Adele Foster

• Created processes and efficiencies across the team that identified areas of focus and priority and resulted in the improvement of attainment and attendance within our student cohort.
• Commissioned reports from the data team to deliver accurate information and reduce time spent manually recording and communicating data changes.
• Identified efficiencies and created new processes in the reporting of data that saved approximately 5 days FTE per month.
• Consolidate reports from multiple sources and created progress trackers, allowing effective reporting, monitoring and prioritisation across a number of key statutory areas of focus.
• Analysis of key datasets drawing meaningful conclusions and providing actionable recommendations for strategic decision making.
• Processed confidential data and information following strict guidelines.
• Funding & Budget management and statutory reporting to the government body.
• Presented my tracker to the National Association of Virtual School Headteachers to offer and discuss a solution of tracking and reporting new national funding to the Department for Education.
• Delivering and supporting training and network events to social workers and designated teachers.
• Identified a weakness in our in-house reporting systems and costed an external solution that would provide more robust and efficient reporting. Presented a case to senior management of costings and benefits which was approved for commission.

• Financial reporting and budgeting around staff training and procurement
• Senior Leadership support around Covid Bubble planning and part time student timetables
• HR & Staff Sickness Management
• Parent communications which often involved challenging conversations around students
• Facilities management
• School census submission to the department for Education

• In a newly acquired organisation it was my role to transition new and old customers over to new data providers, reporting products and capabilities.
• Where the former organisation had a wealth of historical data that could be easily accessed this was now limited and stored within an Oracle archive
• For the first 12 months there was a transition period where we had to source, interrogate and collate “old world” data with data from the new systems, convert into a uniform format and produce reporting packs for customers that provided a rolling 13 month oversight and analysis
• Investigative work of historic and archived data from legacy systems to provide both internal and external customers with requested reporting and insights.
• Creation of regular (daily, weekly, monthly) reporting and dashboards.
• Weekly and Monthly Management metrics
• Regular reporting packs for customers providing them with key data and insights in a presentable format around spend, fuel usage and fleet analysis
• Telephony Metrics
• KPI reporting
• Daily performance reporting to be displayed on team screens around the office
• Weekly meetings with senior leadership team to discuss site performance, review targets and understand reasons behind performance concerns. This was also a forum to present and discuss new areas for analysis
• Prepare training documentation and provide Excel training to account managers so that they could work effectively within their own roles
• Driver League Tables - consolidating data from a number of data providers looking at driving speeds, fines and accident management to provide an insight and risk assessment into commercial driver performance
• Other ad hoc reports analysing spend, performance, accident management within an organisation as and when required.

Stayed at home with a young family after an ex-pat experience in the Middle East.

• Facilitated or assisted facilitation of groups ranging from 10 people to 60 people attending interactive team days
• Worked with companies such as Shell, SAP, Qatar Museum Authority and Williams Formula 1 to align teams on a common goal or build morale.

• Writing procedure guides for new processes and procedures
• New world training manual creation and carrying out training to end users.
• Project post go-live support.
• Resolving post go-live queries from vendors and regional offices.
• Creation of go-live dashboard and presenting to project team and key stakeholders.
• KPI Reporting and analysis.
• Post go-live issue logging.
• System monitoring for post go-live glitches.
• Issue resolution in order to reach Business As Usual.

• Managed a team of 9 across 4 European countries to process invoices and pay vendors in a timely manner.
• KPI reporting (using SAP ECC and BI) and accountability. Held monthly meetings with the country accountants to discuss team's performance.
• Liaised with Astra Zeneca Marketing companies for process improvement, issue resolution and relationship management.
• Provided leadership and direction for employees, supervising activities to drive productivity and efficiency. Displayed compassion to a team facing change and redundancy whilst maintaining high standards and outputs.
• Developed people and encouraged accountability and independence within the team.
• Bi-weekly 1-2-1's to discuss workload, priorities and wellbeing checks.
• Led performance reviews and tailored employee feedback to facilitate professional development.
• Professionally handled difficult customer complaints and objections to maintain first-class customer service standards.
• Monthly team meetings including KPI reviews to improve KPI awareness within the team.
• Recruitment and starter/leaver admin.

• Managed and facilitated stakeholder engagement meetings and forums with internal and external stakeholders.
• Owner of the Business Process Master List for Accounts Payable, Document Management, and Vendor Payments Teams - identified all tasks carried out by the Accounting Operations departments.
• Ensured all "old world" processes and procedures were identified and documented to ensure that nothing was overlooked during configuration and implementation.
• Held a process mapping workshop to design and amend new processes and procedures.
• Data Cleanse of legacy systems.
• Creation of Training Materials.
• Test Script Creation.
• End User Training for new systems and processes.
• User Acceptance Testing.
• Go-Live floorwalking.
• Liaising with IT and SAP consultants in order to resolve post implementation issues.
• Post Implementation Review with Project team.
• Provided valuable feedback on What Went Well & What Went Not Well.
• Post implementation it was my role to improve and sustain people, systems and processes, striving towards BAU as smoothly as possible.

Key Achievements:

• Reviewed and amended companywide delegation of authority process and metrics.
• Identified refinements to systems, liaising between operational teams and SAP support function.
• Compiled and analysed reports as and when required by different financial departments. From month end reports for business analysts or one off reports for senior management showing discrepancies on the general ledgers.
• Identified the need for a project team to be set up to resolve a critical post implementation issue.
• Researched, set up and co-managed the project that resolved £millions goods receipts on the company P&L within 4 months of identifying the problem.

In between phases of the implementation I worked in the Project Management Office within the Operations and Service Management Department where I:

• Implemented a LEAN initiative across the service centre.
• Organised presentations to the wider business to explain changes within Accounting Operations that impacted other business areas eg. Procurement.