Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Accomplishments
Timeline
Generic
JOSEPH COOPER

JOSEPH COOPER

Leeds

Summary

Accomplished industry leader with a proven track record in digital transformation and innovation. Demonstrates exceptional leadership and strategic thinking skills, with extensive expertise in control, governance, delivering scalability, efficiency management, and operational excellence. Driving organisational success through effective people, SLA & target delivery management

Overview

12
12
years of professional experience
4
4
years of post-secondary education
1
1
Certification

Work History

Head of Financial Services - Central Europe

Liberty Blume
Leeds, Yorkshire
01.2022 - Current
  • Senior leader responsible for c. 450,000 invoices, 4.8 billion in spend, governance & control, bank reconciliation, query management, TM&E with a team of 126 people
  • Finance lead for multiple ERP merger, migration and upgrade projects on both SAP & Oracle
  • Drove process automation & improvements via sourcing and deploying platforms whilst streamlining financial operations by implementing innovative strategies and procedures.
  • AI Queries management tool - 42% query automation
  • Straight through invoice processing platform - 72% STIP
  • Spend control policy - 52% to 3% non-PO spend reduction
  • Created and led successful business culture focused on performance.
  • Successfully delivered on tasks within tight deadlines.
  • Enhanced risk management with thorough financial audits and assessments.
  • Ensured compliance with all regulatory requirements, maintaining impeccable financial records.
  • Provided strategic leadership during corporate restructuring efforts, steering towards success.
  • Leveraged business intelligence tools to generate insightful data for improved financial forecasting.


Group AR & AP Manager

Lowell Financial Ltd
04.2017 - 12.2021
  • During my time at Lowell my main responsibility was to manage all our corporate and third-party financial transactions and group AP ledgers
  • This consisted of a credit ledger transacting circa £36million+ from our credit partners and payables function looking after 80,000 invoices and £180mil in spend annually
  • This was run with a team of 22 including 4 direct reports
  • I oversaw all of our UK, Netherlands & Luxemburg clients and payables ledgers for 11 countries across Europe
  • My biggest achievement was centralising AP & AR from across the group to a SSC within Leeds
  • I implemented a variety of platforms such as Coupa, SAP Concur, Frontier & Chaos (an inhouse RPA development) to successfully deliver an FTE saving of 44 within AP and 22 within AR
  • This also dropped our cost per invoice from $28 to $13
  • This process was a great success and was shown when my accounts payable team won 3 industry awards for Investors in people, Team of the year & AP tech advancements in 2019, 2020 & 2021 with the APA
  • The progress and controls I have implemented in to my AR department have seen the credit risk debt reduce from an increasing £3.4million to under £10k monthly and key metrics such as days to pay and aged balances for AP ledgers to
  • Furthermore, I work closely with our treasury and management accounts & business partners to forecast and manage our output whilst ensuring our cash flow projections are met, yet keeping a tight control over guaranteeing all suppliers are paid on time as per their contractual needs
  • I manage roughly 800 suppliers and on average £5.8million in payments each week
  • Timely payment has become a huge part of my AP work; I have created and implemented robust processes since the introduction the HMRC initiative, Duty to report
  • When I took over the AP department, we were at 52% of invoices paid on time and in the last 2 years have seen this increase to 89%
  • These platforms helped manage compliance to DTR, CCO and PPC as the digital end to end process flow has enhance fraud checks and controls, reporting and prompt payments

West Yorksire District Arrears and Credit Manager

Perfect Home
11.2012 - 04.2017
  • During my time at PerfectoHme I manged a team of 14 employees across Dewsbury, Halifax, Bradford and Leeds
  • We worked strategically to target at risk credit accounts to ensure all company targets were met and using a unique formulae to determine most likely payers and recoverables across all regions
  • This led to west yorkshire being the top area for collection 3 years in a row
  • A large part of this role was spent presenting all our deliverables and actuals to our senior management which was done on a weekly basis

Education

BSc Hons -

Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds
09.2009 - 08.2013

A-Level - Math Grade C, P.E Grade B, Economics Grade B, History Grade B

GCSE - Math Grade A

Skills

  • AP Association appointed industry leader
  • APAM
  • FCICM
  • LEADERSHIP
  • STRATEGIC THINKER
  • DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & INNOVATION
  • CONTROL & GOVERNANCE
  • MULTI REGION LEGISLATION KNOWLEDGE
  • PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
  • DELIVERING SCALABILITY
  • EFFICIENCY MANAGEMENT
  • PROCESS CONTROL
  • SLA MANAGEMENT
  • DTR / PPC / CCO

Certification

  • Certified APAM (Accounts Payable Association Manager), Certificate of Excellence
  • Working party member of the first APA industry qualification, Certification
  • MCICM application, currently processed to undertake on personal time in 2023

Accomplishments

APA Industry Award Winner

  • Leadership Award - 2024
  • Innovation Award - 2024
  • Team of the Year - 2023


APA Industry Award Runner-up

  • Leadership Award - 2023
  • Shared Service Center of the Year - 2023



Timeline

Head of Financial Services - Central Europe

Liberty Blume
01.2022 - Current

Group AR & AP Manager

Lowell Financial Ltd
04.2017 - 12.2021

West Yorksire District Arrears and Credit Manager

Perfect Home
11.2012 - 04.2017

BSc Hons -

Leeds Metropolitan University
09.2009 - 08.2013

A-Level - Math Grade C, P.E Grade B, Economics Grade B, History Grade B

GCSE - Math Grade A

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