SCOTT SHEPHERD

(Promoted from Manager to Senior Manager in 2023)

Flutter Entertainment is the world’s leading Global iGaming and sportsbetting company, having undergone a flurry of M&A resulting in massive and ongoing growth in our Analytics team during which we’ve had to keep up with a rapid pace of change.

In my role in Finance Data Analytics I lead a team responsible for revenue modelling for the UKI side of the business. We are at the intersect of Data, Product and Finance, collaborating with business stakeholders and data engineers alike to create reliable and scalable models that enable data-driven business decision making.

My aim is for my team to be the linchpin that connects these otherwise disparate elements of the business. Our success is measured by the extent to which we can dovetail our Finance Analytics strategy to address prioritised business needs.

Our existing Financial model - spanning our full gaming product suite and multiple brands across jurisdictions worldwide - has been hugely successful, and due to a flurry of M&A in recent years needs to be refactored to ensure we’re able to scale to serve the growing complexity of business questions being asked of us.

As of last year Flutter now trades on the NYSE and, as such, is now required to be SOx compliant. As such there is now an increased focus on Data Governance and Controls.

Role & Responsibilities

Currently leading a project team redesigning the architecture of the company's Global Financial Revenue data model which serves as a single source of truth across the Group for:

• statutory and commercial flash reporting
• the automated generation of reconciled gaming tax returns
• “Revenue-to-Cash” reconciliation - ability to reconcile 3rd party gameplay and wallet data right back to transactional level deposit/withdrawals from 3rd party payment providers for a complete picture of the customer lifecycle and Revenue.
  

Coaching a team to build and maintain key DQ checks for the model, with the customer wallet at its core and interacting with several internal and external data platforms. The model takes a holistic approach and leverages financial accounting principles such as double-entry and accruals to ensure datasets are accurate.

Underwent two major platform migrations and collaborated closely with the Data Engineering team to ensure minimal disruption with the ETL in Airflow and the adoption of best practices.

Interpersonal and Leadership Skills

• Business Partnering with commercial executives - the first stage in any project is to build “shared understanding” through productive, two-way conversations with stakeholders rather than one-dimensional “requirements gathering”. This builds trust and drives the breakdown of complex requirements into more manageable user stories that can be digested and managed by the team.
• Coaching - I currently mentor an Analyst in my team, as well as having 4 direct reports. While more than happy to engage in technical work, as a Manager my success is underpinned by the success of the team. As such my role is principally to coach and mentor my team, and so have a multiplicative effect on value-add than an additive one. This is achieved through regular 1:1s and using Radical Candor to build trust and give/solicit productive feedback
• Building a Team - In my 10 years in Finance BI &Analytics at Flutter I’ve been central to increasing our headcount from 3 to what is now a team of 16 during a couple of periods of company hyper-growth
• Project Management - ensuring all parties have clearly defined roles and boundaries and ensuring projects are well-scoped and delivered to deadlines

Technical Skills

• SQL, mainly in Amazon RedShift and BigQuery for data modelling and architecture
• Alteryx for ETL and data manipulation/exporting
• Looker (both dashboarding and LookML) for daily Revenue flash reporting and a handful of other use cases, and formerly Tableau (desktop and server)
• VS Code and GitHub for version control and for managing our data models
• Databricks for ETL
• Atlassian suite (JIRA, Confluence)

Shift + Return to add a new line

• Developed financial revenue models in SQL to enhance analytical capabilities.
• Automated month-end adjustments using Alteryx and SQL for increased efficiency.
• Constructed daily revenue flash reports in Tableau to support decision-making.
• Acquired knowledge of financial statements and diverse revenue streams.