SERENA RAVO

I am in 6 months career break - full time childcare role.

I am looking forward to restart work in September.

I used this time to further invest in:

• my technical skills with Financial Modeling course at the BPP college in London and doing an SQL online training.
• building relationships with other ACCA professionals attending Accountex and Link up events .

70% job focus :

• Ownership of User Access Testing (UAT) to implement the Budgeting Financial software - partnering with external consultant and delivering the automation of Lending and Deposits planning process

30% job focus :

• Streamlined budgeting process by building financial models and setting reviews with budget owners
• Ownership of the Forecast process for the Operational Expenditure
• Supporting the Head of FP&A on ad hoc analyses

Key achievements:

• Building of hybrid (excel and software base) Balance sheet and Income statement 5 years Budget template
• 90% time saving implemented in the payroll review process to support HR department
• 80% staff cost control introduce for each department within the bank

• Reporting to the Europe FP&A Director and Partnering with the UK&I Finance and Operation Environment Department
• Partnering with finance teams across different countries to gather the costs in high profile projects
• Supervising the UK&I Revenue Forecast process and coordinating the monthly outlook with Operation & Finance Directors
• Consolidating the Sources of Revenue for Europe and presenting at the Monthly Directors meeting

Key achievements :

• Creating dynamic Dashboards using Power BI to help the Environment Department to understand the Business Development Costs versus the Budget

• Monthly reviewing of the Support Functions costs (HR, Finance, Marketing, Legal, IT, Quality, Real Estate, Group Admin, Exec) and discussing the monthly financial performance with Department Leads
• Working with the local R2R and Oracle finance team to ensure the transactions were correctly recorded in the accounting system

Key achievements:

• 100% process improvement achieved with the implementation of standard Variance Analysis Template to performance reviews process across the various Functions

• KPI Dashboard preparation and data consolidation from different accounting systems
• After the merger, I have worked through three different accounting systems (Sage, Oracle and E1) to consolidate the data and to support Senior Management in understanding the District and End Market performance in Continental Europe

Key achievement:

• 100% centralised Working capital model to set out the Cash monthly targets for all European business

• As part of global Record to Report (R2R) team, I was focusing on supporting the EMIA regions to ensure the financial data were correctly accounted into the Integrated Management system
• Preparation of Consolidation, IC accounts and monthly review of financial position for the UK entities.

• Promoted to Benelux GL team leader
• Preparation and review of BS reconciliations
• Managing the month end closure

• Five months relocation from the SSC Dublin to the Italian Head Office to work on preparation of local statutory financial statements
• Review of year-end accounts enabling deep understanding of US GAAP and IT GAAP

• Managing migration accounting tasks from Italian HQ to Shared Service Centre in Dublin
• Conducting of payroll month end, P&L and BS variance analyses in US GAAP

• Improved cash flow by strategically timing payment and invoice processing.

• Achieved performance goals on consistent basis monthly and quartely.