Ahmad Taraq

The role demands end to end responsibility of technology Opex ranging from planning & optimizing Opex and achieving planned financial performance in line with strict strategic financial targets, through controls and analysis to further enhance efficiency in collaboration with technology team.

 Forecasted end to end technology operational cost for 5 year business plan Opex in first telecom merger in local industry. Estimating over 70% of overall merger synergies to be delivered through technology Opex, backed by detailed plan for integration transition in collaboration with technology teams.
 Forecast technology cost in line with commercial inputs and technology feedback in all forecasting exercises 0+12, 3+9, 6+6 and 9+3 and business plans.
 Manage month end, quarterly and annual Opex closing followed by detailed variance analysis and management reports including financial performance & KPIs, Operational KPIs and status of Key Projects for local management and Group (parent company)
 Prepare business cases in collaboration with technology team and evaluate initiatives based Capex investment thorough ROI and other thoughtful resource allocation analyses to drive better investment decisions. Keeping track of implementation phase of approved investments and monitoring initiative results and KPIS in comparison to business case and presenting implementation report.
 Site wise performance evaluation through site level profitability and various analyses with the objective to enhance value.
 Supervise financial control and approval management of Procure to Pay Cycle.
 Support implementation of finance automation project as Technology Business Partner.
Special Projects:
 PMCL & Warid merger financial evaluation with identification and quantification of network related synergies as per technology integration plan. Closely monitor and ensure timely delivery of technology Opex synergy milestones as per project plan.
 Smart Managed Services (Nov 2015- Jun 2016) focused precisely to improve efficiency through process optimization in areas of FLM, security and refueling services. The project has delivered 12% cost savings since completion.
 Network Costing Model (Feb - Oct 2015) The project aimed at estimating the actual cost per unit of products and services offered, thereby resulting in cost per minute (voice), cost per MB (data) and cost per SMS/MMS through allocating all direct and indirect costs to each unit billed.

 Evaluate business cases for technology projects suggesting financial viability
 Identification, quantification and reporting of technology risks based on user’s inputs and obtaining management risk response to mitigate the risks.
 Developed a detailed utilities based monthly performance report highlighting the specific low performing areas like hybrid solution inefficiency and fuel pilferage and recommendations for cost control.
 3, 5 and 10 year Technology Business plan forecast under strategic guidelines, based on end users inputs in-line with commercial requirements;
 Annual and quarterly rolling budgets forecasts required to meet commercial forecast in accordance with strategic guidelines;
 Evaluation of a local telecom operator for acquisition bid, forecasting the possible synergies in terms of network cost.

Special Projects:
 3G license bid evaluation required a series of scenario evaluation in line with commercial forecast for various spectrum options. I was responsible for forecasting technology Opex in all the scenarios under discussion.
 Inorder to enhance cost efficiency “Network cost base lining” was quantified which was further compared to global best practices with environmental adjustments to evaluate cost gaps. A detailed task based initiatives plan was established to optimize cost.
 Global Competitive Benchmarking (AT Kearney) for Technology OPEX/CAPEX and KPIs for 2013 with aim to evaluate the technical and IT cost for each cost driver against benchmarks and quantify performance gaps. Moreover, action plan to reduce the identified gaps was prepared and is continuously monitored for against actual results.