Financial Analyst
Al Azizia Panda United Co.
Total years of experience :3 years, 3 Months
• Preparation and allocation of budgets for Sales, Income, Rebates and Margin for different categories of the Electronics Departments and ensuring they are met on regular basis.
• Co-ordinating with Marketing and supply chain to promote and place products to achieve targets and drive maximum sales.
• Managing Inventory and ensuring targets for Stock Days are met. Further, ensuring a reduction in the discontinued and purged range and disposing off the aged stock in an orderly manner.
• Work with Category Managers to achieve operational excellence for monthly commitments and maintain accuracy.
• Preparing of departments’ performance reports on a daily basis, including AD HOC reports for individual products within categories.
• Co-ordinating with Category Managers to enhance business models and pricing plans that contributes to the profit and growth of the company.
• Design, development and management of new and/or existing products.
• Working with the Business Team and key stakeholders to define scope, timelines and costs for updating existing products and implementing new products.
• Assisting in the deployment of new products, involves working with product design team to prepare product feasibility and limitations.
• Preparing the weekly promotion plan for products that have the highest planned sales and including them in the weekly promotional leaflet.
• Working closely with Category Managers to prepare and negotiate supplier contracts and promote products to improve sales, margins and income. Further, providing the signed contracts to Government Relations Officer and streamline renewal of contracts.
• Identifying product marketing ideas and opportunities based on industry trends, current market environment and competition.
• Rationalizing of product range to improve competitive position and optimal product performance.
• Participate in the month-end close of various legal entities including analysis and reporting.
• Responsibilities included summarizing and preparing financial status, balance sheet, profit and loss and supporting schedules according to monthly Group Reporting timelines.
• Preparing and recording entries by compiling and analysing account information.
• Reconcile and maintain balance sheet accounts.
• Using Oracle to update and create general ledgers, making adjustments and reconciliations for day-to-day transactions.
• Assisting with year-end closings along with preparing Zakat calculations and audit compliance.
• Administer AP, AR and Treasury in daily transactions in regards to financing of projects, reconciliations and feasibilities.
• Preparing AD HOC reports and Variance Analysis for the CFO, Directors and Managers.
• Analysing trends for the preparation of budgets and forecasts with the use of the Zero Budget Based model.
• Implementing and maintaining internal financial controls and improving procedures.
• Prepare and maintain Special Project budgets and analyse limitations.
• Prepare and present monthly Financial Review Pack for the Finance Director, CFO and the Board of Directors.
• Constant liaison with Marketing, Supply Chain, Payroll, HR, Treasury etc. in solving queries.
I was approached by the Junior Operations Manager at Mosaid Travels to work as an intern for a second time, due to the achievement in the previous year. He was very adamant in me working with 2 other members of my previous team as we already had knowledge of and experience in the company. I was more than happy to work at Mosaid Travel due to their friendly working environment and the opportunity to work closely with a number of Clients.
There was a change in the Internship Programme at Mosaid Travel as now they hired a team of experienced individuals who had already worked there as an Intern to supervise the new Interns. Therefore, our responsibilities included briefing the new interns with their duties and helping them with their problems. Along with this we had to complete a number of tasks that we were accounted for. These included checking the Ledger accounts, arranging meetings for the Managers with the Clients and typing of the Contracts.
Working at Mosaid Travel has taught me the importance of building client relationships and providing promising results by completing the delegated responsibilities.
I worked at Mosaid Travels during the summers of first 2 years of my Undergraduate degree in order to absorb the experience of a professional environment. Mosaid Travels is a part of Mansour Al Mosaid Group of companies which deals in a diverse range of projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
During the first week of my internship I was briefed by the General Manager on the responsibilities that I will be allotted. I was then teamed up with a Junior Operations Manager who mentored me and 6 other individuals throughout the 12 weeks of the programme.
Our team studied the company and its products and developed new ideas to sell packages to a younger client's base. We conducted questionnaires and collected data on the most popular holiday destination among the youth and inputted the responses on Mosaid's Accounting software. The Management delegated the task of analysing the profitability of products in different regions and preparing a report on how to increase profits in poor performing areas.
We resolved the issues in some regions by offering competitive rates and group discounts, the Senior Management accepted majority of our ideas and rewarded us with the best Intern Group of 2008.
The opportunity that I was given while working at Arena included assisting team managers and putting forward innovative ideas to the Management. We as a group discussed a number of ideas amongst ourselves and after picking out the best one I decided on presenting them to the Senior Managers in the weekly meetings. While I used my group members' Accounting and I.T competency to allot them the job of cutting down costs via Cost Benefit Analysis and I prepared the report on the results.
I came up with the idea of teaming up Warid Telecom which is the largest mobile phone network provider in Pakistan. The Management were impressed with the idea as there was minimum cost involved and ended up in saving a lot in the marketing budget. We finalized the deal with Warid that they could use our property for advertisement and in return they will send text messages to 100, 000 customers, ages ranging from 16-25, every month with the promotional deals that Arena offers. This boosted up sales by 30% and more people were attracted to the complex.
We were rewarded by the Management with a lifetime membership at the complex free of cost which only the Senior Management had. The overall experience at Arena was valuable as it taught me the skill of thinking outside the box.
Overall Degree Classification of 2:1 (Second Class: First Division).
Overall Degree Classification of 2:1 (Second Class: First Division).