Financial Controller
Unilever KSA
Total years of experience :26 years, 0 Months
Prime responsibilities & Key Achievements so far includes;
• Overall responsibility to ensure all legal and statutory compliances are met on time in full.
• Ensuring that all internal Controls & policies are adequately operational in each KSA entity and controls are working as designed.
• Managing Tax and regulatory affairs of the entities to ensure zero unplanned financial risk
• Maintaining overall financial hygiene of the entities. Delivering against all internal performance KPIs
• Managing KSA Cash planning by owning AR collections and Credit policies
About Gandour:
Gandour group is over $ 150m business (KSA $100m) across KSA, Lebanon, Egypt & India
and operates within FMCG with over 100+ products range from 10+ categories
Designation:
Head of Finance
Reporting to: Reporting to Managing Director
Supervising to: Functional Finance Managers of the business processes
Key responsibilities:
Prime responsibilities & Key Achievements so far includes;
• Managing the Profitability & Cash flow position of the KSA business
• Improve financial capability of the organization by directing available investments &
resources to the most profitable opportunity (mix, channel, category, region or product etc.)
• Advise MD & CEO on long term organization strategy in terms of business model,
profitability and reaction to dynamic business & economic environment etc.
• Build and execute a financial controls environment with clear responsibilities assigned to
right individuals and following a check and balance mechanism
• Managing all financial and non-financial risk relevant to organization by forward planning
and setting the course through relevant organization policies.
• Develop and document standard operating procedures for all finance related activities to
help continuously improve the business processes
• Developing clear and smart objectives and expectations for everyone within Finance
function. Clear roles and responsibilities to support growth
• Helped business turn to path to profitability after few years of successive losses by
introducing zero based budgets, defining clear business processes, updating missing
policies and then implementing them, loss tree analysis etc. Business shed off around 40%
of losses ($ 4.5m) in first year of joining.
Designation: Finance Manager
Reporting to: Reporting to Finance Director of North Africa & Middle East (NAME) while Business
partnering with Vice President of Finance & Vice President of Marketing for NAME
Supervising to: Finance Managers at each Business Units with NAME
Key responsibilities:
Currently working as Finance Manager - BB finance for North Africa & Middle East business.
The prime responsibilities include;
• Review, provide guidance and support to local and regional teams with respect to
preparation of innovation business cases. Align the business priorities and making sure the
innovation crossing through the funnel are in harmonization to those priorities
• Lead the NAME wide savings agenda on marketing investments. Control and Track the
performance by target setting and monthly review.
• Co-lead with KSA Finance Director, the project on Effective Business Partnering across
NAME. The project is to align the finance priorities for the year and implement plans to
move finance efforts on more value adding activities. This project also includes rolling out
the global best practices across NAME business units
• Analyze and advise the opportunities to NAME LT on the in-market price alignment with
the strategy. Analysis includes by brand/channel/format/pack size opportunities
identifications and work with the BB team to implement in the market place.
• Information management relating to BB area.
Reason for leaving Future Growth opportunities within Gulf region
Designation: Finance Manager - Supply Chain Finance for North Africa, Middle East & Central Africa
(NAMCA)
Reporting to: Senior Finance Manager - NAMCA SC Finance
Supervising to: SC Finance Teams across 9 Business Units of NAMCA (42 countries)
Key responsibilities:
For over 2 years stint worked as Finance Manger with the renewed function of Supply Chain
Finance (SCF). The role looked after the finance aspects of Supply Chain function for North
Africa, Middle East & Central Africa (NAMCA) cluster. The role requires (at minimum) the
following;
• Managed the information needs of Supply Chain Leadership team (related to finance aspect
of SC) through establishing a reporting mechanism and culture across 9 business units (42
countries).
• Worked with regional SCF to help drive regional agenda (eg. Budget setting for Business
Units, Transfer price standardization, alignment with regional Supply Mgmt teams etc)
• Factory costs budget setting and performance management through monthly calls
• Analyze and feed-forward the business with insights on the replacement margins using
monthly Supply Management (SM) cost forecast. The SM FC review would ensure;
▪ Rigor in cost forecasting process
▪ Identify the key risks & Opportunities for the business
▪ Drive price to price (P2P) reconciliation across NAMCA
• Built a process to ensure SCF approval on all savings projects, computation of savings and
its reporting into online system (ISIS)
• Ensure a rigor in Gross Margin Variance Analysis (GMVA) calculations, challenge and at the
same time bring impr. in overall process including extension of the analysis to categories
• Worked on cross Business units projects eg. Dubai entity, Cross Border sourcing etc.
Reason for leaving: Move to new role within Unilever
Designation: Finance Manager - Information Office North Africa & Middle East (NAME)
Reporting to: Senior Finance Manager - Information Office
Supervising to: Cross regional Team with 8 persons based in Dubai and 4 across other geographies
Key responsibilities:
• Setting up the teams (which includes 8 local members based in Dubai and 2 in Egypt & 2
in Morocco) and managing the process for providing the Right information at Right time to
the Right people for Supply Chain (SC), Customer Development (CD) and Brand Building
(BB) teams across NAME.
• Business Partner to Finance Director, NAME in developing the strategy document for next
5 years and tracking of Actuals vs. the targets. OTIF information to right people to take the
corrective actions.
• Successfully implement the process of Operating Cash Flow (OCF) calculation and
reporting across NAME.
• Delivery of Supply Chain Booklet containing all the SC related information across NAME
within the short span of 3 months.
• Liaise with outsourcing partner in India to set up a process to compile a sole source of
information for the board overseeing NAME countries
• Setting up the process and delivery of NAME wide Market Share reports within the agreed
timelines.
• Played a vital role of Team leader and trainer during implementation of next phase of SAP
(FICO Module) across Gulf & KSA Business Units. Managed to train about 50+ people on
SAP with the passing rate of 95%.
• Handling the external and internal Audits
Reason for leaving: Move to new role within Unilever
Designation:
Internal Auditor & SOX Consultant for Unilever Arabia
Reporting to:
Senior Internal Auditor
Supervising to:
Cross regional Team with 8 persons based in Dubai and 4 across other geographies
Key responsibilities:
• Study and documentation of Business Processes (Financial Accounts, Media buying, Supply Chain & commercial marketing etc) and preparing risk matrix suggesting various further controls to be brought in.
• Reviewed and Assessed Business Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) & Corporate Policies.
• Business Units (KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Abu Dhabi & Dubai) Process study & operational Audits
Reason for leaving:
Move to new role within Unilever
Designation:
Business Process Associate
Reporting to:
Finance Manager - Financial Services
Key responsibilities:
• Team Leader for Accounts Payable outsourcing project to India. Responsibilities include the smooth handover and bring in more controls and system efficiencies.
• Monitoring & Controlling of sales auto invoicing process for the shipments taking place from Saudi Arabia
• Monitoring and controlling the month end tasks relating to materials management e.g. Goods in Transit, Reconciliation of GIT etc.
• Controlling financial part of Material Management activities e.g. Variance Analysis, implementing controls, with help of Regional Application Team (RAC) in Turkey to avoid any variances happening in first place.
• Team leader (during 2005) to undertake the part of centralization of Accounts Payable function (from KSA, Bahrain, UAE & Oman in 2005). Prepared SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) thereof to document the activity. This was ultimately contributed once the function was outsourced to BPO
Reason for leaving:
Move to new role within Unilever
Reporting to: Finance Director
Key responsibilities: • Liaison with banks regarding funds management and day to day transactions.
• Preparation and Finalization of P&LA/c and Balance Sheet including cost comparison
and reconciliation reports.
• Assist Director Finance in Foreign Currency booking for future funds requirements
• Dealing with Vendors and Authorizing payments to them.
• Liaison with banks and Foreign Customers for timely payments of Export Invoices.
• Liaison with banks for the matters related to Import & Export documents
Designation:
Senior Auditor
Reporting to:
Principle - CA Firm
Key responsibilities:
• Planning, supervising and review of Audit work plan.
• Audit of Various Private and Public companies − both at initial and finalization stage
• Assisted the client in preparation of financial statements in accordance with the identified financial reporting framework that conform with International Accounting Standards
• Tax Planning, preparing and filling of Income Tax and Wealth Tax returns of various Companies & Partnerships
Reason for leaving:
Completion of 5 years of compulsory on-job training with CA firm.
Chartered Accountancy Qualification
SAP FI Consultant