Yahia Ben Saoud

• Financial Stewardship: Lead financial oversight of a $70M global technology portfolio, serving as the primary finance partner to IT leadership on funding strategy, risk management, and portfolio governance.
• Cost Optimization: Negotiated a bulk hardware procurement agreement that secured $3M in direct savings for the technology portfolio.
• Digital Reporting: Led the transition from fragmented Excel reporting to a centralized Power BI executive dashboard, providing real-time forecast visibility to 100+ North America IT leaders.
• Team Leadership: Lead 3 finance partners and influence 8 cross-functional stakeholders across global programs, ensuring consistent financial accountability and governance standards.
• Process Agility: Redesigned the annual budgeting and forecasting cycle, reducing turnaround time by 20% and improving confidence in investment decisions.
• Vendor Financial Governance: Established financial oversight processes for major technology vendors, improving cost transparency and strengthening budget accountability across programs.

• Enterprise Finance: Directed full-scope operational finance and FP&A for a $250M+ automotive enterprise, overseeing accounting operations, financial planning, and business performance reporting.
• Analytics Framework: Developed an enterprise-wide inventory analytics framework that eliminated 8+ hours of manual monthly processing and improved pricing accuracy and margin visibility.
• Operations & Controls: Managed AP/AR operations and financial controls overseeing $24M+ in monthly transactions, ensuring policy compliance and audit readiness.
• Systems Migration: Led the migration from legacy planning systems to Hyperion Financial Management, enabling dynamic financial modeling and improving forecasting capabilities across the organization.
• Talent Development: Managed and mentored a team of 11 finance and accounting professionals, establishing high-performance standards and building bench strength across the department.

• Successfully developed monthly operational reviews and provided accounting/analytical support of assigned functions.
• Reviewed forecasts, analyzed key performance indicators, identified any business issues, and provided financial input.
• Continuously performed ad hoc case analysis, created financial models, and analyzed business trends to support growth.
• Created dashboard reports that were implemented in business segments and forecasted $1 Million budget portfolios.
• Identified innovation and renovation opportunities and lead initiatives in support of the brand's financial proposition.
• Analyzed, tracked, and reported risk data to make informed optimizations along with all financial recommendations.
• Influenced high prioritization of initiatives, aligning experiences across channels and touchpoints to ensure best results.

• Analyzed operating results, identified key financial/operational issues, and quantified actual results versus forecasts.
• Maintained fixed asset systems for accounting, processing, and reporting of the assets in order to meet requirements.
• Reported to the Chief Financial Officer along with analyzing budgets, revenue, and expenses to ensure compliance.
• Reviewed all information/data in an efficient manner to reduce complexity and implement actionable improvements.
• Prepared step-by-step processes and streamlined accounts payable cycles to meet goals and decrease operational costs.
• Supervised assigned Jr. Financial Analysts and A/P Specialists to ensure compliance standards were efficiently met.
• Liaised between accounting teams and external auditors as well as reviewed all audit reports to create improvements.

• Handled all activities in accounts payable and receivable including high volume full-cycle accounts payable-matching, batching, coding, and cutting checks.
• Ensured timely payments of vendor invoices. Worked with vendors to solve problems and responsible for negotiating past due accounts.
• Processed and sent purchase orders and credit memos to vendors.
• Produced and maintained a variety of financial reports and helped with yearend audit.
• Prepared and post journal entries as assigned. Assisted on completion and maintenance of general ledgers and other accounting functions on an as-needed basis.
• Audited and processed expense reports for employees.

• Prepared and consolidated Financial Statements of several entities and their subsidiaries.
• Prepared trend analysis of account receivable, inventory and bad debt provision.
• Prepared quarterly analysis of fixed assets and capital expenditure reports for executive management.
• Provided analysis of Balance Sheet and Income Statement accounts, which includes investigating, reporting and documenting variances compared against forecast and prior periods.
• Prepare tie-out and support binder for each SEC filing
• Assisted with SEC filing and stock option expense reporting.
• Created and prepared Hyperion reports for executive management.
• Applied GAAP and business logic to financial statements and accounts.
• Provided Excel training courses.
• Maintained high audit compliance.
• Performed special projects as assigned.
• Created controls to ensure compliance with SOX.

• Handled all activities in accounts payable and receivable including high volume full-cycle accounts payable-matching, batching, coding, and cutting checks.
• Ensured timely payments of vendor invoices. Worked with vendors to solve problems and responsible for negotiating past due accounts.
• Processed and sent purchase orders and credit memos to vendors.
• Produced and maintained a variety of financial reports and helped with yearend audit.
• Prepared and post journal entries as assigned. Assisted on completion and maintenance of general ledgers and other accounting functions on an as-needed basis.
• Audited and processed expense reports for employees.

• Performed monthly/daily reconciliations.
• Performed month end accrual adjustments.
• Preformed extensive research, documentation, and reporting.
• Monitored daily cash flows for a subset of accounts.
• Worked extensively with MS Excel, Access, Words and Outlook.