Neil Francis

Experience

• 

  Saint Helena Government

  Jun 2011 - Nov 2011

  Accounts Payable Executive

  - Reconciling a number of government held accounts. - Processing transactions for payment from government controlled accounts. - Inputting transactions for creditor payment to settle government accounts with external vendors. - Liaising with external vendors regarding receipt of payments from government.

• 

  Bank of Saint Helena

  Dec 2011 - Aug 2012

  Lending Officer

  - Carrying out analysis on business loan applications and providing judgements on the creditworthiness and feasibility of applications. - Working with customers on a regular basis regarding loan applications and maintaining collateral. - Risk management of various loan portfolios with regards to insurance. Working on risk management of possible bad debtor clients, and liaising with actual bad debtors regarding the settlement of said bad debts with the bank. - Preparing end of month financial documents for submission to management. Show less

• 

  Nike EMEA

  Jul 2014 - Aug 2015

  Financial Analyst

  - Internship focused on the Operating Expenses of multiple functions (Sales, Merchandising and Operations) across Western and Central Eastern Europe geographies.- Monthly forecasting on a cost centre level to accurately capture expenditure adjustments vs. initial budget.- Communicated pertinent financial information to functional VP's and business leaders in order to track expenditure to budget/ forecast. - Carried out variance analysis to inform business leaders on route causes and key drivers of deviations from budget and forecast; enabling functional personnel to create action plans to cover adverse variances throughout the fiscal year to land year on agreed upon targets.- Partnered with functional leads to create function-specific budgets based on expected expenses in upcoming year and historical trend analysis for regular operating expenses.- Worked closely with HR function to capture headcount related expenditure to accurately update forecasts and create functional budgets. Enabling the business to accurately track headcount movement and cost throughout the fiscal both vs. budget and on a forecast basis.- Working in multiple currencies including USD, GBP, EUR and RUB; reporting on exchange rate risk to functional leaders.- Other tasks included creating manual accruals and prepayments in order to meet US GAAP regulations. Also carrying out budget transfers to Western and Central Eastern European territories.- Daily use of SAP and Excel programmes and occasional TM1 utilisation. Show less

• 

  Matrix Chambers

  Jul 2016 - Jan 2017

  Fees and Finance Administrator

  - Reconciling current and credit accounts utilising Sage accounting software.- Regular debt collection of member aged debt portfolios and current portfolios.- Liaising with external legal bodies regarding sensitive information.- Carried out timely and appropriate fee collection to reach annual and monthly targets.- Carried out billing of sensitive and high profile cases.

• 

  WeWork

  Jan 2017 - now

  - Enhanced company efficiency through implementing strategic change initiatives with a focus on aligning processes in EMEA and APAC regions to Global standard.- Led sprint teams in pursuit of tactical business improvements in preparation for future strategic transformations.- Working with internal stakeholders to understand business requirements to plan for future process and technology transformations. - Act as a champion within shared service function to drive engagement and adoption of new technologies and processes through change management initiatives.- Assisting large scale technology transformations through requirements gathering, system testing and issue identification and escalation.- Executed change management processes, ensuring smooth transition during company-wide system implementation.- Responsible for system testing, bug reporting and validation for EMEA & APAC regional rollouts of new technology systems.- Ad hoc data and content preparation to inform senior stakeholder decisions; including trend and variance analyses. Show less - Responsible for owning the finance quote-cash project roadmap and prioritisation of initiatives for EMEA region resulting in an overall error rate reduction of ~5% across all P2P and Q2C operations.- Requirement gathering for Billing & collection team project goals and providing recommendations for project prioritisation for upper management.- Identified process enhancement needs and implemented solutions alongside change management initiatives.- Project-managed small teams focused on tactical initiatives with a focus on enchanting team productivity through clear directives and coordination.- Built business cases for exec groups to assist decision making.Facilitated problem-solving and solutioning sessions with stakeholders (primarily shared services functions).- Prepared and conducted regular project reviews with stakeholders on process changes and initiative progress- Led risk assessments to identify potential project issues and mitigate risks to project outcomes and timelines.- Designed, trained and implemented new procedures to enhance existing tactical processes and remove control gaps. Show less - Daily review of invoices and payments for member accounts and providing resolutions for account discrepancies.- Providing timely solutions for internal and external stakeholders with regards to billing issues and discrepancies via multiple communication channels.- Maintaining billing and collections for multiple building portfolios – approx. £xx M per month- Train new billing associates on billing and collections- Hold training sessions for internal teams on correct policy and procedure in relation to billing and accountsreceivable to ensure best practice- Participate in regular brainstorming sessions to ensure processes are reviewed & improved regularly and best practice and procedure is followed- Identify and correct issues related to billing and collections processes.- Liaise with internal stakeholders such as digital, IT and community to resolve any issues and provide ideas for process improvement both system based and internal procedures Show less

  • Manager - Transformation & Controls

    Mar 2024 - now

  • Senior Analyst - Transformation & Controls

    Dec 2020 - Mar 2024

  • Shared Services Analyst

    May 2018 - Dec 2020

  • Billing Associate

    Jan 2017 - May 2018