Working in the Global Digital Leadership Team, I deliver strategic Alliances with key digital partners that drive value to the agencies and better advertising outcomes for our clients. Based on key strategic pillars, we use our combination of scale and expertise to stay at the forefront of digital media.• Negotiation of trading agreements for digital media buying, sharing best practice and ensuring that all local agencies benefit from global programs.• Implementation of compliant partner programs that benefit our agencies and improve clients' advertising results. This includes training and certification programs, initiatives to develop agency tools and tech or to gain access into our partners' data and audiences.• Data visualization of our partnerships, based on API feeds, that provides an objective basis to evaluate partnership trends and competencies.• Based on my finance background, delivery of long-term financial growth, through new product development, negotiation of new suppliers, pricing methodologies and M&A.

Reporting to the CFO, EMEA, the role involves:• Media Trading & Accountability: Audit of media buying trading to ensure compliance to global transparency policies and client contracts that deliver sustainable long-term growth.• M&A: Working with local management on company acquisition targets to build a business case for Group approval.• Conduit between senior local management and WPP Group HQ on HR, M&A, Property and Treasury.

Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer of the European HQ:• Product Development. Working in conjunction with suppliers and agency experts to identify new revenue and product opportunities, negotiate and contract services and trickle down regional initiatives to media buying staff in the local agencies.• Trading Audit to ensure integrity of commercial models for agency trading, ensuring strict contract compliance and working with key stakeholders on opt-in advertiser documentation.• Financial Management & Forecasting: monthly review of actual Profit & Loss and analysis of quarterly budget forecasts. Partnering with local agency CEOs and CFOs to drive profitability and embed regional revenue initiatives.• Fee Negotiation: leading fee and invoicing within the Finance workstreams on regional pitches.• Client Profitability: Assessment of FTE commitment, performance versus contracted criteria and identification of opportunities to deepen the client relationship beyond core services.• Cash, Credit Limits & Credit Insurance: Management of Treasury across Europe and risk assessment on countries and late-paying clients. • Process Improvement. Development of new applications (using advanced Excel and macros) to overhaul routine reporting with automated reporting, real-time data and deeper insights.

Leading a group of 10 people, I ran the Sales Finance function. The team is essentially a “Finance function within Finance”, with its reporting requirements and budget.PEOPLE MANAGEMENTManaging a team over two office locations, implementation of a cultural change programme, headcount reduction and redundancy, recruitment, appraisal, grievance hearings, identifying training and development needs, and continual hands-on coaching.COMMERCIAL BUSINESS SUPPORT• Billings Analysis: product revenue trends, billings attrition and new product development.• Data Analysis: Compilation of data into concise and meaningful financial reporting through expert Excel (Macros, Visual Basic Programming) and Database knowledge.PERFORMANCE REPORTING• Monthly Executive Board reporting– with accompanying commentary, analysis into billings spikes and cost effectiveness of Sales Incentivisation programme.• Sales Pipeline reporting, providing a live view of sales, activity levels by sales representative and a rest-of-year forecast.SALES INCENTIVISATION & COMMISSIONS• Day-to-day management of £6m annual sales commission budget.• Target setting, calculation and payment of annual targets for the Sales function.• Dealing with all queries, from ad-hoc to monthly reporting to grievance claims / HR tribunal.• “What If” Analysis on sales tactics.

Financial Planning & Analysis, Executive Support, UK Corporate Bank (UKCB)Lawrence’s role was based around the core financial reporting timetable and also involved the evaluation of opportunities, ranging from its core banking businesses to its invoice discounting, leasing and car services.M&A• Acquisition: Financial and strategic analysis undertaken on car dealerships that were potential acquisition targets. Outputs included a review of the commercial health of the business, its strategic fit within RBS and financial valuation.• Disposal: Part of the team responsible for the disposal of the UK’s fourth largest car dealership. Responsibilities covered research on competitors and purchaser’ targets, alternative use of related freehold property and redundancy issues.• Implementation of Group-wide Investment Appraisal Process to enable subsidiary companies to prepare business cases for submission.FINANCIAL REPORTING CYCLE & COMMERCIAL ANALYSIS• Monthly analsyis and review of Actuals, quarterly reivew of financial forecasts, revenue and cost trends,• Commercial decision support for the launch of new products (Lombard Business Finance for the planned launch of a car finance product, launch of the Faster Payment product)

Reporting to the Head of Strategy, Lawrence’s role involved the financial and strategic evaluation of opportunities across both sector (residential, SME, Major Customer) and product (electricity, gas and fixed-line telephone). PORTFOLIO ACQUISITION• Financial and strategic analysis undertaken on acquisition projects. Key responsibilities included the establishing of core business assumptions, data room review and financial modelling. Recommendations presented to the EDF Group Board of Directors.COMMERCIAL ANALYSIS• Analysis and insight delivered across a range of projects, including cost benefit analysis of EDF joining the Nectar customer loyalty scheme.• Launch of a fixed-line telephone product, with analysis of tarrifs, customer acquistion and project payback.