Organisation: Department of Transport NSW
Job Title: Procurement Analyst
Word Limit: 2 page Statement of Claims
Location: Sydney
In 2006, I completed my Master of Professional Accounting at the University of Southern Queensland, after which I have gained more than five years of professional accounting experience, including over a year with Railcorp, where I currently work as a Customer Liaison Officer in Procurement Services. I commenced the CPA program and have just one module remaining to achieve my CPA. In my role as Finance Officer with Lo-Chlor Chemicals, I assisted in the preparation of financial statements, analysed financial reports, and undertook monitoring and reporting on inventory. This followed on from my successful strategic planning and implementation of a new inventory system, which supported improved planning and forecasting, demonstrating my ability to think strategically.
Both throughout my career and within my current role, as a Customer Liaison Officer with Railcorp Procurement Services, I carry out financial analysis on a daily basis in the form of investigating and resolving financial questions, and performing complex reconciliations. I recently investigated a purchase order which was incomplete due to an unpaid amount remaining. I reconciled data from both the finance and procurement systems (Ellipse and Ariba) and investigated what had been receipted by the business unit, what had been paid and what remained unpaid. I found two areas of variance relating to the receipting of goods by the business unit, and provided them with an explanation, along with the steps they needed to correctly receipt the goods. My skills in the above software, as well as advanced skills in Excel, Access, PowerPoint, CAPTIVA, Epitomes and the IFS system, mean that I can perform all procurement and financial requirements within these applications.
As Assistant Cost and Budget Analyst with the KDS Group, I was responsible for the provision of a job cost report on a monthly basis. This was a complex report, where I compiled information on manufacturing costs, allocated and detailed against each job, as well as profit and loss figures across two business units. Where my specialist knowledge and experience was utilised, was that the correct data was extracted from the financial and procurement systems. This included gathering manufacturing job details from two systems, including profitability of business units, customers and orders, production variance and capacity utilisation figures. I performed extensive analysis on the data, breaking it down and categorising it, and providing a summary of costs. My success in this task I attributed to leveraging my business and financial knowledge and capability to provide an accurate report reflecting the current business status.
I recognise the importance of sound financial management, reporting and accountability within the public sector. I follow sound accounting principles and ensure that I apply all Railcorp policy, guidelines and legislative requirements. As an Assistant Cost and Budget Analyst with KDS Group, I prepared end of month job cost reports and profit and loss statements, monitored business unit profitability, inventory management and job pricing. A key part of this role was activity based costing, preparing job cost reports and job pricing for the marketing team. This involved taking data from two systems, the procurement system and the finance system, and compiling the data to price individual jobs. I carried out forecasting and estimating, and then carried out variance analyses on the production reports. This information informed business decisions and allowed me to build credibility and relationships with the production area of the business.
During my role at Lo-Chlor, I was required to present reports to the General Manager which determined the profitability of certain jobs, especially those which required large expenses to run. These report presentations gave the General Manager a good indication of the potential viability of certain projects, and also demonstrated my ability to present information in a clear and concise fashion.
In my current role with Railcorp I am in constant contact with suppliers, business units, cost centre managers, colleagues and others. I use a combination of phone, email and face to face communication to ensure that I am effective in conveying information, responding to queries and arranging for necessary processes and activities, such as receipting, to be carried out.
In my role at KDS Group, my clients were the business marketing department, and they would provide me quoted prices from external buyers. With this information I would determine the internal costs to provide the goods or services in regards to manufacturing, and determine if the price was viable. It required me liaising with the marketing department extensively, providing support to achieve their requirements and explaining costs that are acceptable for them to still meet business efficiencies. I was also analysing bids from up to three other companies to determine best value and what jobs were viable bids for the business to take. These orders were constant and changing, where I was required to perform analysis on many different pieces of information and communicate this back to the marketing clients. The impacts of these daily changing orders was that I was required to assess the daily activity costs for each order and to calculate separately how many jobs could be produced for each, production times and the maximum production achievable, all resulting in a high work load for each activity.
I was recently given the task of checking a spreadsheet containing purchase order and supplier numbers for approximately 400 invoices to ascertain which had been paid. While the spreadsheet was reporting that none had yet been paid, it was understood that some had been paid, and we needed a quick way to check which ones still required processing. If I checked each invoice individually through Ariba the task would take approximately two days to complete. So instead I used my Excel skills and knowledge to take all of the data on these invoices from Ariba and export it into a new spreadsheet, where I used the invoice number to match the data with the spreadsheet I had been given and created a True/False formula to indicate which invoices had been paid. I found that the majority of the invoices had been paid, investigated and resolved the reasons for non-payment of the others, and had the overall job completed in one hour.
During my tenure at Railcorp, I have undertaken training in a range of topics that have contributed to my knowledge in this area. These include: Ethics and Probity in Procurement; ARIBA Procurement System Training; Code of Conduct; Ethical Awareness; Just Culture; and Safety Management Introduction. These courses have developed and furthered my knowledge in these areas, and I have retained a good working knowledge of the content.
These courses, along with my CPA and Master studies, have also armed me with a range of practices which can prevent and detect fraud and corruption. These practices can be as simple as ensuring the correct person has signed for authority on invoices, or as complex as ensuring major and minor accounts reconcile without outstanding amounts.
