M. Ussama Khalil, ACA

Leading finance, budgeting, performance management, controls, and compliance functions to drive company’s profitability by bettering margins, optimizing portfolio mix, and optimizing working capital cycle through increased visibility, insights, and performance cadence.

• Structured group finance function (KSA, UAE and Pakistan) including but not limited to teams, policies, controls, and systems.
• Reduced cash burn by USD 1.1 million through sales mix optimization, and cost controls.
• Enhanced working capital efficiency by USD 1.3 million by strategic exposures adjustment and ineffective ROI exposure liquidation.
• Saved USD 840,000 in inventory losses by optimizing SKU damage to margins ratio, regularizing stock counts, optimizing return policy, and introducing inventory reconciliations.
• Streamlined and automated procure-to-pay cycle, saving 20% in expenses and improving monthly financial reporting efficiency by 40%.
• Increased financial closing efficiency by 63% through effective team communication, improved tasks prioritization, and introducing responsibility and accountability matrix.
• Part of outreach team for fund raising, managed investor conversations and reporting, successfully resolved investor due diligence and queries, and presented path to profitability.
• Led successful audit by the largest international firm for group financial statements.

Led the finance, budgeting, performance management, taxation, and control function.

• Setup the financial planning and budgeting division.
• Successfully led production capacity expansion and diversion project (USD 47 million), involving financial and technical due diligence, board approvals, regulatory approvals, and project implementation cost and timelines monitoring.
• Led financial reporting quality improvement project, resulting in 3 times (2018 to 2020) national award, and an international award for best corporate reporting.
• Automated financial analytics with power BI saving over 576-man hours.
• Led SAP S4 Hana implementation project.

Led the controls, budgeting, investments, and accounting function.

• Led the group ERP implementation of MS Dynamics AX as “assistant head of ERP”.
• Led problem-solving and change management efforts for ERP implementation.
• Setup the financial planning and budgeting division, and created system of performance management and tracking.
• Performance financial due diligence of new investment opportunities.

Successfully served high-profile clients such as Unilever, Wyeth Pakistan, Dow University of Health Sciences, Arif Habib Corporation and Atlantic Onshore Services Limited.

Successfully conducted audits for high-profile clients including Hoshan Group of Companies, Al Khaleej Computers, and SHAS Company for Water Services.