About
Fourteen years of progressive leadership experience with top global Investment banks and SAAS business, in strategy, corporate development and finance leadership roles.
Worked extensively with C-suite executives in devising and executing strategic road maps and FP&A activity for achieving growth and performance improvement, digital finance transformation, market penetration, building financial models to drive revenue growth and forming external vendor partnerships, reskilling internal teams to execute technological transformation agenda.
I love to focus on data-driven storytelling to drive business intelligence analytics for enhanced corporate performance and shareholder value.
A decade and half progressive experience of leading and partnering with the business, technology & product teams attributed to the following:-
- I put customer-centricity as an integral part of all actions I take
- Ability to make a decision during ambiguity and manage risk
- Exceptional ability to bridge technology and its usage in Finance
- Collaboratively working in cross-functional heterogeneous environments
- Coach and promote team members continuously
I feel most satisfied in helping business and product teams and ultimately customers gain competitive advantage by using a collaborative leadership style, effectively communicating with functional leaders across the business & board to guide and evaluate financial decisions, including M&A activity.
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CRM and Business intelligence tools
☞ Oracle | SAP | Cognos | Hyperion | TM1 | Tableau | Peoplesoft
Professional Skills
☞ Annual Operating Plans and Monthly/Quarterly Business Reviews
☞ Revenue forecasting and pricing
☞ Strategic Finance
☞ Go To Market Acceleration (GTM)
☞ Outsourcing/offshoring, Creating Cente of excellence teams
☞ CFO/CIO Advisory
☞ Post-merger integration/divestments (M&A)
☞ Business growth via use of data analysis & modelling
☞ Group change & program management
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Contact Details:
Karan.Walia@hotmail.com
1-650-4395995
Ask me about
Work experience
- November 2022 – present
Palo Alto Networks
Head of Sales Finance - North America - April 2021 – November 2022
Palo Alto Networks
Corporate Development (M&A) and Strategic Finance - April 2018 – November 2019
Sofyx Systems (Unite & Fight Digitally)
Vice President FinanceJoined a rapidly evolving digital SAAS company supporting the retail small and medium(SME) sector to become a digital native to drive enhanced engagement with their customers and bring them to the E-commerce platform. Providing solutions from consumer insights, supply chain, payments, loyalty, and merchant & customer financing As the Finance and Strategy head, complete P&L performance accountability post-integration: Financial reporting on a Non-GAAP basis, Business operations & Analytics building, Finance strategic partnerships and working closely with Engineering, Product and GTM teams. - April 2017 – March 2018
Startupbootcamp FinTech
Finance ExecutiveLeveraging the experience as a Finance practitioner with top global investment banks, took an additional role within Fintech(startup) industry by working with entrepreneurs helping them define and deliver the right mix of business strategy, financial planning, and marketing initiatives to drive growth and engagement models. I actively mentor & advise first-generation entrepreneurs looking at starting out on their own and help them by negotiating funding, start-up strategy, introduction to different POC engagements and drive convergence between technology offerings they have for the end customer or financial services NEON FS - Enternpreurship Stint 𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛 𝗟𝗢𝗡𝗗𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗗𝗩𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗟𝗜𝗠𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗗 - 𝗔𝗗𝗩𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗘 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟳 - 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗻, 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗱𝗼𝗺 T͇L͇A͇ ͇F͇i͇n͇t͇e͇c͇h͇ ͇K͇e͇y͇ ͇O͇b͇j͇e͇c͇t͇i͇v͇e͇s͇ ☞ Leading collaboration across the entire FinTech ecosystem: FinTechs, Incumbents, VC, BigTech, Regulators, Government, Professional Services and Academia ☞ Facilitating commercial mentoring to ensure businesses are positioned for scale-up through a network of senior business leaders and decision-makers ☞ Working with the ecosystem to address head-on, issues and hurdles that FinTechs experience in scaling their businesses - June 2014 – November 2016
Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking - SGCIB
Vice President - Corporate Development (M&A)Promoted to take on the additional role as Global Head of M&A Finance a critical position to build strategy, deal modelling, market scouting of technology business providing front-office solutions., and execution of financial and operational integration of Societe Generale acquired companies. ☞ Prepare executive-level business reviews through consolidating, synthesizing, and preparing senior board-level presentations to showcase the progress of mergers, benefits realised and progress on corporate performance management (CPM) ☞ Restructured the complete FP&A and Project management office including nearshoring and offshoring unit to develop effective financial budgeting and reporting process by creating a centre of excellence team ☞ The complete responsibility of defining and executing the program management of finance and people integration and process and system integration milestone deliverables across procure-to-pay, financial reporting, culture harmonization and Forecasting. ☞ Streamlined the financial planning and budgets at the global level including the acquired entities by use of automation (RPA) to deliver reporting requirements and submissions to regional business, finance and technology heads. - March 2012 – November 2016
Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking - SGCIB
Vice President FinancePromoted to Senior management Exco position operating both as Head of Finance and COO, with full responsibility of FP&A & Accounting team, the digital transformation of finance functions, strategy roll out and with overall responsibility of project management office. I’ve played a key role in developing the sourcing strategy and support the business in achieving its strategic and operational targets. Furthermore, I’ve completed speaking engagements on the impact of Fintech and the implementation of continuous delivery within the banking industry. As head of the Program management office, ownership of the project and product delivery of $140m budget from onset to execution and realization of its benefits against the business case. ☞ Implementation of Digital Finance cockpit integrated with ERP tools layered with Business intelligence tools to drive the different level of financial reporting as one version of the truth at country, product and customer level. ☞ Creation of large scale offshoring and creation of a centre of excellence teams to support Finance and Technology functions. ☞ Implementation of Robot process automation (RPA) on financial processes to drive capacity for the finance team to focus on delivering key insights and action intel to business and CIO team for decision making. ☞ Complete ownership and restructuring of the FP&A reporting ☞ Restructure the processes and optimise them to enable finance team to support strategic financial planning, forecasting and monthly reporting without increasing the headcount due to organic and inorganic growth(M&A) Lead, mentor, and manage a team of fully Qualified & Part-Qualified Accountants, Project Managers and Head of Finance making up of 22 staff. - August 2011 – February 2012
Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking - SGCIB
Head of FP&A , EuropeHeadhunted to Lead the Technology Finance Team for Europe, and be a strategic partner to Europe CIO with full responsibility of Financial planning, forecasting,month-end analysis and senior management reporting. ☞ Controllership of publishing all monthly financial reports ☞ Develop Return on Investment model by-product to measure business returns ☞ Responsible for leading, coaching Finance team on Onshore and Offshore India location. - August 2010 – August 2011
Barclays Bank
Vice President - FP&A & Strategic ProjectsCalled back by Ex-Barclays manager to put policies, procedures and financial controls in place due to consolidation of two businesses responsible for leading financial planning and analysis, financial transformation providing decision support analytics, tracking ROI on the investments and efficiency opportunities, and proactively managing cost base for the consolidated business. ☞ Work with the CIO & Head of Corporate Finance on building consolidating budgeting and reporting across the integrated Corporate and Wealth business. Driving efficiency through the chart of accounts optimisation, reporting and financial process re-design into SAP. ☞ Build process and models to do a cost-benefit analysis on the change bank projects ☞ Building controls and reporting to protect project budgets and hence deliverables that could have Impacted the customer experience desired by our external clients. ☞ Improve the forecasting accuracy and process through new analytics, increased automation and process optimization ☞ Created actionable performance metrics to drive accountability and ownership to manage the run and change cost (Made of OPEX, CAPEX and Vendor base) ☞ Restructured the roles & responsibilities of the finance team onshore and offshore to support the consolidated business - May 2008 – August 2010
HSBC Holdings plc.
Financial Controller Head for Payments & Trade (GTB)Responsible for global financial management and project management of corporate cash management, trade finance, custody service spread across 72 countries with $1.1bn P&L and 9k Staff. Working with the global CIO for the business , Finance and Treasury team to manage the cost targets across P&L and RWA for the balance sheet. Developed resilient partnerships and one global project management principles and reporting by working closely with product owners, project managers, finance teams and business stakeholders Managed cross-functional/cross-vendor teams of 25+ people based in the UK and offshore unit to lead strategic finance business transformation initiatives - June 2007 – May 2008
Barclays Investment Bank
Director of FinanceResponsible for budgeting, consolidation & reporting of all aspects of Finance across 10+ Group Functions, directly managing a cost budget of c.£250m, role reporting to the Head of Finance. 3 direct reports. System Used - Excel, PowerPoint and SAP -Business Objects - December 2006 – July 2007
BNP Paribas Fortis
Management AccountantMy role also included appraising new investment initiatives, analysing financial viability, assessing strategic alignment and maximising benefits, whilst ensuring compliance with IAS and IFRS. Responsible for budgeting, reporting & highlighted budget variances, to business heads for the drivers to variances and mitigating action. 2 direct reports. Systems used -Cognos TM1, Hyperion, Excel, PowerPoint - August 2006 – December 2006
Barclays Investment Bank
Finance Business Partner - April 2006 – August 2006
Fidelity Investments
Financial Analyst - October 2005 – January 2006
Leader Community Newspapers
Business Analyst - April 2005 – September 2005
Transdev Australasia
Project AccountantConnex Trains - Project Accountant for Common Wealth Games 2006 - January 2004 – April 2005
Innovation Group Australia
Assistant Accountant (FP&A)
Education
- 2005 – 2007
CIMA
Accounting and Business/Management - 2003 – 2004
Victoria University of Technology
Masters of Business, Professional Accounting & Finance - 2002 – 2002
Software Technology Group International Ltd.
Data Structures using 'C', Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management - 2001 – 2002
DOEACC
Foundation degree, Information Technology - 2001 – 2002
NIIT Institute
Honours Diploma in Networked Centred Computing, Computer Science - 1998 – 2002
Delhi University
Bachelor’s Degree, Accounting and Finance