What's your job about?
At CSL Behring, we develop and deliver innovative plasma-derived and recombinant therapies for people with life threatening and rare medical conditions, and we are strongly driven by our promise to save lives using the latest technologies.
I am privileged to work as a Product Costing Analyst in the Finance Business Partnering team, where we have the role of providing financial stewardship and partnership with the business to achieve our company strategy. I currently partner with the Quality Assurance, Supply Chain, and Operational Services function groups. As the Finance Business Partner for these functions, I am their main point of contact for everything Finance. I work side by side with team managers to build their budgets and forecasts and track their actual financial performance.
The other element of my role is in the Product Costing space, where I work on setting up our standard costs at budget time and then track our actual performance against these standards throughout the year. We look at Process Order variances on a weekly basis to understand the root cause of variances and work to determine ways to prevent them from occurring in the future. There is a wide variety of work that we do, and there is something different and exciting to work on every day.
What's your background?
I was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia.
The most important stage of my schooling years would have to be Year 12. It was during that marathon of a year that I picked up important intangible skills that I still use today. I learnt a lot from a personal perspective on what can be achieved through hard work and commitment.
Another key milestone was completing a double degree in Finance and Laws at University. I chose to study this double degree as I have an interest in both fields and believe that they complement each other well.
I spent one year working in the Finance Business Partnering team in my second rotation of the 2018 CSL Graduate Program and was fortunate enough to get a full-time role after graduating from the program. I have since been working in the team for approximately two years.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
I believe that it is helpful to have some sort of Commerce/Finance degree which will give you a good foundation in financial and analytical skills. After you obtain these skills you can continue to build on them with the necessary knowledge to perform at a high level. However, I do believe that the most important characteristics for this job are to be curious and to be eager to learn. When you have the drive to learn then the possibilities are endless.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I think the coolest thing about my job is that I not only get to learn about finance and analytics, but also about the manufacturing process at CSL Behring. It makes for a much broader learning experience and adds interesting context to the financials. A close second would have to be the digital finance tools that we get to use to analyse our numbers, such as QlikSense and PowerBI. I am also really interested in automation, particularly in writing Python scripts. I have had the opportunity to write a handful of different scripts that automate manual work and give us more time to focus on analysis and more value adding exercises.
What are the limitations of your job?
Like most jobs, there are certain periods in the calendar when we are very busy and need to work extra hours. For instance, budget time is particularly hectic in the Finance department, along with the forecast periods and fiscal year-end. However, we get through these busy periods through strong collaboration and teamwork. The culture at CSL Behring is fantastic and there is a focus on ensuring that employees have a good work-life balance.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...