Connie Xue, MBA 

• Hands-on and supervisory experience preparing annual operating plans, budgets and forecasts for multiple companies, utilizing top-down, bottom-up, zero-based and incremental budgeting methods.
• Managed P&L performance against plans and estimates, including sales, margins, manufacturing costs & variances, administrative expenses, depreciation expense and interest expense. Achieved the EBITDA growth 2 years in a row with over 4,000 employees.
• Managed profitability of 183 full-line stores with separate P&L statements with approx. $2B in revenues.
• Developed the management P&L statement with 18 built-in KPIs for a $1.9B business unit. KPI owners included VP/GM, pricing manager, sales and marketing leaders, contract negotiators, and supply chain and operations leaders. Conducted the monthly financial review with 18 KPI owners to drive the financial results.
• Enhanced and implemented commercial sales KPIs with data visualization tool. KPIs captured 20 measurements: 4 core business drivers, 9 top line growth indicators, 3 margin expansion and 4 sales force productivity trends. The one-page tool became a user-friendly reference that GM and his senior leaders carried with them on business trips and helped the NA region achieve the margin expansion target of 100 bps in a single year.
• Prepared long- and short-term capital plans (up to $35M annual spend), tracked spending and progress, and capitalized project costs. Assets purchased/constructed included land, buildings, machinery, trademarks, and other intangibles such as goodwill.
• Consolidated approximately 1,000 cost centers globally at corporate FPA with BPC (business planning consolidation) tool, including intercompany consolidation.
• Managed 2 overseas plant controllers responsible for manufacturing cost and KPIs (productivity, yield, material saving, inventory turns) and capital planning and spending.
• Participated in the monthly commercial real estate lease renewal reviews including lease term negotiations, sale-leaseback transactions and NNN (triple net) charges, as part of OPEX fixed cost monitoring for 183 full-line retail stores.
• Forecasted the restructuring target with quantified actions needed. Jointly coordinated forecasted inputs with the CFO and executive team and monitored alignment of the forecast model with a strategic turnaround plan.

• Extensive experience building, improving and refining budgets, forecast, planning, analytical, valuation, and other types of financial models in various companies.
• Familiar with various financial models and analytical tools including DCF, CAPM, NPV, IRR, growth model, 12 month rolling average, trend analysis, ratio analysis, sensitivity analysis and scenarios modeling.
• Developed a five-year forecast model for a targeted real estate acquisition. The model forecasted post-acquisition income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet. It allowed for sensitivity analysis to changes in assumptions, and graphically displayed EBITDA and cash flow sensitivity to the changes.
• Developed a comprehensive financial model to evaluate the multi-year new product investment from market revenue projection, R&D and capital investment to manufacturing and purchasing cost. The tool was adopted by the client’s executives as the company’s new product approval process and housed at the company’s share point to improve input efficiency from the global cross-functional teams.
• Developed and implemented service profitability model with comprehensive fixed and variable factors including service coverage, call mix/trend, labor mix and staffing, material costs and travel time.

• Used the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) approach to illuminate non-valued added or waste (Red) and most value-added or critical deliverables (Green) in the Services Accounting end to end close process. The improvement plans including system integrations, process change with front-end business partners, and major close template standardization, were targeted to reduce the close cycle from 15 to 10 days.
• Identified three key bottlenecks in the Order-to-Cash (OTC) process by working with cross-functional teams including Asset Management to improve its invoicing accuracy for the monthly service delivery and billing timeliness to over 100 project customers.
• Delivered a comprehensive allocation process improvement plan, helping the company to streamline how costs were allocated to projects vs. corporate overhead, not only improving process clarity to external auditors but also maximizing project profitability in managing over 100 energy and facility management services agreements.
• Developed 70-page standard operating procedures (SOP) documentation to capture 27 steps to complete the Services Accounting month-end close, serving as a playbook to ensure greater efficiency and consistency.

• Hands-on and supervisory experience for various large and small companies, including G/L, A/P, A/R, collections, payroll, tax and treasury functions. Supervisory experience included all aspects of staff development managing teams of up to 10 professional and clerical positions.
• Led 2.5 days month-end close schedule with multiple business divisions, assuring accuracy of data and integrity of reporting in accordance with GAAP.
• Reviewed customer orders over $35K as part of the month-end close process to ensure compliance of ASC 606 Revenue from Contracts with Customers, especially in fulfillment of contract obligations, transfer of controls and transaction price before approving the revenue booking. The sales transactions included equipment sales and multi-year services sales.
• Supported the commercial sales team in approving the customers’ contracts related to sales-types leasing offering (mostly five-year lease) by performing SFAS 13 test and  reviewing the customers' credit history at the front end and reviewing the revenue booking and balance sheet accounts booking at the back end based on ASC 842 Leases
• Managed international accounting issues such as foreign currency impact, China tariff, duties and transfer pricing for subsidiaries in China, Mexico and Italy.
• Designed and prepared internal monthly financial review packages including executive summaries and variance analysis.
• Reviewed major spending (over 100 projects) to classify capital vs. expense in compliance with Project Accounting’s GAAP guidance.
• Prepared the annual financial statements in Workiva including balance sheet, income statement and cash flow to support external auditing and company filing.
• Developed internal monthly reporting packages capturing a wide variety of financial performance metrics, ratios, and presentation styles adapted to the issues, people, and businesses involved.
• Prepared and reviewed quarterly management presentations and financial review and disclosure questionnaire for SEC reporting.
• Functioned as the principal liaison with external and internal auditors in various companies. Coordinated and supervised year-end audit schedule preparation (PBC listing), remediation action plans, and related items to P&L statement.
• Provided the remediation on the deferred revenue liability issue raised by the external auditor to reduce short-term and long-term exposure on the balance sheet.
• The remediation included meeting with customers over 90-days delinquency for payment plan, repossessing assets, and raising creditworthy threshold when offering the lease program.
• Reviewed interest payment and accrual schedules for over 30 projects with structured financing based on debt agreements to prepare for the annual audit work.

• Managed post-merger accounting integrations, including working with the accounting personnel from the acquired companies to ensure a smooth transition to the acquiring company’s internal financial reporting requirements. Provided input and performed purchase accounting adjustments.
• Participated in pre-acquisition due diligence including reviewing several balance sheet accounts, commercial real estate lease terms and vendor contracts.
• Developed the buy-side strategic acquisition plans on retail-chain company in the consumer product industry. Plans included detailed market and company assessment, initial acquisition strategies and valuation, and initial post-acquisition financial and operations integration models.

• Improved inventory accuracy from 96.2% to 98.7% at 13 distribution centers with 100% SOX compliance by developing and executing financial policies and procedures.
• Participated actively in SOX 404 compliance program, including supporting standardization of journal entries, increasing transparency and documentation of supporting accrual entries, and demonstrating signoff at the appropriate executive levels.
• Developed month-end and year-end close checklists to ensure that the balance sheet accounts were consistently and systematically updated according to company policy and GAAP, and that stringent timelines were met.

Microsoft Excel

• Expert level with extensive experience in financial modeling and budget/forecasting analysis by using wide range of excel functions such as data validation, name range, Vlookup, pivot tables, conditional formatting.

Hyperion Essbase / SmartView

• Advanced Level Hyperion Planning / Essbase User with extensive experience designing and generating reports, exporting data to Excel and performing data analysis using spreadsheet add-in feature.
• Expert Level Smart View user with extensive experience creating financial models and reports, using drill-down capabilities to research specific business units and/or individual G/L accounts.
• Expert Level Essbase Retrieve user with extensive experience creating financial models and reports, using drill-down capabilities to research specific business units and/or individual G/L accounts.

SAP & SAP BPC (Business Planning Consolidation)

• Proficient level user of sub-ledgers, accounts payable/receivable and asset accounting to do financial analysis.
• Able to create COA, define accounting calendar and work with currency/conversion rates.
• Used BPC to consolidate the corporate P&L for multiple legal entities with approximately 1000 cost centers.

Oracle

• Used for month-end close and financial statement generation.
• Performed account reconciliations and financial analysis with A/P, A/R and fixed asset management data

Microsoft BI

• Used tool to create the monthly KPI reports with visualization.

• Gannon University, Master of Business Administration (MBA), with concentration in Accounting
• Shanghai International Studies University, BA, Business Administration

Languages

• Fluent in Chinese, both reading and writing.

• Sears Holdings Corporation ($16.7B broad line retailer and Home Service provider)
• W. Grainger ($11.2B global industrial supply distributor)
• Navistar International ($10.2B global manufacturer of commercial vehicles, school buses and diesel engines)
• GE Transportation ($4.2B division of GE, a global manufacturer of locomotives and engines)
• Videojet Technologies ($2.0B division of Danaher Corporation, a global manufacturer of coding and marking equipment and supplies)
• Littelfuse ($1.7B global circuit breaker manufacturer)
• Invenergy (leading global privately held developer and operator of sustainable energy solutions)
• Pet Stuff USA (PE owned company, revenue-private)
• Siam Commercial Bank (Chicago office of Siam Commercial Bank, the largest commercial bank, in total assets, in Thailand)