I work on ... making a major difference to the bottom line at AstraZeneca.

AuthorDuran, Cristina Ortega

Start date 2011 End date 2013

My team is responsible for delivering a multi-million dollar improvement to the bottom line over the next two years.

This involves the finance team working closely with sales and marketing colleagues on business strategy reviews. Two basic ingredients were needed. First, building a talented team. Second, having a clear vision for finance business partners at AstraZeneca--we want to be the best in the industry at driving value for our customers and shareholders.

We had to prove ourselves by just doing it, rather than asking for permission. By this, I mean we had to learn who the key business contacts were on the strategy, both within commercial but also at a group level and other business areas. We also had to find out what the main questions were that the board wanted to review, what the annual process was and what had been done in previous years. We even set up the first meetings to discuss the strategy with our colleagues based on this knowledge.

Tools used included models to review product portfolio investment appraisals and the impact of organisational structure changes, forecasting different options on financial statements and company ratios and the resulting impact on shareholder value.

The CIMA qualification has been extremely valuable in...

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