Mahesh Gopalan

In my current role, I partner very closely with the Enablement (Microsoft Site Operations) team of Customer Sales Organization (CSO) from a finance perspective. Objective of this team is to improve the site conversions (Customers purchasing in microsoft.com and equivalent MS sites WW) by removing frictions in their buying process. The Enablement org. is made up of Experimentation, Data Science Analytics and Sales Capability teams that partner closely with marketing and EG teams to drive the initiatives designed to remove frictions in customers' buy process. As a finance partner to these teams, I worked closely with PMs and LT to develop models to estimate revenue impact from these initiatives and drive the correct prioritization with EG.

• Designed and maintained financial models to identify opportunities to remove frictions from Customer Funnel, resulting in identification of Revenue opportunities for $540M for CSO.
• Partnered with Experimentation team to run experiments for these initiatives and monitored results to ensure results align to model projections.
• Presented to LT results of experiments, making adjustments to the financial models and forecasts as needed.
• Was part of V-teams to expand into new markets (Direct in Korea and 3P Stores in Japan).

Apart from the above, I also led a V-Team for an initiative to drive visibility and uniform measurements for the Direct Channel of CSO across WW. As part of this initiative, As part of this initiative,

• I worked with Regional Finance and Category leads to develop RACI to document Roles and Responsibilities to drive planning, close and MBRs for the direct channel.
• Worked with LT (central and Region) to identify success metrics (KPI) of Direct Channel and partnered with Data Science Team to develop dashboards for these metrics.

I was awarded by the Finance LT of CSO for H2 2023 in recognition of the work highlighted above.

As a Finance Manager, I partnered with the Support Team of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which at that time was one of the top 8 Services of the AWS. The Support Team was the IT help desk for customers, providing customers with free help desk support to trouble shoot their problems in AWS. Aside, the team also was responsible for many proactive management of customers' AWS workloads to ensure problems are solved prior to them impacting Production.

• Partner with Product and Pricing team in developing strategy/ plans for AWS’ Support business, resulting in launch of two new Products of Support team.
• Develop financial models/ scenarios for new Pricing strategies.
• Lead long range planning and budgeting for AWS’s Support business; integrate modelling of new Product/ Pricing initiatives into plans.
• Present financial analysis on Product strategies to Leadership team to obtain their buy-in; Lead month-end close process; ensure revenue from customers are accurately booked and long terms contracts are amortized
• Present business results and plans/ budgets to Support leadership for review and approval.
• Conceptualize and lead automation initiatives.
• Trained new and existing staff members in various financial procedures to prepare for job requirements.

• Finance lead for many Retail Product lines (Health & Personal Care, Shoes, Private Brands, etc.,) P&L lead for Health and Personal Care (HPC) P&L (was a $9B P&L in 2016 and 2017).
• Partnered with Vendor and In stock managers of HPC to identify and monitor initiatives to improve HPC's profitability by $0.03/unit or 27%
• Diapers Profitability flash - Key contributor to draft email update to Doug Herrington (SVP Consumer) on Diaper product line's Pricing landscape and its profitability impact on Health and Personal care (HPC)
• Key contributor to initiative to stop internal price matching in Shoes GL, which resulted in recommendations on key edits to Price matching tenets to NA Consumer Leadership
• Partnered with Econometrics team to develop Customer High Value Actions (HVA) for Amazon's Private Brands. Key contributor to final recommendation that was approved by WW consumer team, adopting HVA methodology for North America Private Brands - WIN. Received Star Performer Award from VP of NA Consumer for this work.
• Partnered with EG to create separate P&L for WW Private brands in Fortune - WIN

• Finance lead for Lenovo’s Profit and Loss, Budgeting and Accounting closure
• Identified all the profit drivers of the BU & devised strategies for the BU to deliver on the profit drivers
• Ensured Business hygiene and upheld Lenovo’s commercial interests in all contracts
• Led the process of measuring ROI for all key investments
• Improvised processes and maintained healthy ageing of key balance sheet accounts
• Key contributor in achieving highest turnaround of consumer business units thus obtaining 17% market share
• Consumer BU delivering highest ever Net Profit
• Led a team of 11 employees, consisting of Financial Analysts, Pricing Analysts, & Payables
• Conceptualized special opportunities around automations to my team to excel with Special projects rollout – promoted 3 of my directs to next level
• Mega/ Large deal management – insuring Lenovo’s commercial interests are protected in large contracts, including one contract of $100M from Govt
• Of India
• Implemented Incentives and Commissions process across Lenovo Asia Pacific to manage targets, calculated sales-based incentives and payout of commissions to Lenovo AP’s sales employees.

• Responsible for budgeting, forecasting and reporting of expenses pertaining to the Legal team of Medical systems
• Conducted headcount analysis and reporting of medical systems
• Achievements: Successfully developed process to forecast costs of Legal Team
• Automated the Headcount reporting process
• Ensured accurate closure of books of accounts and review of entries by Corporate Audit Staff
• Achieved forecast accuracy of 98%+ with actual – variance of less than 2% between the actuals and forecast.