Tamara Smith

Lead finance workstream for new client implementations and expansions, focusing on developing and delivering functional and technical requirements within project timeline and producing quality deliverables that need little refinement or oversight.

Promoted to manage both the Financial Settlement and Accounts Payable teams.

Key Contributions:

• Redesigned supplier AP payment process to eliminate creation of a separate payment reconciliation and set of payment batches for each individual settlement client as well as payments issued daily. AP now creates one weekly consolidated payment reconciliation which includes all supplier settlement clients. AP also issues payments once weekly which includes all supplier settlement client payments. This redesign reduced the time required to manage and complete the supplier AP process from approximately 25-30 FTE hours to approximately 2-3 FTE hours weekly.
• Worked with AP Supervisor to streamline creation of weekly Corporate Cash Requirements workbook, which is used by Finance leadership to approve outgoing AP payments. Reduced payment prep time by approximately 4 hours weekly.

Led a team accountable for managing the Supplier Settlement process for approximately 25 Beeline clients.

Key Contributions:

• During the first 4 months in this role completed audits of all settlement client accounts handled by previous settlement employees and worked closely with the clients to bring several accounts back to green status after correcting multiple supplier payment issues. This included a top 10 ARR client account.
• Successfully transitioned legacy IQN settlement process from Denver team to Jacksonville Financial Settlement team.
• Transitioned the Financial Settlement team from email inquiries onto Beeline/IQN Self-Service JIRA ticket portal. Created monthly volume and productivity reporting to provide to Finance leadership.
• Implemented supplier remittance reporting in the Beeline VMS for settlement clients who pay by timecard, rather than by Invoice Header ID. This eliminated the manual creation of supplier remittance reports for several high-volume settlement clients and saved approximately 20 FTE hours weekly.

Key Engagements include:

Healthcare IT Consulting Firm – Jacksonville, Florida

Interim Payroll Supervisor

January 2018 – April 2018

• Partnered with interim Payroll Manager to manage existing payroll team and coordinate bi-weekly payroll cycle.
• Worked with interim Payroll Manager to analyze and review existing payroll processes.
• Implemented a bi-weekly payroll cycle processing schedule to ensure all necessary documentation was provided timely to the Payroll team and all consultants (approximately 1500) were paid accurately and on time.
• Developed and implemented internal control sheets and peer review system for each pay batch to help reduce errors.
• Successfully developed and executed plan to change pay cycle of all consultants from bi-weekly paying current to bi-weekly paying 1 week in arrears.
• Developed standard operating procedures (SOPs) and Visio process maps for existing payroll processes.

Responsible for a team accountable for proactively identifying, planning, and deploying quality management across all shared services (EFAS) functional areas. Tasked with identifying opportunities for process improvements and developing solutions that meet the needs of each individual business unit within EFAS. Work through change management process with impacted business units.

Key Contributions:

• Led a project that successfully reduced the number of final paychecks requiring void and re-issue by approximately 90% resulting in approximately $10K in annual savings.
• Led a project that successfully reduced the number of incorrect Form 1099s issued by approximately 25% resulting in approximately $1.5M in annual savings.
• Led a project to develop and maintain a Quality Assurance (QA) scoring system to evaluate and monitor the quality of work performed by the EFAS global resource partner as well as onshore staff including establishing and measuring Key Performance Metrics (KPIs) for each business unit and providing monthly dashboard reporting.
• Led a project to develop and maintain a list of departmental tasks and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all functional areas within EFAS. Included design and setup of an online SOP library using SharePoint to store documentation. Created a Nintex workflow change control process to manage changes to documentation.
• Collaborated with a team to transition the Kemper P&C and P&B business units into a single General Ledger in Oracle Financials. Developed and delivered end user training to staff.
• Management of Accounts Payable process. Oversaw review and payment of approximately 2,500 invoices weekly.
• Accounts Payable Process Lead on Robotics Process Automation (RPA) initiative to utilize BluePrism to automate recurring AP tasks.
• Developed training for various Finance system rollout/conversions including Oracle iExpense, AP Approval System (APAS), Purchase Card Approval System (PCAS) and the Kemper Travel Card program. Created user guides, training videos, FAQs documents, and Quick Reference Cards (QRCs) for key functions. Traveled to various Kemper locations to deliver training to end users.
• Developed and maintained a Finance & Accounting Helpdesk function to provide quality customer service to internal and external customers. Helpdesk processes 800-1,000 phone calls and 1,200 – 1,500 email requests monthly. Created monthly volume and productivity reporting to provide monthly to key stakeholders.

Worked with Sr. Director of Finance to focus on transforming various aspects of financial reporting and analysis across all PGA TOUR business units and create more useful and efficient on demand reporting for both operations and finance management.

Key Contributions:

• Worked with Employee Benefits department to reconcile TOUR’s Self-Funded Insurance fund from inception through Plan Year 2012 to ensure appropriate balance in fund for each Plan Year, as well as established an end-to-end process to account for and report on the Plan Years going forward.
• Began long-term project to transition PGA TOUR Entertainment (PGATE) from preparing Financial Statements on a project/cost accounting basis to traditional Financial Statements prepared in nominal account form.

Worked with Accounting and Finance Managers to lead large scale projects that are challenging for existing staff due to time constraints such as month-end close, year-end close, and quarter-end and follow through to completion. Frequently interact with senior leadership to make presentations and hold training sessions.

Key Contributions:

• Developing Performance Metrics and Volume Reporting dashboard for Shared Services Finance Group (KSG). Work with each business unit to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and identify or develop a source system to drive reporting each month. Incorporate metrics into Business Process Reviews (see below).
• Developed Business Process Reviews – worked with each of VP’s direct reports to create a departmental Business Plan & Outlook detailing the organizational structure, objectives, and forward outlook for each business unit and presented to VP every 6 months.
• Worked with VP to develop and implement a more consistent method for recognizing Deferred Policy Acquisition Costs (DPAC).
• Worked with various departments to obtain data to reconcile $1M in outstanding COBRA Receivables. Successfully collected most outstanding balances and ensured that COBRA participants were current on payments or coverage cancelled resulting in only a $250K write off for uncollectable amounts.
• Created a complete end-to-end process to effectively manage the COBRA administration process going forward. This included creating a database to store all COBRA participant elections, payment history, and COBRA related information and train end users on how to utilize the database.