After 6 months of nervous anticipation I finally arrived in Dublin. On my first evening, driving off of the ferry straight into traffic (an hour to travel 3.5 miles), all I could think about was sampling the nightlife.
My apartment where I was temporarily put-up by Cadbury, was a jungle of cardboard boxes containing my entire collection of possessions, which a friend and I had moved there just a few days before. Finding a place to live was a high priority, since living like this for more than a couple of weeks would probably send me over the edge.
In my third and final year as a Finance Graduate, I've been seconded to Cadbury Ireland as a commercial sales analyst and I am one of a brand new team of just two, that look after the sales side of the Irish business.
We are in the process of trying to build a strong business partnering relationship with the sales management team. By applying various forecasting, budgeting and other financial techniques, we are helping the sales managers to understand the impact of their pricing and promotion decisions, as well as ensuring they are managing their budgets correctly and that there are no nasty surprises at the end of each accounting period.
This is no mean feat considering that the managers have not had a dedicated finance resource before - and changing others' behaviour is never easy! However, our business partners are beginning to take to this new way of working and are motivated by the prospect of being able to make better-informed decisions.
We have set up new management accounting structures to aid our analysis and are currently in the middle of setting our budgets for 2006. As our partnership has progressed, we have been able to free up knowledge and time to begin the more-meatier aspects of the job, such as assessing the financial viability of promotional deals to our customers and consumers.
My first month has flown by and has been hectic to say the least. Studying for my CIMA finals, I've been going to college 3 nights a week from 6-10pm and I'm currently in the middle of a revision frenzy of classes, which take place on 3 consecutive weekends (on Friday, Saturday AND Sunday).
Learning a new job, studying for 3 CIMA final papers and searching for a place to live, whilst trying to build a new social life in a new city is nigh on impossible - prioritisation means that inevitably something must give.
I'm afraid the Dublin nightlife will have to wait. . . . . . .
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