Karthik Gopalakrishnan

About Karthik Gopalakrishnan

Accomplished Senior Finance Professional with 25 years of Corporate Finance Leadership experience. Deep domain experience in Strategic Financial planning, Budgeting, Analysis, Reporting, and Controllership functions. Finance partner for Business on key areas of strategic planning, operational support, and decision-making. Proven record of implementing accounting and reporting systems for sustained business growth. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and lead cross-functional teams to implement large-scale transformation projects including post-M&A integration of M&A companies. I have led and managed more than 20 M&A Integrations with an annual turnover of companies ranging from $20 to $600 million. Dynamic and Self-motivated, I am a self-starter with a strong desire and initiative to bring out the best in people, processes, and systems to enhance business performance and help Organization achieve its vision, mission, and goals. Change is the only constant with Me as I constantly Evolve. Skills and Expertise: Business and Finance Processes: Strategic Financial planning and Analysis, Business modelling (New ventures, Investments, and valuation), Data analytics and insights, Budgeting, Forecasting and Management reporting. Mergers and Acquisition Integration, Project and Change Management. Controllership - Accounting, Consolidation and Reporting, Revenue Management, Cost Control, Audits, Internal control and Risk Management, Order to Cash Process, Procure to Pay Process, General Ledger, Asset and Payroll accounting. Establish Governance and oversight. Treasury and Cashflow forecasting and Working capital management. Tools and Technology: Large-scale system implementations and Transformation Projects – SAP Accounting, SAP ARIBA (P2P), PeopleSoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Hyperion, SOPs, SLAs, KPIs, Oracle BI tool, and Qlikview for dashboards. Domain Knowledge: IFRS, US GAAP, Indian GAAP, Sarbanes Oxley, and COSO framework Leadership skills: Strategic and Critical thinker, Understands the Big picture, International exposure having worked with various nationalities and cross functional teams. Innovative, Inspirational and Collaborative team player with a problem-solving attitude.

Experience

1. Senior Director Finance

   Cognizant

   Sep 2014 — Present · Chennai, IN

   Strategic Financial Planning:Created a 3 Year Integrated Multi-Year Outlook plan that provides insights on various key KPIs and Operational metricsi. In-depth review of Monthly financials and full-year forecast submission by Market units and Service lines.ii. Review of multi-year outlook with CFO and CEO for their inputs and guidance (Tops down Coordinated calls with Market units and Service lines (CFOs / BU Heads) to review the multi-year outlook based on Strategic inputs for their feedback (bottom-up approach).iv. Finalize the multi-year outlook based on Top-down guidance and bottoms-up feedback and present it to the CFO/CEO.• Led the Global Accounts Payable Process for ARIBA Implementation and Beeline MSP Model (Jan 2020 - Dec 2021)Established:i. SLAs and KPIs for monthly dashboard reporting.ii. Standard operating procedures for streamlined Successful Go-live of SAP ARIBA for India and NA region in Q3 2021.iv. Finalized the blueprint for Beeline (Subcontractors hiring process) in Q3 2021.• Created Revenue forecasting model and automated the process in Cognizant ($18 Bn annual turnover)• Established Process and team for TCV Booking’s validation, Revenue leakage analysis, and reporting ($20 Bn annual bookings)US GAAP requirements:• Revenue recognition transition from ASC 605 to ASC 606 in Cognizant ($7 Bn)- including testing, training, and rollout• Instituted Mergers and Acquisition team for Order to Cash Process in CognizantERP Implementation:• (Major Integration spearheaded by me along with PeopleSoft redesign to implement Software and Products revenue recognition) – Trizetto acquisition $600 mn annual turnover)Overall handled a team size of 50+ members

Education

• The Institute of Company Secretaries of India

  Intermediate level in ICSI, Specialisation in Companies & other laws

  1995 — 1998

• Institute of Cost Accountants of India

  Cost Accountant, Costing and Accounts

  1992 — 1996

• The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

  Intermediate level in ICAI, Specialisation in Commerce & Accounts

  1995 — 1998

• University of Madras

  Bachelor of Commerce, Commerce, Accounts & Economics

  1991 — 1994