Finance for Jewelry Retail

Hi all,

Glad to be writing in again! It has been a very exciting and challenging couple of weeks. I am close to the end of the 1st project and am gearing up toward the finishing stretch. Just to remind you, I am interning in Finance at Sears and am working to squeeze in as much as possible over the next six weeks as I have a baby coming at the end of the internship, and not much say in when she decides that will be! I have been putting in an average of two hours overtime everyday as contingency against losing time in the last couple of weeks of the internship. My team, especially the business finance manager that I immediately report to, has been extremely understanding of my need to take time off for doctor’s appointments. All in all it is shaping up to be a productive summer!

Let me tell you a little bit about my project. I work with the Jewelry business unit and one of the most important things the merchants/buyers do every year is to go into negotiations with their supplying vendors to determine fair costs of products, negotiate returns of unsold or defective merchandise and negotiate support for things like marketing, volume discounts, margin support, clearance sales etc. It is critical for them to have all the numbers relating to these items for the previous two years in order to be effective in their negotiations. My task is to figure out what metrics are most relevant to them (through conversations with all of the buying team and their leadership) and develop a comprehensive scorecard that they can refer to during negotiations. Up till now, this sort of elaborately detailed information had never been available to them in one comprehensive data source, due to the existence of multiple data entry and pull systems. While the move to better IT is something the company is working on, much of the collation of data has to currently be done by individuals like myself, in order to be useful on the ground.

I made a presentation of my work to the Senior Vice President (SVP) on Thursday in the presence of the merchant and finance Divisional Vice Presidents (DVP’s) and my Business Finance Manager (BFM). The SVP and merchant DVP were extremely appreciative of the work I have done and are very excited about taking the scorecard to market in a week, where they will finally be armed with as much or more information than their negotiating counterparts on the vendor side.

The role of the finance team in a retail set-up is to support the functioning of the business unit using financial metrics, and I think this project has definitely delivered value to the business unit in a way that they would not have been able to access on their own. I am pleased with the opportunity to create value for my team and for the fact that I have made an impression of thorough groundwork and meticulous attention to detail with my senior leadership.

Looking forward to the next project!

Week 1 at Sears Holding Corporation

Hi Readers,

Last time I wrote, I was preparing for my summer internship in Chicago at Sears. There’s been a lot happening since and I am already into my second week of work as a Finance Senior Analyst intern. I have been assigned five projects within the Jewelry business unit. It is a unique and fresh experience working in retail

With my architecture background I find the work experience very different in lots of ways. What I am most impressed by is the volume of data that is processed through the company systems every day and the level of complexity of thought, skill and experience that is required to maintain the smooth running of the companies thousands of stores.

I spent the early part of my first week getting oriented – both at the organizational level and in greater detail within the Jewelry business that I am supporting. I met many of the senior leadership within the Jewelry business unit. I met both my project manager and divisional VP to discuss goals and expectation for the 10 weeks I will be interning. I attended ongoing lectures on the Jewelry business. I caught a glimpse of our CEO while walking past him in the corridor. I attended a lecture / Q&A with the chairman of McDonalds who is visiting. I also spent a good amount of time investigating the different aspects of operation of the Jewelry business. I spoke to the VP of inventory and the business unit Controller to learn about the accouning methods employed. I also sat down with the systems expert to understand the various data systems used to organize the massive amount of complex data used by the finance team on a daily basis. I also met the entire team of Jewelry buyers to gain an understanding of their product lines, vendors, the various aspects of their role and what was working well for them and what their areas of challenge were.

My goal is to pinpoint various areas of improvement for the Jewelry business unit, where financial analysis can help quantify and validate these improvements. I am looking forward to providing valuable input to my team from a fresh perspective that my non-finance background allows me.

I am also juggling running a home and eating right as I anticipate the end of my pregnancy alongside the end of my internship. I make up for lost time spent at doctor appointments by working through lunch hour and staying an extra hour or two late each day. I’d encourage anyone in the position of having to do more that one large task at a time to take it on and rise to the challenge. The achievement of finding you can do more than most people would think is a reward in itself!