Winners Testimonials

Jayne Crathorne, Birmingham City University
Rising Star of the Year: Non/Part Qualified

"I’m absolutely shocked and stunned to receive this award! I’ve been rewarded for doing a job that I’ve done for 23 years that I’ve absolutely adored so thank you WMFA.”

Chelsey Joanne Bird, Terberg RosRoca Group Ltd
Rising Star of the Year: Qualified

“This recognition means so much to me, and is the first award I have ever received. I had my child at 18 years old, and at the same time was undertaking my accountancy training. I hope this award gives other young people the belief and encouragement to go forwards and achieve in their career.
“This award will only push me further. I’ve worked at Terberg RosRoca for just over a year and they are sponsoring me for an MBA which means a lot to me.”

Andrew Parris, Tarmac
Finance Director of the Year

“I have been an accounting for 25 years, and at Tarmac for five of those looking after the shared service centre. Our focus is all about delivering the service to our organisation as a shared service centre and we do that through ‘people first, process next and service excellence.’

“I’m really proud of the team I have. I wouldn’t have achieved this if the team hadn’t contributed. Their enthusiasm, willingness to go the extra mile, desire to try new things, solve problems, take chances, all play a huge part in the success of the department.”

Jurys Inn
Shared Service Centre of the Year

“This is our third time entering into the Shared Service Centre of the Year and our first win, so we are absolutely ecstatic!
“We look after 42 hotels for the Jury’s Inn group across UK & Ireland. We’ve gone through a lot of changes with a lot of acquisitions this year. The team has stepped up massively to deliver the extra service to all of the new hotels to help bring them into the portfolio seamlessly.
“The team are just a joy to work with and really deserve this award, and I am so proud of them.”

Mondelez International
Excellence in Diversity

“We work within a European Shared Service Centre in Birmingham (Bournville) and we’ve been doing a lot over the past two years around recruiting a more diverse population and introducing a number of different initiatives around celebrating diversity. Our mission is to put the employee at the heart of what we do. We have 150 people in Bournville who support 25,000 people across the globe. Our office supports 17 countries, speaking 14 languages."

“The challenge for us is to take something on a global scale – our global diversity vision - and bring it to life in each locality. We achieve this by sharing resources across the globe namely through our destination programme where we have teams come from our other shared service centres around the world and work with us.

“From a global perspective we have been driving women in leadership, gender balanced interview panels, work around parental leave, and LGBT rights. Our goal is to standardise our offering across the globe.”

Student Roost
Business of the Year; Business Innovation

“We are delighted to win this award! There has been a huge amount of effort & time that has gone into the last 12 months in terms of taking the business from where we were to where we are now.

“The biggest achievement has been that we have created a finance department out of nothing in Birmingham. We completely internalised our entire finance function, and they team have worked incredibly hard for a number of months to bring it all together and to bring it all in-house.

“We are a new brand, new operations team, new finance team, and a new HQ in Birmingham. It’s been a total transformation for us and so it's nice to be recognised for the amount of work and effort that’s gone into that.”

McDonald's
Finance Team of the Year – Over 20 People

“We came last year and didn’t walk away with an award, and tonight we’ve won two awards – Rising Star Non-Qualified and Finance Team Over 20 People.

“We’ve had a busy 2018 and made significance improvements over the past year through a big continuous improvement drive, process and automation. We have plenty lined up for 2019, and so we will definitely be putting ourselves up for an award next year!”

Millennium Point 
Not for Profit Finance Team of the Year

“This awards rewards our team for all of the hard work and issues they have had to overcome over the past year. This is the first time we’ve entered, and we did so because the team have been faced with some major challenges, and they have got through it with team work and enthusiasm. We’re a young team and something like this award gives them that boost they deserve.”