Inside the finance engine room at Telstra

Alistair Stewart-Holmes, finance analyst

Alistair Stewart-Holmes joined Telstra’s finance group in February 2010 as part of the graduate recruitment program, which he finished late 2011.

He is involved in the corporate planning process rather than the decision-making itself with day-to-day responsibilities that include spreadsheet modelling, financial analysis and, systems-wise, uploading assumptions to financial models.

“Basically it’s day-to-day analysis of numbers and how they are tracking to forecast and budget,” Stewart-Holmes says. “One of the highlights of working in this business group is you get a bit of a broad understanding of each section of the business rather than being in a specialised area.”

Stewart-Holmes studied a Bachelor of Business majoring in economics and finance and has just started studying to be a CPA, having taken a few foundation level subjects as he didn’t study accounting while at university.

At university he studied a lot of theory but the realities of Telstra are a combination of training and on-the-job learning. “Once you land at a company, especially one this size, it is pretty overwhelming and a lot of stuff you’ve learnt goes out of the window and you have to learn on the job,” he says.

He says his Excel skills were “pretty ordinary” when he started, but they developed pretty quickly out of necessity.

On a daily basis he will be talking to financial planners within business units to assess their activity levels and requirements. “Obviously people skills are something you have to have,” Stewart-Holmes says. “You are not always telling them things that they want to hear. You are constantly holding forums during the planning rounds and ensuring everybody is tracking to target.”

Delve further into the finance engine room at Telstra in Issue 1 of Real Business (2012).