Having completed ICAEW's FTEN leadership programme in 2015, Deepak Jayaprakash, Finance Director  of Expedia EMEA, partnered with ICAEW Academy for a comprehensive curriculum for training and development across the finance functions of their three businesses (Expedia, Hotels.com and Expedia Affiliates Network).

The vision was to support career progression, create a step change for how finance supported the business, and drive performance by bringing the different teams to share successes and challenges.

“This was a hugely successful programme with great engagement from all the delegates," says Jayaprakash. "Whilst we had some specific corporate objectives around up-skilling the finance function and improving retention rates, we were very pleased that the finance team themselves were very keen to participate on the programme so we were clearly filling a development gap. 

"We saw the training programme as an investment in our people, and like all investments it is important to measure the ROI. We did this by measuring alignment to our Key Core Competency framework on a pre/post basis. 

"The results were impressive with significant improvements in all metrics, and in addition we also had a number of case studies where finance had improved the quality of our reporting insights and business partnering engagement.

"The inaugural 2016 programme had 70 delegates and given its success for our 2017 programme we were able to roll out the programme wider to include all Expedia group businesses in Europe.”