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Carsten SchönbergCSBERG GmbH, Hamburg
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I made the decisions first, then built the systems.

Trained as a banker, graduated as an economist (Diplom-Ökonom) in Oldenburg, then ten years in corporate finance: treasury in shipping, controlling in a shared service center, two years heading Finance IT Germany, and most recently managing director of a financial shared service center with 50 staff and €400m in client revenue.

Since 2020 I have worked independently, as interim CFO and CIO, as project lead for ERP and BI implementations and as a developer. Today I run CSBERG GmbH in Hamburg. It has two divisions: consulting, which I lead myself, and the software division with management information systems and Datenbrücke, whose architecture and data model come from my project work.

Carsten Schönberg

Qualifications

Diplom-Ökonom (economics)
University of Oldenburg, 2010
Bankkaufmann (banking)
Apprenticeship
PMP
Project Management Institute, 2020
CPA Australia
Full Member, 2020
PRINCE2
2019
Scrum Master
2019
German
native
English
business fluent

Independent, since 2020

  • Adelphi Consult

    Sustainability and policy consulting, 250–500 employees

    Interim CFO

    • Established a monthly close where there was none
    • Set up budgeting and financial planning
    • Introduced Power BI
    • Took over liquidity planning and management

  • Air Alliance / Unicair

    Aviation

    Interim CIO

    • IT strategy and program management
    • Implementation of AMOS, CRM and Power BI

  • Air Alliance

    Aircraft maintenance

    Project lead ERP and CRM

    • AMOS ERP implementation for the maintenance operation

  • Retail Capital Partners / Leiner

    Furniture retail, Austria, 1,000–5,000 employees

    Project lead CRM and software development

    • CRM and marketing software, partly custom-built
    • Replacement of several legacy systems
    • Budget responsibility over €1m

  • tesa

    Manufacturing, over 10,000 employees

    Workstream lead SAP BI, senior controller

  • Pharma and medical technology

    500–1,000 employees

    Data analyst, SAP migration

Employed

  • Kabs Polstermöbel

    Furniture manufacturing and online retail, Hamburg, 2020

    Head of commercial operations

    • Overall commercial responsibility, six months

  • Eurofins

    50 staff, four teams, €400m client revenue, over 60 client companies

    Managing director financial shared service center, head of finance Germany

    • Raised the EDI rate in purchasing and incoming invoices from 10% to 60% via a cloud-based P2P platform
    • Built a ticketing system for around 7,000 external requests per month

  • Eurofins Biopharma

    Two years, team of five

    Head of Finance IT Germany

    • Responsible for the BI landscape of the corporate shared service center
    • BI strategy on SQL, ATLAS BI and Excel/VBA
    • Moved controlling reports from overnight batch to real time
    • Led 20 M&A integration projects, cutting each integration from nine to two months

  • OTTO Group / Hermes Fulfilment

    Team of six

    Deputy head of accounts receivable, business analyst finance

    • Receivables management rollout for twelve e-commerce clients
    • Paperless invoice approval workflow across five sites

  • DSV Air & Sea

    Financial controller in the shared service center

    • IFRS closings and internal cost allocation
    • Controlling tools on SAP, Qlikview and VBA

  • Hansa Heavy Lift

    Heavy lift shipping

    Controlling, treasury and financing

    • Built the treasury department from scratch
    • Fleet financing for 20 heavy lift vessels
    • Controlling of twelve newbuild projects

  • Beluga Group

    Shipping

    Treasurer and controller

    • Budgeting for the chartering company
    • Financial modeling, cash management, hedging, ship finance

What I work with

SAP R/3, S/4HANA and FI/CO, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, NAV and D365, AMOS, DATEV. Power BI with DAX, M and Power Query, SQL, Azure SQL and Azure Data Factory, ATLAS BI, Qlikview, Excel and VBA. In CRM: Microsoft CRM, Salesforce, Creatio and HubSpot. On the process side EDI, P2P, cloud migrations, PRINCE2 and Scrum. Plus what these tools are meant to serve: controlling, accounting, treasury, process and business analysis, leadership.

Also

Speaker at Controlling Summit and Accounting Summit, participant in the Startup Awards 2024 and 2025. Outside my field I write non-fiction books on work and society — not part of any mandate, but it explains why I rarely leave processes the way I find them.

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