I connect finance, operations, people and data. From understanding costs and margins to improving reporting and putting AI into practical use, I turn business questions into clearer decisions and better ways of working.
This is my story
I’m Marwan. I’m Libyan, I live in the Netherlands, and I have spent much of my life moving between places, responsibilities and questions I wanted to understand.
I have studied, worked part-time, built businesses and contributed to projects alongside my main work. Sometimes those chapters happened in the same country. Sometimes they involved travelling back and forth between Malaysia and Libya. They did not arrive in a neat sequence.
What connects them is a habit: I want to understand how something actually works. Who does the work? Where does it get difficult? What does the information tell us? And what could we change together?
Today, that curiosity has a clearer direction: business control, supply-chain performance, and data and AI transformation. I’m bringing the different parts of my experience together, while continuing to develop the technical depth to take them further.
“I’m still on a long journey of learning
and polishing my skills.”MARWAN ALKATEB
Different places. Different kinds of responsibility.
The same instinct to get involved.
At Al Naseem Food Industries, I worked part-time in production operations, helping with quality checks, materials and handovers. A one-year Toyota Production System placement in Misurata followed. Flow, waste, standard work and going to see a problem for yourself became practical habits.
Malaysia gave me a new environment in which to grow. A six-month operations internship at Nestlé developed into part-time continuous-improvement work while I studied business. I learned through lectures, daily management, Kaizen, process mapping and conversations with people doing the job.
I completed a Bachelor in Accountancy at the University of Tripoli in 2013. During the final examinations, I was already based in Malaysia. This accounting foundation became part of my later work in finance and business control.
My academic path included a visiting period at the University of Malaya and a Bachelor of Business Management in Financial Management at SEGi University, completed in 2017, with Dean’s List recognition.
Living in Malaysia was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The time difference with Libya, Türkiye and the Middle East made me feel as though I could live two lives in one day. My mornings and daytime hours were for university and part-time work. Then, after 5 p.m. in Malaysia, another part of my day began: contributing to projects in places where the working day was still unfolding.
That rhythm made me very happy. I could study, work and contribute to projects across different countries, learning so much along the way. I loved having that much life in a day. It is still one of the things I treasure most about my years in Malaysia.
During those years, I also travelled between Malaysia and Libya and took part in election-related and political initiatives in Libya. Study, work and civic involvement sometimes overlapped. Coordinating with people, preparing material and following through on commitments were early lessons in working with very different priorities.
At F&N Ice Cream Manufacturing, I worked as Finance & Operations Continuous Improvement Lead. Purchasing, production costs, customer orders, stock, closing and reporting became parts of one connected picture.
I worked with Finance, Procurement, Production, Warehousing and Distribution on standard versus actual costs, inventory reconciliation and month-end reporting in SAP ECC. Yield, waste, freight, service and working capital connected the financial picture with everyday operations.
As Strategy & Operations Manager at Yıldız Holding–Ülker, I translated organisational priorities into business cases, workstreams and implementation plans. That meant working with finance leaders and process owners on responsibilities, decision rights and KPI ownership.
Budgets, rolling forecasts and SAP S/4HANA reporting connected volume, price, mix, inventory and distribution costs with business decisions. Power BI, workshops and clear KPI ownership helped teams understand the drivers and follow through on actions.
At Europastry Central Europe, my work connects ERP, finance and operations improvement. Since May 2024, I have contributed to ongoing and completed transformation projects across three Dutch plants, working with the source data as well as the processes it describes.
Living and working in the Netherlands is also a daily learning experience. I use Dutch in systems, emails and reporting, and study every day. My spoken Dutch is at A2 and developing toward B1. I’m building my understanding of the language at the same time as I deepen my work in data platforms and AI.
My strongest contribution connects financial control and operational performance with reliable data, Microsoft Copilot and Power Platform, clear ownership and people who can put change into practice.
An invoice, a stock movement and a production decision each describe part of the same business. My work brings those parts into a view that people can use.
I connect Oracle JDE, operational records, Power Query and Power BI to support P&L reviews, month-end reporting and variance analysis. Clear definitions, reconciliations and ownership make the numbers easier to trust and explain.
Alongside that data work, I map the processes from purchasing through invoicing, reconciliation and reporting. I clarify handovers, controls, exceptions and ownership, and apply 5S to financial records and daily routines.
I build budgets and rolling forecasts from volume, price, mix, capacity, inventory and logistics assumptions. Customer-product profitability and cost-to-serve analysis connect transport, storage and distribution costs with margin, service and working-capital decisions.
I used structured data delivered through reporting pipelines and presented in Power BI to support business cases and review transformation and continuous-improvement initiatives.
My contribution included operating models, governance, decision rights, cross-functional coordination and adoption. The analysis helped inform the decision; clear responsibilities helped people carry it into their work.
A few habits I return to, whatever the sector.
Listen to the people involved. Walk through the process. Understand the difficulty before proposing the solution.
Validate the records, reconcile the totals and agree what each KPI means. Separate volume, rate, mix and timing effects before deciding what needs to change.
Bring business and technical colleagues together. Turn the need into a practical scope, clear decisions and shared responsibilities.
Agree an action, an owner and a review date. Follow adoption, actual savings, margin and service against the baseline, and adjust when the evidence changes.
My portfolio connects ERP data, trusted reporting and governed AI assistance. Alongside the architecture proposal, I built and presented a working Microsoft Fabric solution and Power BI dashboard for an AI & Data case study.
SAP, Oracle JDE and business records.
Tracked loads, preserved source records, validation and reconciliation.
Curated business measures and Power BI reporting.
Authorised AI assistance, human review and a responsible decision owner.
I would agree the business question, data definitions, quality rules and acceptance conditions first. Platform options such as Fabric or Databricks would then be assessed with architects and engineers against the requirements, existing environment and operating costs.
Enter the interactive portfolioRESULTS IN PRACTICE
A shorter reporting cycle by connecting JDE, operational sources, Power Query, Power BI and clear control responsibilities.
Customer-product profitability and cost-to-serve analyses supported targeted actions that contributed to this improvement for selected customer-product combinations.
Alongside my main professional path, I have contributed to work in banking, payments, retail, public services and digital operations. These are some of those chapters.
Turning an establishment initiative into workstreams, ownership and management follow-up.
I contributed to the early-stage establishment initiative for Kuveyt Türk Yatırım. My work connected objectives with project plans, governance, decision routines, KPI reporting and stakeholder working sessions. The focus was helping people understand what needed to happen next and who would carry it forward.
Connecting business, technology, banking and operations around payment processes.
I supported payments-transformation work involving Central Bank and banking stakeholders. This included SWIFT and ISO 20022-related payment and settlement processes, reconciliation, monitoring and exception follow-up. My contribution sat within the project and stakeholder ecosystem.
Shaping the connection between a customer proposition and its operating model.
For Alshaheen Wallet & Shipping, I contributed to the proposition and operating-model work around wallet services and logistics. It brought together my interest in payments, customer journeys and the practical handovers that sit behind a service.
Helping shape the customer proposition and operating model for an airline e-wallet.
My Alburaq Air e-wallet involvement connected the service idea with business and operational requirements. I enjoy this stage of a project: working through how a customer experience will be supported by processes, responsibilities and implementation.
Connecting inventory, service and reporting across a 14-location network.
I designed and implemented ERP-enabled workflows that brought together digital intake, inventory and service records, thresholds, dashboards, alerts and exception follow-up. Work instructions, checklists, onboarding and coaching helped people use the new routines. Feedback from daily use helped improve them.
Helping a European retail-customer operation move from requirements into daily delivery.
The implementation work connected EDI, product and label data, order-to-delivery flows, quality, logistics and handovers. I contributed to workshops, role clarity, testing, readiness, onboarding and exception routines, with attention to the transition through go-live and stabilisation.
A business, a platform, a community project, a very particular car. My curiosity takes different forms.
Founding and running a commerce business put me close to customers, sales, conversion and team coordination. It taught me what ownership feels like when the decision is yours to make and the work is yours to follow through.
I helped build an education venture connecting students with study opportunities and Malaysian university partnerships. It combined an entrepreneurial idea with a very human decision: where someone would take the next step in their life.
Business-management and organisational improvement work added another perspective on commercial priorities, costs and coordination across a larger team. It was another setting in which plans had to become people’s daily responsibilities.
I have been developing a structured approach to career positioning and applications, alongside a client and administration platform. It brings together profile information, documents and the practical steps of an application journey.
A B2B fresh-produce trade concept connecting European supply with buyers in Libya. I have worked on buyer and administration portals and the flow of quotations, shipment documents and commercial information.
My wife, Safia, runs the Arabic-teaching venture. She brings her classroom experience to lessons for children, while I support the organisation and digital experience for parents, children and administration.
Kfila grew from our experience of shopping abroad for delivery to Libya. It is one of my wife Safia’s businesses, and I support her with the service and digital platform: requests, quotations, invoices and order follow-up.
Frula is my wife Safia’s freeze-dried fruit business. I support her fully as she develops the brand and its next steps.
frula.nl · Website to come
With my partner Morad Alkharraz, I am building a house for selected, exceptional automobiles and bespoke commissions. Morad found our 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE Coupé in the Netherlands; The Principal helped turn the discovery into an acquisition. Its next chapter leads to Libya. AZ takes the first and last letters of Alkharraz: an outlook that moves through history and into what comes next.
Establishment note: The Dutch entities for Frula, Kfila, Mawred, DHAF and Alkharraz are still being established, pending paperwork that has taken longer than expected. The Libyan entities have been fully established.
Other consulting and exploratory work has touched procurement, airlines, industry, automotive, buy-now-pay-later and cross-border propositions. The recurring question is how an idea becomes an operation someone can actually run.
I’m proud of being able to learn. When I see a gap between what I understand and what I want to contribute, I like to start working on it.
On 9 September 2026, after a conversation about my next professional step, I went straight into Databricks Academy. That day, I completed Analytics Fundamentals and AI Agent Fundamentals.
My focus now is to deepen the platform understanding behind the data work I already do: how information is ingested, structured, governed and made useful for reporting and AI. I want to ask better technical questions and work more effectively with architects and engineers.
Implement a Real-Time Intelligence solution with Microsoft Fabric
Assessment passed · 100%Verify Microsoft credentialAnalytics Fundamentals
AI Agent Fundamentals
Preparing for DP-700
Fabric Data Engineer Associate
Working through Microsoft Learn, including data ingestion with Dataflows Gen2, and developing my understanding of OneLake, pipelines and analytics.
My Microsoft Learn profileI bring hands-on experience with Microsoft Copilot and Power Platform, including Power Apps, Copilot Studio and AI agents for analysis, workflow documentation and decision support. I check outputs against source information and keep a person responsible for the decision. A KPMG Power Apps workshop added to this practical learning.
In 2021, I completed FinTech through Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning in association with HarvardX (certificate issued 13 May), and the Oxford Private Markets Investments Programme developed by Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (certificate issued 3 May). These professional-development programmes complement my degrees and practical finance experience. My development also includes continuing finance study and a planned next step in AI business transformation studies in 2027.
English is fluent. Dutch is part of my systems, emails and reporting. Spoken Dutch: A2, actively developing toward B1. There is progress in showing up again tomorrow.
Being busy can be one of my favourite ways to enjoy a day.
I can happily spend twelve hours working, learning or building something that has caught my attention. A side project after the main working day can feel like my version of a holiday or a party. I like the energy of having something to figure out.
And I enjoy the actual holidays and parties, too. The beach in Libya. The sea in Southeast Asia. Going out in Amsterdam. Time with my family. There is room for all of that in the person behind this profile.
One of my favourite small pleasures is eating watermelon with triangle cheese and bread on the beach, my hands still wet with seawater. It is a very different kind of satisfaction from solving a business problem, and I love it just as much.
I’m more focused now on what I have been building myself towards. The different chapters are coming together. I don’t think of myself as finished. I’m still learning, still refining my skills, and still interested in what I might understand next.
I welcome conversations about business control, supply-chain finance, and data and AI transformation. I bring financial understanding, practical delivery and attention to the people who make change work.
Connect with me on LinkedIn Step inside my work.Explore the interactive portfolio Make decisions. Follow the evidence. Meet my approach.