Operational Lead - Finance - Center Of Excellence

Role Purpose :

The individual will lead in embedding best practice group-wide in

( a ) Financial Planning and Analysis;

( b ) Costing and related disciplines of variance analysis, inventory valuation and overall support to operations;

( c ) Governance to ensure adherence of best practice systems controls. The individual will lead a team to provide support to the business in the form of accurate and timely reporting with insights for business improvements. 

( d) Standardized activities will be centralised within his team to create capacity for finance business partners to focus on implementing business improvement plans.

Principal Accountability and Key Activities :

Best practice deployment :

- Embed best practice in the areas of reporting and forecasting

- Standardize reporting via online dashboards and operational review packs highlighting areas of focus for business performance improvement

- Efficient and accurate direct from core system reporting to facilitate target month end close timelines

- Supporting the business for effective forecasting including monthly routines and point- in- time Group planning and forecasting processes

- Develop a forward looking view of performance in reports, to support the business to develop corrective action early

- Benchmark with external world in reporting practices and lead the continuous improvement effort in related areas including adjusting to changing business requirements

Maintain Data integrity :

- Develop, employ and enforce stringent governance framework around systems and operational controls to ensure best practice is adhered to and data integrity in core systems are maintained to facilitate direct system reporting

Product Costing Expertise :

- Standardize approaches to build capability in the Group for accurate costing, variance analysis and inventory valuation, to facilitate timely decision making

Support for Operations review:

- First point of contact for business stakeholders for all reporting requirements

- Understand key business requirements relating to information & insight and ensuring reports are tailored to this and are fit for purpose, including data integrity

- Support business performance management by narrowing focus on key exceptions to expectations (the what) to enable the business to focus on underlying root causes (the why) and related corrective action

Key skills :

- Understand Business and have a broad knowledge of different Finance activities: mainly reporting

- Familiarity with Group core systems

- Be committed to delivering high quality outputs in tight timescales

- People management

Key Behaviors :

- Provide leadership to an expert team, to deliver effective business support

- Trusted to handle confidential information

- Be able to influence senior stakeholders in the move towards standardized best practice

- Able to align dependent support within and across functions (e.g. CoE and Technology systems development teams) to meet objectives

- Be able to interpret business requirements and engage with key dependent stakeholders such as technology to deliver outcomes required

- Be flexible to work on different projects as the need arises

- Digital first mind-set in developing solutions

Education, Qualifications and Experience :

- CA, ICWA (CMA) with 10 - 12 years of exp from a CoE (Center of Excellence background ideally Manufacturing)

- Strong knowledge SAP / Power BI tools

Reporting to : Head of Finance - COE