Job Description
Job Title: Group Commercial Finance Manager
Location: West Midlands
Company & Role Overview
My client is an international manufacturing group with operations across the globe. Having recently been acquired by an investment group they have been tasked with double in size over the next 5 years and as part of that journey, the Group CFO has identified the need to increase the size and calibre of the group finance team. The Group Commercial Finance Manager is responsible for leading the annual budgeting process and working with the sites on the financial planning, analysis and performance reporting. They will challenge site forecasts and understand the assumptions to ensure forecasting is accurate and robust. They will also be responsible for creating investment models for key strategic group projects and reviewing site models for local capital expenditure as well as assisting sites with any commercial and operational finance needs where additional support is required.
Key responsibilities
Financial Planning & Analysis
* Leading the budgeting process, coordinating submissions from the business units, timetables for submissions, data required, etc. to build the group budget. Challenging business units to ensure challenging, but fair targets are set that consolidate up into the desired group budget.
* Drafting and coordinating the production of the group budget presentation for the board of directors with guidance from the Vice President – Group Finance and CFO.
* Ensuring each business unit submits an accurate monthly forecast containing Profit & Loss, balance sheet and cashflow forecast for the coming 12 months.
* Challenge the site forecasts and ensure each is submitting accurate information with fully understood assumptions using all data available to the sites, including orders and forecasts from customers.
* Working with the business units to improve the forecasting models and methodology to standardise across the group and improve accuracy of the forecasting.
* Ensure the management team at each site understands the forecast and uses it to drive business decisions.
Business Performance
* Work with business units on various projects as they occur, modelling outcomes to ensure the business is making the best financial decisions with the available data.
* Store and monitor investment decisions, ensuring they are approved in line with the delegation of authorities and reviewing them 1-3 years after implementation to ensure actuals are in line with the original plan. Where they are not, investigate, learning from any deviations and helping the business take appropriate actions as necessary.
* Produce group models for strategic projects such as acquisitions, significant investments, site rationalisation plans or other strategic group level decisions as required.
* Participate in strategy planning processes as and when they occur to produce 5 year forecasts that align with the medium-term group strategic plan.
* Monitor sales wins and losses and ensure a level of financial rigor to the business development process. Learning from commercial bids when we aren’t successful and validating the percentage likelihood figures from the sales teams based on historical data and success rates.
* Support sites with commercial and operational issues where additional expertise or specialist knowledge is required from group.
* Analyse operating margins across multiple sites or where information from sites needs additional scrutiny.
* Support on more complex analysis such as segmental P&L reporting where analysis is more judgemental and open to differing assumptions to ensure group understands the assumptions being made and analysis is in line with policy.
* Cash and working capital management
o Assist sites in producing cash flow forecasts, helping to improve cash flow forecasting, particularly around working capital management.
Other
o Other projects and tasks as required to support the smooth running of the broader finance team.
Attributes and competencies
o Strong commercial and operational acumen.
o Ability to challenge and influence the divisional leadership team and site management teams.
o Strong analytical skills, ability to spot trends, anomalies and explain / communicate them to non-finance trained staff.
o Ability to identify and implement continuous improvement in the forecasting and budgeting processes.
o Collaborative, able to work with the wider group and site finance teams.
o Strong organisational and time management skills.
Qualifications & experience
o Recognised accounting qualification, e.g. ACA/CIMA/ACCA.
o Experience in the manufacturing industry and manufacturing costings and accounting.
o Experience in working in FP&A or other similar commercial or operational finance roles.
o Proven experience at site level, preferably with group or divisional experience.