Job description
Axon Moore are working with a leading retail organisation with its HO in Blackburn who are looking for a Head of Finance Data Analytics on an interim or potentially permanent basis.
Following the series of acquisitions made in recent years, the company has embarked on a programme of transformation. The first part of this transformation is the investment in its system landscape including a SAP transformation programme to bring all entities onto one common SAP ERP platform. With two regions already successfully under its belt, the rest of the business is now lined up to move onto the single SAP platform setting the stage for the second part of the transformation. The second part of the transformation programme is to both standardise and continuously improve process and controls, enabled in part by the standardised SAP ERP platform.
Role:
The Head of Finance Data Analytics will play a critical role in both parts of this transformation as they help drive in standardising its processes and controls, both inside and outside of SAP.
The Head of Finance Data Analytics and their team will continuously find new and better ways for Finance to extract and analyse data, largely but not exclusively from SAP, to understand how Finance processes and controls are performing and where opportunities for improvements lie. You will also design and own the financial processes controlling changes to customer, supplier and similar sensitive master data (eg banking and contact information) to ensure they can only be changed with the correct authorisation with a view to preventing fraud.
This is a senior level role, with the Head of Finance Data Analytics reporting into the Finance Operations Director.
The Head of Finance Data Analytics will lead a team of people with the responsibility for owning and driving improvements and the adoption of best practice relating to managing Data Analytics and Master Data change processes and controls across a large global multinational organisation. The will need to manage, coach and mentor their team on best practice relating to managing Data Analytics and Master Data change processes and controls as well as wider coaching and mentoring on softer skills. Working with Finance peers and associated stakeholders across the business, The Head of Finance Data Analytics will ensure accurate, timely and meaningful KPI’s and data analytics are available for use across the wider team to enable them to drive improvements in their performance. They will also be responsible for ensuring efficient and accurate Master Data change processes and controls are in place across all our non-US regions of operations.
Duties:
Please note, this role is based in Blackburn and you must be able to get in to the office 5 days per week. Free parking and excellent benefits package provided.
Following the series of acquisitions made in recent years, the company has embarked on a programme of transformation. The first part of this transformation is the investment in its system landscape including a SAP transformation programme to bring all entities onto one common SAP ERP platform. With two regions already successfully under its belt, the rest of the business is now lined up to move onto the single SAP platform setting the stage for the second part of the transformation. The second part of the transformation programme is to both standardise and continuously improve process and controls, enabled in part by the standardised SAP ERP platform.
Role:
The Head of Finance Data Analytics will play a critical role in both parts of this transformation as they help drive in standardising its processes and controls, both inside and outside of SAP.
The Head of Finance Data Analytics and their team will continuously find new and better ways for Finance to extract and analyse data, largely but not exclusively from SAP, to understand how Finance processes and controls are performing and where opportunities for improvements lie. You will also design and own the financial processes controlling changes to customer, supplier and similar sensitive master data (eg banking and contact information) to ensure they can only be changed with the correct authorisation with a view to preventing fraud.
This is a senior level role, with the Head of Finance Data Analytics reporting into the Finance Operations Director.
The Head of Finance Data Analytics will lead a team of people with the responsibility for owning and driving improvements and the adoption of best practice relating to managing Data Analytics and Master Data change processes and controls across a large global multinational organisation. The will need to manage, coach and mentor their team on best practice relating to managing Data Analytics and Master Data change processes and controls as well as wider coaching and mentoring on softer skills. Working with Finance peers and associated stakeholders across the business, The Head of Finance Data Analytics will ensure accurate, timely and meaningful KPI’s and data analytics are available for use across the wider team to enable them to drive improvements in their performance. They will also be responsible for ensuring efficient and accurate Master Data change processes and controls are in place across all our non-US regions of operations.
Duties:
- Must take ownership of the processes and controls related to the change of transactional Master Data (eg supplier or customer banking information) in Finance systems. Must continuously design and manage process improvements and the implementation of those improvements. Be a hands-on SME in ensuring that processes and associated controls are designed and implemented to ensure only valid, approved master data changes are made efficiently and accurately.
- Must have a strong understanding of Finance transactional processes generally, ERP processes (ideally SAP but not mandatory) and the associated data and controls required to measure their performance
- Be able to create and execute plans effectively and ideally have process mapping experience. Can successfully project manage others to improve processes and controls.
- Identify risks in processes and controls and present them to others together with options to mitigate risks.
- Be proactive in coming up with new and inventive ways of improving processes and controls and in designing new KPI’s and analytics related to understanding how financial transactional processes are performing eg processing times, ageing of supplier and customer related items etc.
- Have experience of extracting data from Finance systems (ideally SAP). Be able to join data together from different sources to produce meaningful information. To quickly analyse data to identify obvious anomalies and be inventive in finding workarounds.
- Together with IT, manage the implementation of new systems related to The Head of Finance Data Analytics
- Always have the end user in mind to ensure their experience is a great one and have a focus on operational impacts at all times to ensure processes continue to add value.
- Work collaboratively alongside peers to ensure, where required, that end-to-end processes are optimised, designing Master Data and Data Analytics processes that dovetail seamlessly into other processes where they interact.
- To be an expert in Excel and associated manipulation of data.
- Drive standardisation to ensure that as far as possible all changes are implemented globally in a standardised way.
- Where appropriate, work on future acquisitions (and divestments) made by Group and provide support in ensuring new acquisitions adopt standard processes as defined by The Head of Finance Data Analytics and Finance.
- At least 5+ years of experience of Data Analytics work with strong knowledge of Finance and ERP systems (ideally SAP)
- Experienced manager with proven ability to create and retain high-performing teams
- Recent large-scale experience as an SME with Data Analytics and/or Master Data changes, ideally within a Finance setting
- Track record of independently improving processes and controls
- Experience of operating in a relatively large, complex business
- Very strong Excel skills, proficient user of PowerPoint. Understanding of processes in ERP systems. System implementation experience desirable
- Have an inventive and pro-active mind-set to independently identify and resolve data, process and controls related issues.
Please note, this role is based in Blackburn and you must be able to get in to the office 5 days per week. Free parking and excellent benefits package provided.
