About The Role

This role is responsible to provide business partnering to the Commercial/Sales team in driving business performance and give decision support. Identifying KPIs that help business to understand actual performance, hold the business to account for performance, and making decisions support that are effective, strategically aligned, and value-maximizing even when you’re not the final decision-maker.

As part of an experience and dynamic Finance team, you will interact with various stakeholders including marketing, Shopper Marketing, Sales and Supply Chain to exchange strategy and financial information. You will be required to analyze and project the company’s Net Revenue and analyze variance between actual sales vs plan in terms of volume and value.

Key Accountabilities:

The Commercial Finance Manager is responsible for all financial matters for the sales team in the business. He/ she is closely integrated in the day-to-day operations and the “go-to” person for all financial matters relating to this business. The ideal candidate must be an ambitious, analytical and a highly commercial individual, who has the drive to lead and influence the business.

Key elements of the position are:

• Revenue management and planning for distributor business and ensure timely decisions and corrective actions to address opportunities & risks.
• Support the Sales Team to ensure that their strategies lead to Net Sales Revenue and GP growth through the business planning and forecasting processes.
• Provide analytical support in evaluation of all Commercial initiatives in terms of product launches, pricing promotional activities and direct marketing expenditure.
• Support to drive initiatives in order improve Gross Profit (Pricing, Promo optimization, Mix optimization, Product profitability).
• Prepare in-depth & insightful financial analysis and decision support to the sales and category team including identification of opportunities and risks with commentaries/analytics.
• Evaluation and Monitoring of Trade Discount Incentive proposals/programs to drive promotional effectiveness/profitability.
• Strategic investment decision support to the Sales team in assessment of new customers/ business opportunities, new RTM/ business model analysis etc.
• Provision of robust analysis and insight into pack profitability and portfolio management and preparation of value chain analysis for existing and potential products.
• Distributor financial scorecard tracking and review to support on-going customer performance assessment and appropriate compensation and incentive design.
• Review and processing of Payment for Target-Based Trade Discount Incentive Programs and Support and Trade spend efficiency evaluation to ensure optimal investment decision making
• Ensure the business complies with the executed Commercial policy which includes credit management policies, debts collection policy, product returns policy etc.
• Implement appropriate spending and budgetary controls for ASP expenditures and review spending requests and manage banking relationship for the business on behalf of the distributors
• Responsible for all financial matter: with focus on sales controlling and commercial activities and decision support, including preparing ad-hoc financial models.
•  Transfer finance knowledge to sales teams, coach and improve financial acumen of sales management team and other finance teams as it relates to sales controlling.

Education/Knowledge, Skills, Attributes, Experience & Other Requirements:

• Minimum of Bachelors degree or Higher National Diploma in Accounting or other related courses.
• Qualified Accountant (ICAN, ACA, CIMA, ACCA or equivalent)
• 4+ years of related commercial finance and financial planning and analysis experience with increasing responsibility and control
•  Ability to work independently – specifically on commercial projects – and lead key initiatives and in a fast-paced, and constantly changing environment
• Excellent interpersonal skills and proven ability to work as a team player in a cross-functional / group environment
• Strong management accounting knowledge, analytical skills, problem solving skills, good understanding of systems, processes and work-flows, combined with business acumen
• Properly managing workload, timelines and deliverables, and expectations in a highly entrepreneurial business environment – high-growth, fast-paced, performance-driven
• Create robust financial business case models, and as a result of analysis formulate findings and providing a founded point of view for decision making support to the leadership team
• Proficient in NAVISION, Advanced Excel, PowerPoint and Word.
• Experience with general ledger functions and the month-end/year end close process
• Experience dealing within FMCG or in the retail sector is highly desirable.

Key Competencies:

• Detail oriented
• Good team player
• Flexibility
• Proactively taking initiatives
• Self- driven and hardworking
• Leadership & coaching skills
• Identifying and driving improvements
• Written and verbal communications skills
• Strong interpersonal skills and organizational skills