Operations Finance Controller

Job description

Danone is a global food company holding top positions in healthy food through its four businesses: Fresh Dairy Products, Early Life Nutrition - Happy Family , Waters, and Medical Nutrition. Its mission, bringing health through food to as many people as possible, embodies commitment to human progress and business success. It gives meaning to the work of our 100,000 Danoners worldwide on an everyday basis. For passionate people looking for autonomy and exciting career opportunities, Danone truly has something special inside!

Happy Family is currently at a very strong business momentum with high growth, an impressive amount of innovation launches, and on its path to sustainable profitability. This role will have a high impact on the company’s evolution in the next years, with high exposure to the Executive Team, as well as the Region/Division, due to the strategic nature of many supply chain projects.

The Operations Finance Controller will play a key role in co-piloting Operations in Happy Family by implementing initiatives to ensure finance performance animation, bring visibility and transparency in the material costs & manufacturing results as well as Supply Chain results (full COGS & logistics), own (with the COO) the budget between Net Sales to Gross Profit (~$115m), increase efficiency in analysis and reporting by improving the management information systems and way of working, facilitate the discussion platform and strategic alignment between Finance and Operations. In this role s/he will also ensure financial analysis as well as management reporting on financial matters on ad-hoc and regular basis within the monthly forecast cycle and requests from the Executive Management Team, to contribute to optimal decision-making within the company. The position will play a key role in the finance department by providing information, about all operations related company activities.

The Operations Finance Controller should be able to deal with dualities: s/he should on the one hand, be the business partner and on the other hand be the financial conscience of Operations teams. S/he should challenge and build strong relationships with the Operations teams.

POSITION DESCRIPTION & RESPONSIBILITIES:

The Operations Finance Controller’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

·  Provide support to the CFO (& rest of Finance Team) & the COO in understanding and monitoring the Ops financial performance
·  Provide strong ad hoc financial and business analytic decision support on numerous revenue or cost-saving initiatives, return on investment analyses and/or other assigned projects.
·  Perform variance analysis, analyzes financial results versus budget/forecast, and provide commentary that helps identify performance drivers and root causes of variances to objectives on a monthly basis.
·  Develop, execute and effectively communicate significant analyses & reports that identify meaningful trends and opportunities across the business. Leverage tools and systems to quickly access data and present meaningful, concise information to various levels of management
·  More specifically, support Finance Planning process in the spirit of Beyond Budget (Strat Plan, Rolling FCST, Actuals, Transfer Pricing, COGS Outlook and outlook on Financial performance)
·  Monitor the rolling forecast execution and financial performance targets CO/ROP/Capex/WoCap/FCF
·  Effectively and efficiently follows up on deviations and initiates action to fill the gaps vs Target
·  Actively participate & continuously improve the internal and external monthly forecasts & annual budget, in cooperation with all departments
·  Lead the Transfer Pricing process, ensuring compliance with global ELN TP model
·  Provide analytical support on Operations topics and business cases, cooperation with other functions and FP&A team
·  Provide support during the Innovation process, coordinate with Business Development, Sales, R&D and Operations. Lead and facilitate COGS preparations for business cases.
·  Lead the Operations related Protein company projects as well as Margin Improvement company projects, animate and drive saving initiatives.
·  Educate & support the department heads, in understanding & managing their expenses
·  Establish and maintain systems and controls that verify the integrity of all systems, processes and data, and enhance the company's value, in cooperation with the other finance team members.
·  Propose new tools and/or new processes that can help improve monitoring, transparency, reporting and performance.
·  Manage and develop the other members of the Finance OPS team

Education and Experience:

·  Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting or related field required
·  MBA, MSc or CPA preferred
·  Minimum 8-10 years of controlling experience preferably in a multinational FMCG context; previous exposure to operations / manufacturing controlling is considered beneficial e.g. factory controller
·  Minimum 1-2 years of experience with standard cost accounting and variance analysis
·  ERP Systems experience (SAP preferred)
·  Strong Excel (model development, Pivot Tables, function/formula understanding) and Power point skills required. Must possess Expert Excel skills with the proven ability to produce high end work products suitable for analysis.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

·  Ability to balance between Finance view and Operations view
·  Manage high complexity, numerous projects and can set proper priorities
·  Ability to formulate a view, get buy-in and drive the implementation and secure in the daily way of working
·  Flexibility and adaptability to different situations. Passion for delivering actionable insights
·  Thinks systematically, has good analytical skills. Can deal with big data sets and can and will perform analysis on the lowest detail level if needed
·  Ability to work autonomously, perform well under pressure and manage change effectively
·  Challenges the status quo, takes initiative and generates breakthrough ideas
·  Shows value for different opinions, shows flexibility to different opinions.
·  Fast learner, positive energy, team player, committed, resilient Shows interest to learn and share from others.

For more information about Danone and Happy Family, its people and its business, please visit danone.com We have something special inside, do you?
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