Finance Director

Finance Director

England, Wiltshire, Malmesbury

Competitive Salary + Bonus and Pension

The overall objective of the Finance Director role is to act as a key financial, commercial and strategic business partner to the Product VP:

• Leading a financial agenda that balances short and medium term profit and cash delivery with long term sustainable growth and brand health;
• Leading financial performance by establishing analytical capability and support that provides category and market intelligence;
• Providing insight on business health by devising and holding the business to key financial and non-financial performance measures;
• Providing clarity on and insight into the category outlook by leading short, medium and long term business planning;
• Supporting ongoing product development by leading NPD evaluations and milestone governance;
• Supporting the commercial development of the category by bringing a clear financial lens to ranging, pricing and product decisions and by driving transparency in volume performance, margin management, BBI effectiveness and cost control;
• Optimising the business model, including by internally and externally benchmarking category and market performance;
• Driving strong financial management by leading working capital management through the sales and operational planning forums, governing resource allocation, sponsoring cost initiatives (including product cost, capex, brand building and central costs) and driving a culture of generating strong financial returns and value for money.
• Driving consistent best-in-class approach to financial, commercial and strategic management across the Health & Beauty categories of Environmental Control, Personal Care and Professional to drive operational effectiveness, comparability and transparency.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities of the Finance Director:

• Manage a team of three Environmental Control and three Personal Care finance managers/analysts supporting commercial and RDD teams.
• Lead category performance management from market reviews through to Executive and Board reporting:
  • Drive accountability across markets, commercial and RDD;
  • Lead market benchmarking, product/channel/promotional/market mix management
  • Develop and manage timely and relevant reporting, analysis and KPI measures (financial and non-financial)
• Lead BBI and promo effectiveness:
  • Drive financial returns to maximise ROI
  • Drive BBI multiples
  • Optimise product and infrastructure building investment
  • Drive effective promotional strategy.
• Support product lifecycle management:
  • Help drive effective portfolio management, including sku management, range transitioning and product end of life
  • Manage investment appraisal, milestones' governance, post investment review, and support launch scenario planning.
• Support sales and operational planning processes:
  • Oversee category demand, supply and capacity planning and ensure they are aligned with financial forecasts
  • Support product allocation prioritisation and working capital management.
• Support category strategy and business planning:
  • Act as a trusted adviser on range planning, pricing, product strategy
  • Support development of business model and competitor and go to market strategy
• Drive cost optimisation across product, capex and operational costs.
• Deliver financial support and coaching to category and product teams.

Traditional Finance Directors need not apply. Of course, we need you to be a qualified accountant, yet you need to come with heavyweight commercial PQE experience. That's because currently, there's nothing set in stone… and we need you to set it. Vision, drive, intuition, intellect and integrity are what we're looking for. And ideally, we'll need you to come from a premium consumer and / or technology business.

The Finance Director l also be the kind of person who inspires (and not just your immediate team, your gravitas and personal impact has to be wide-reaching as you'll need to influence right across the business), so superb communication and leadership skills are essential. You certainly need to be unfazed by challenging preconceptions and relish the thought of bringing about change. Sound like a tall order? It shouldn't be for someone like you. We've got high hopes for this category and we're looking to you to deliver.