Commercial Finance Controller

Gleeson Recruitment Group have been instructed on a retained basis by a market leading brand based in Birmingham to recruit a Commercial Finance Controller. This is a newly created role and will see you support their UK operation which has a turnover of approximately £250 million and a Group turnover in excess of £500 million. This exciting and well recognised brand continues to buck the trend having experienced double digit growth over the past 2 years with no signs of slowing down.

As the Commercial Finance Controller you will be a fully qualified accountant and will have extremely strong stakeholder management experience, coupled with strong reporting skills and the ability to own the P&L for a sizeable business area. You will be able to work very comfortably in a very fast moving environment and will place value on being a true team player.

The ideal candidate will come from an FMCG background and will have a high aptitude for commercial finance coupled with excellent team management skills.

You will be working closely with the Group Finance Director, the Sales and Marketing team and Operations and will provide financial support and critical analytical challenge to the UK Market to ensure the organisation achieves the financial targets it has been set. You will also be responsible for managing relationships between both Operations and Group Finance and will be comfortable in both areas.

The Role:

As the Commercial Finance Controller this role will provide variety and challenge and you will be responsible for driving performance of the UK market you represent. The key areas of responsibility are Business Partnering, Budgeting & Forecasting, Financial Analysis, Reporting and Projects which will be successfully completed by the following:

• Manage and develop a small and highly qualified finance team.
• Establish effective relationships with all members of the senior management team and develop a deep knowledge and understanding of the business.
• Ensure completeness, accuracy and timely delivery of UK market financial reporting.
• Lead on the annual strategic planning process as well as the rolling forecast process.
• Identify and follow risks and opportunities.
• Ensure a robust sales forecast is in place by monitoring and challenging this forecast as well as investigating variances to the plan.
• Ensure the team are providing reporting analysis to explain the underlying variances against budget and forecast.
• Build, manage, track and evaluate investments and promotions to drive profits in line with the annual plan.
• Work with Sales & Marketing and Operations to evaluate effectiveness of promotions.
• Provide direction to Sales & Marketing to improve the bottom line, drive sales, revenue and return on investment.
• Undertake and drive insightful analysis of all KPI's to monitor and report on the implementation of the overall financial strategy.
• Report on the long term business plan - monitoring progress against the annual plan on a monthly and quarterly basis alongside the Commercial Finance Manager.

The Candidate:
As the successful Commercial Finance Controller you will be:

• A fully qualified accountant with FMCG / Retail experience;
• Strong commercial finance background;
• A strong communicator who is comfortable challenging the status quo;
• A strong team player who is happy to roll their sleeves up;
• Experienced in the use of ERP accounting systems and have a good grasp of Excel;
• Able to interpret and communicate financial issues to non-finance stakeholders;
• A sense of humour.

The Benefits Package:
The following benefits package is available to the successful Commercial Finance Controller:

• Salary of £80K - £90K
• Car allowance
• Bonus up to 20%
• Pension
• Healthcare
• Fun, fast paced environment
• Modern, well equipped offices

By applying you will be registered as a candidate with Gleeson Recruitment Limited. Our Privacy Policy is available on our website and explains how we will use your data.