Dunelm
Finance Manager - Property & Format
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Overview
Home. There’s no place like it.
And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do. We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And we’ve crafted a workplace that feels just as welcoming – where you can bring your ideas, be yourself, and feel right at home.
At Dunelm, our Finance team isn’t just about numbers, we’re the powerhouse behind smart decisions, smooth operations, and spotting golden opportunities for growth. We balance the books and manage procurement like pros, but we also dive deep into financial data to uncover patterns, trends, and hidden gems that help steer our business forward.
With an approximately 85-strong team, we’re just the right size - agile enough that no one gets lost in the crowd (or stuck doing the same thing every day), but big enough to offer real opportunities to grow explore new areas and really challenge yourself. If you think finance is all grey suits and spreadsheets - think again. Here, we're making numbers exciting, decisions smarter, and opportunities bigger.
Work your way, together
We’re a hybrid business, which means you’ll have flexibility alongside time together with your team. In this role, you can expect 3 days a week in the office or on-site, helping you stay connected, collaborate and do your best work for our customers.
The Business Finance Team is a team of roughly thirty finance professionals, who partner with the functions across Dunelm, to:
- Produce timely and accurate weekly and monthly reports and insight to inform trading and operational control and decision making
- Set targets (in conjunction with business) and provide independent view of forecasts and trends
- Hold business to account to deliver to targets and manage risks and opportunities
- Support and challenge tactical and strategic decision making, including financial appraisal (and post investment appraisal)
- Agitate for optimising profitability and return on investment, and for best use of our resources
- Use our unique viewpoint to join things up, ‘unblock’ issues and put simple structure around priorities and actions.
There are many opportunities for development in the team, both:
- Progression through Analyst, Business Partner, Finance Manager, Senior Finance Manager and Head of; and
- Partnering with the varied parts of Dunelm’s business, including Stores, Supply Chain, Digital, Marketing, Tech, Commercial and many more!
In addition to leading your team, you will directly partner with your Executive and Dunelm Leadership Team partners on specific projects, initiatives and focus areas, acting as a key member of their leadership teams. You will work closely with your colleagues partnering other areas of the business to support join up of opportunities and issues across the end-to end operation.
Role Overview
As Property & Format Finance Manager, you’ll be the primary finance business partner to the Property and Format teams, with a clear focus on driving profitable growth across Dunelm’s store estate. You’ll play an integral role in assessing new store and refit opportunities, appraising investment options and payback, and challenging performance after implementation to ensure expected returns are delivered. You’ll also lead improvements to how we develop business cases, assess performance and track investments and returns against agreed assumptions. Alongside this, you’ll own the end-to-end view of property costs, providing a clear month-end story and regular, robust forecast updates. This is a high-profile role with the opportunity to shape how Dunelm invests across its store estate, raise the quality of commercial decision-making and build a more rigorous approach to measuring and delivering returns.
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What you'll be doing
- Act as the primary finance business partner to the Property and Format teams, building trusted relationships and bringing clear commercial insight and constructive challenge to decisions.
- Proactively identify opportunities to improve store profitability, investment returns and property cost efficiency, using insight to shape the agenda rather than responding only to requests from the business.
- Support the delivery of profitable growth across the store estate, with a particular focus on opening new stores and refitting existing stores.
- Lead the financial appraisal of new store, refit and other property investment options, clearly assessing costs, benefits, risks, payback and expected returns.
- Provide robust challenge to the assumptions underpinning investment proposals and help stakeholders make well informed choices between options.
- Lead post-implementation performance reviews, comparing actual results with the approved business case, challenging underperformance and agreeing actions to improve returns.
- Improve the methodologies, models and governance used to write business cases, appraise payback and assess investment performance.
- Establish clear and consistent tracking of investment spend, benefits and returns against business-case assumptions throughout the investment lifecycle.
- Undertake quarterly reviews of total store profitability, identifying trends and using clear insight to drive actions that improve performance across outlier stores.
- Own the end-to-end financial view of property costs, understanding the key cost drivers and identifying trends, risks and opportunities.
- Lead the month-end story for property costs and investments, ensuring performance is accurately explained and the key messages and actions are clear.
- Own regular forecast updates for property costs and investment activity, working with stakeholders to ensure forecasts are timely, evidence-based and reflect the latest outlook.
- Lead, coach and develop the Finance Business Partner for Property & Store Controllables, setting clear priorities and building capability across the team.
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What we'll look for in you
Essential Skills
- Experience of coaching, mentoring or developing others, with the ability to set clear direction and build capability; previous formal line-management experience would be helpful but isn’t essential.
- A strong track record of evaluating investment opportunities and translating analysis into clear commercial recommendations that drive profitable growth.
- The confidence and credibility to challenge senior stakeholders, test assumptions and influence significant investment decisions.
- An improvement mindset, with evidence of developing better models, methodologies, governance, reporting or decision-making processes.
- Strong analytical judgement, able to work with incomplete information while making assumptions, risks and sensitivities transparent.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to simplify complex information and build understanding, commitment and action.
- A strong relationship builder who creates trust across functions while maintaining independence and constructive challenge.
- Finance qualified, with broad finance experience and the credibility to represent the wider Finance function with stakeholders.
- Strong financial modelling and analytical capability, able to bring together multiple sources of information, identify trends and translate analysis into decisions and action.
- A bias for action and the drive to turn insight into measurable commercial outcomes, while remaining comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities.
Behaviors We Look For In You
- Communicating – Making complex financial information easy to understand and using clear, compelling messages to influence decisions and gain commitment to action.
- Curiosity – Seeking to understand store performance and property economics in depth, probing beyond the first answer and using evidence to uncover risks and opportunities.
- Adapting – Responding positively to changing priorities and new information, flexing the approach while maintaining focus on the best commercial outcome.
- Thinking Big – Looking beyond individual investments to understand the long-term opportunity across the store estate and using internal and external insight to shape better choices.
- Challenging – Providing constructive dissent, testing assumptions and holding stakeholders to account so that business cases, forecasts and investment decisions are robust.
- Making It Happen – Cutting through complexity, setting clear ownership and following through so that insight leads to action and agreed returns are delivered.
- Commercial Judgement – Balancing evidence, risk, payback and long-term value to recommend where investment will deliver the strongest profitable growth.
- Collaborating – Building trusted partnerships across Property, Format, Retail and Finance, creating shared ownership of decisions, performance and improvement actions.
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