Budgeting, Forecasting & Business Planning

• Lead the commercial elements of the annual budgeting and strategic planning processes.
• Own the commercial finance forecasting cycle and ensure forecasts are accurate, timely, and commercially realistic.
• Develop rolling forecasts and scenario analysis.
• Challenge revenue, volume, pricing, promotional, and margin assumptions.
• Provide clear explanations of variances against budget, forecast, and prior year.
• Identify emerging risks and opportunities and communicate these to senior management.
• Support the development of long-term financial plans and strategic business cases.

Management Reporting & Performance Analysis

• Own the commercial finance reporting agenda.
• Produce insightful monthly performance reporting for senior management.
• Develop dashboards and KPIs covering revenue, volume, gross margin, customer profitability, trade spend, and other commercial measures.
• Analyse performance by customer, channel, brand, category, product, and geography as appropriate.
• Ensure reporting is accurate, consistent, and aligned with business objectives.
• Move the finance function beyond historical reporting towards forward-looking commercial insight.

SAP & Data

• Act as a key finance business owner for commercial data and reporting within SAP.
• Ensure SAP master data and transactional data support accurate commercial reporting.
• Use SAP data to analyse sales, pricing, customer profitability, inventory, costs, and margins.
• Partner with IT/Data teams to improve reporting automation, data quality, and financial systems.
• Identify opportunities to improve the use of SAP reporting and analytics capabilities.
• Support implementation, enhancement, or migration projects involving SAP ERP/SAP S/4HANA and related reporting platforms.
• Ensure appropriate controls are in place over commercial finance data.

Business Partnering

• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders across Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Procurement, and Operations.
• Provide constructive challenge while maintaining a collaborative approach.
• Explain complex financial information in a clear and commercially relevant manner.
• Influence decisions without relying solely on formal authority.
• Develop a strong understanding of the FMCG market, customers, brands, channels, and competitive environment.
• Support cross-functional initiatives designed to improve profitability and operational performance.

Strategic Projects & Investment Appraisal

• Lead financial analysis for major commercial and strategic initiatives.
• Prepare robust business cases for new products, customers, markets, pricing initiatives, and investment proposals.
• Evaluate potential acquisitions, partnerships, or other strategic opportunities where required.
• Assess payback, ROI, NPV, and other relevant financial metrics.
• Conduct post-investment reviews to assess whether expected benefits have been delivered.
• Provide scenario and sensitivity analysis to support senior management decisions.

Cost & Margin Improvement

• Partner with Supply Chain, Procurement, and Operations to identify margin improvement opportunities.
• Analyse the financial impact of commodity costs, manufacturing costs, logistics, warehousing, and other cost drivers.
• Support initiatives to improve gross margin and operating profitability.
• Track delivery of cost-saving and margin-enhancement initiatives.
• Ensure financial benefits are appropriately quantified and reflected in forecasts.

Controls & Governance

• Ensure robust financial controls are maintained across the commercial finance environment.
• Ensure appropriate accounting treatment of rebates, promotional spend, customer incentives, and other commercial arrangements.
• Partner with Financial Control and Internal Audit where required.
• Ensure compliance with company policies, accounting standards, and internal governance requirements.
• Identify and mitigate financial and commercial risks.

Person Specification

Essential Experience

• Qualified accountant: ACA, ACCA, CIMA, or equivalent.
• Significant post-qualification experience in commercial finance.
• Strong experience within FMCG, consumer goods, retail, or another fast-moving commercial environment.
• Proven experience partnering with senior Sales, Marketing, and/or Commercial leadership.
• Strong understanding of revenue, gross margin, pricing, promotions, and customer profitability.
• Experience leading budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning processes.
• Demonstrable experience managing and developing finance teams.
• Strong analytical and financial modelling skills.
• Experience working with SAP or a comparable ERP system.
• Excellent Excel and financial reporting skills.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with SAP BW, SAP Analytics Cloud, or similar business intelligence tools.
• Experience managing trade spend/customer investment.
• Experience with revenue growth management or net revenue management.
• Experience in a multi-country or international FMCG organisation.
• Experience supporting SAP implementation or transformation programmes.
• Experience working with Power BI or similar data visualisation tools.