Plant Finance Business Partner - CP Kelco

Position Summary

The Plant Finance Business Partner provides critical support in budgeting, forecasting and financial analysis by serving in an individual contributor capacity. This role focuses on delivering accurate financial insights and reports to support the FP&A team and Finance business partners. As a Plant Finance Business Partner you will ensure data quality and consistency across financial processes within the team, playing a vital role in supporting financial decision making. 

NO AGENCIES PLEASE

Responsibilities

Business Support 

• Advisor and business partner to the plant manager for financial and legal tasks 
• Proactive member of the plant leadership team, providing financial leadership to the business  
• Provide decision support on short, medium and long term issues by using data, sensitivity analysis, information and business understanding 
• Partner with the plant operations teams to identify, support and measure productivity & continuous improvement projects within the plant  
• Collaborate with Specialist teams, including Tax and Treasury to create effective and integrated  financial solutions 
• Support the creation of the financial statements in accordance with local and IFRS regulation  

Cost, cash and working capital management  

• In liaison with GSS and other functions such as purchasing ensure the reliability of cost information in SAP and other information systems like bills of materials, standard and actual costs at product level. 
• Support the business in setting cost management and cost reduction plans.  Monitor and comment upon achievement versus these plans 
• Understand and monitor the drivers of plant working capital, including the coordination of physical inventory counts and cycle counts and overseeing any necessary stock adjustments; finished & semi-finished goods, spare parts, ingredients, raw materials and auxiliaries  

Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting  

• AOP process owner for the plant. Coordinate process of fix cost budgeting, bill of materials and master recipe development including energy setup, maintenance planning and depreciation indirect and SGA cost where applicable.
• Support long term plan development like AOP process with lower level of detail
• Develop and monitor coherent and integrated KPIs and performance measures relevant to the plant 
• Prepare sensitivities and understand the relevant risks and opportunities in the plan/ forecast to build confidence that it is robust and achievable   

Responsibilities Continued

Performance Analysis and Reporting  

• Analyze and prepare commentary on management reports prepared by GSS 
• Prepare appropriate variance and other analysis and commentaries where not provided by GSS 
• This includes commenting on and understanding costs by product, cost center and plant as well as commenting on periodic variances and their causes 
• Follow up the causes of variances, agree actions with non-finance teams to fix them and monitor successful completion  
• Translate business data and information into accurate financial models showing possible impact to support the decision-making process 
• Primary accountability for dealing with requests from global management, global operations FPA and group finance related to the plant 
• Support engineering and other non-finance colleagues in the plant and in central operations, commercial, strategy teams to develop and analyze prospective capital investment projects, to prepare the CAPEX documentation and to provide the financial impact calculations; depreciation, any other cost and savings, this includes preparation and analysis of cost estimates and risk and sensitivity analyses 
• Support the Supply Chain FD in the fulfilment of their responsibilities in this area 
• Monitor and control capital investment projects during and after implementation against the budget 
• Prepare post investment review of the project, in collaboration with the central operations,  commercial, strategy teams  

Continuous Improvement  

• Continuously evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of finance processes relating to the plant, and their consistency with finance processes across the rest of the global plant network 
• Proactively implement improvements, including transition of finance processes to GSS if appropriate  
• Provide review, validation and approval of all corporate recharges into and from the EMEA Statutory entities and provide guidance on how the commercial teams should resolve disputed items
• Oversight of EMEA transfer pricing environment and related adherence
• Assistance with due diligence & integration accounting for EMEA acquisitions or divestitures, including acting as the country finance integration leader
• Identify and drive global and local strategic initiatives to improve processes and control, create innovation, and resolve cross functional issues. 

Required Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting; CPA or CMA preferred.
• 3-5 years of accounting experience in either Big 4 or manufacturing
• Possesses specialist knowledge of financial modelling, commercial planning and risk management. Strong understanding of the policies, objectives, operations and related activities within a Financial Planning & Analysis Sub Function or part of a Sub Region.
• Strong communication skills to persuade and influence a wide range of stakeholders across the organization. The role needs to adapt styles, interpret and explain information to different audiences inside and outside the organization who are not familiar with the subject matter.
• Management accounting and cost controlling background 
• Solid business and financial experience in a global organization 
• Previous experience in manufacturing plant finance role is advantage 
• Excellent ability to build rapport and develop collaborative working relationships within and outside finance 
• Proactive in identifying opportunities and solving challenges  
• Excellent analytical and problem solving skills 
• Capable of leading and managing multiple and challenging assignments 
• Very good skills in Microsoft Office Applications, especially Excel
• SAP knowledge is a strong advantage 
• Strong Verbal and Written skills

Total Rewards

Any offered salary is determined based on relevant factors such as an applicant's skills, performance, job responsibilities, prior relevant experience, certain degrees and certifications and market considerations.