Finance Manager SG&A

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure and people? Then this is the place for you.

As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive to succeed here because we expect pace and agility, we insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact

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PURPOSE:

The Finance Manager SG&A role is responsible for overall Sales, General & Administrative Expense management. In addition to budgeting, tracking and forecasting, this role is responsible for assessing overall spend versus benchmark and working with key business leaders to develop a cost reduction as % Net Sales roadmap. The Manager will be responsible for ensuring policies are well communicated and understood and for conducting spot ‘audits’ to ensure compliance. This role is a key business partner to the Managing Director Americas, Head of HR and the CFO with the responsibility of developing stretching but achievable budgets and driving accountability in the organization. This role may contribute to other key FP&A and finance team initiatives. 

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Budget Management  

• Serve as the key finance partner to the Managing Director Americas, Head of HR and CFO to drive transparency in key SG&A costs and leverage knowledge of cost structure to ‘build a story’ easily digestible by non-finance stakeholders. 

• Partner with HR, Finance, and IT to improve and streamline existing processes and ways of working and drive dramatically improved transparency in actual spend and significantly improved control of forecast and budget.  

• This position will need to harmonize accounting practices across 2 legal entities with 2 different ERP systems (SAP and D365).  

• Drive insightful reporting that drives transparency in overall spending with objective of identifying areas for improved effectiveness and efficiency in spend. 

• Challenge the business and key stakeholders to reassess value delivery against key spend areas (i.e., Cost/Benefit analysis of call centres).  

• Actively assess spending against budgets, highlight risks and partner with key stakeholders to implement corrective actions.  

• Assign targets to key functional leads, build reporting to evaluate spending against targets & agree necessary interventions to maintain spending within budget. 

• Drive consistency among Godiva, pladis x Godiva and pladis Global to ensure that SG&A costs are being captured in the correct budgets and enabling fair comparisons across regions and companies. This will require an understanding of people costs that are currently budgeted in COGS and ensuring consistency in how costs are captured between COGS and SG&A.  

• Serve as Subject Matter Expert for proper accounting/budgeting of key expense items. 

Forecasting 

• Assess trends and highlight future areas of risk and opportunity and align intervention actions where needed.  

• Key responsibility to build a 3-year roadmap to reduce overall SG&A costs with clear accountability, milestones, and enablers.  

Trade off Management 
As above, do the cost/benefit analysis on key spend areas and challenge the business to think differently about spending (i.e., Call Centers) 

Travel & Expense Lead 

• Key finance point person to provide oversight to Travel & Expense tools/websites/credit card. (Key liaison to Procurement and Financial Controller) 

• Provide oversight to Travel & Entertainment spend including assigning targets to key functional leads; re-assessing policies in collaboration with global; ensure adherence to policy; assess timeliness of submitting expense reports in line with policy; assess compliance of corporate spend to policy & highlight gaps. 

Audit 
Key finance point person for internal and external audit as it relates to SG&A spend. 

Ad hoc 
Potential to lead ad hoc projects outside of SG&A as needed to support larger finance team.  

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

• 5+ years of progressive experience in CPG or Food Industry 

• B.A./B.S. in Accounting is required. IFRS knowledge and CPA a plus.  

• Ideally prior experience in navigating complex SG&A budgets.  

• Advanced proficiency in SAP, D365, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint 

• Ability to ‘tell a story’ through power point slides & other visuals versus sharing static financial tables.  

• Advanced analytical skills and experience harnessing technology to share insights and information.  

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills 

• Build from scratch mentality with the ability to institute new standardized processes and establish a consistent, disciplined approach to how we operate. 

• A drive, commitment and sense of urgency that inspires others to be their best and achieve results. 

QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED:

Basic Qualifications

Proficiency in SAP, D365, Excel and strong analytical and communication skills.

Desirable Qualifications

Spend Management, Budgeting, Forecasting, Risk Mitigation 

ADDITIONAL JOB DETAILS:

Base starting salary ranges from $110k - $150k/year. The base pay offered is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and internal equity. In addition to base pay, this role includes:

• An annual incentive opportunity, awarded based on individual and company performance.

• A comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, well-being, and financial security

pladis is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to hiring a diverse workforce. All openings will be filled based on qualifications without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability, age, religion or any other classification protected by law.

We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List. If you are a recruitment agency and wish to submit candidate to be considered for this vacancy, you must have agreed to, and signed, our terms of business.
We will not accept CVs from any other sources other than those currently on our PSL. We will not pay a fee for any candidate that has not been represented by a provider on our PSL.