The Role
Leads financial planning and analysis, budgeting, and business partnering to drive strategic decision-making and profitability in a retail organization.
Summary Generated by Built In
Are you a high-impact finance leader who looks beyond the ledger to see the story behind the numbers?
As the Head of Commercial Finance & FP&A, you will be the strategic co-pilot to our client's executive team (CEO, CFO, Commercial, and Regional Heads). Operating within a fast-paced, leading retail and re-distribution business, your mission is to transform complex data into growth strategies. You will own the forecasting ecosystem and deeply analyze margins, pricing, and ROI to maximize profitability across all channels, regions, and product categories.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Business Partnering & Commercial Execution
- Executive Co-Pilot: Act as a key advisor to the CEO, CFO, and Commercial leads—influencing business planning, high-stakes supplier negotiations, and pricing frameworks.
- Growth Engineering: Build robust, dynamic financial models to evaluate new business cases, store roll-outs, capital allocations, and strategic investments.
- Profitability Diagnostics: Deliver granular margin analysis by channel, region, customer, and product category. Unpack volume/mix performance and unlock hidden rebate opportunities.
Advanced Financial Planning & Corporate Reporting
- The Blueprint: Lead the annual budgeting, rolling quarterly forecasts, and agile scenario-planning models to keep the business resilient in a shifting market.
- Executive Storytelling: Author and present the monthly Board and Exco packs, replacing generic data drops with sharp, forward-looking executive commentary and variance analysis.
- Cost Architecture: Critically analyze and consolidate the total corporate cost structure, highlighting inefficiencies and driving cost-optimization strategies.
Data Transformation & Reporting Excellence
- Modernize Insights: Champion the transition from manual reporting to automated, interactive dash boarding (utilizing Power BI/advanced BI tools).
- Centralize Analysis: Standardize reporting lines to relieve operational teams from repetitive data pulling, shifting the department's energy toward high-value predictive analytics.
Requirements
Qualifications and Experience
- CA(SA), CIMA, or equivalent financial qualification.
- 7–10 years of progressive experience heavily weighted toward FP&A, commercial finance, or corporate business partnering.Proven track record in budgeting, forecasting, and executive reporting.
- Deep, uncompromised experience in FMCG, Retail, or Distribution sectors is essential. You must intuitively understand supply chain margins, rebates, pricing elasticity, and volume dynamics.Advanced Excel and financial modelling skills; experience with BI/reporting tools (e.g., Power BI) advantageous.
- Advanced financial modeling and Excel wizardry are non-negotiable. Strong proficiency with modern BI tools (e.g., Power BI) and enterprise ERP environments (Syspro is a major plus).
Ideal Candidate
You are a financial storyteller. You don't just point out a drop in gross margin; you identify the exact store, product mix change, or pricing promotion that caused it—and you arrive at the Exco meeting with three distinct solutions. You possess the executive presence to challenge commercial heads constructively, backed by undeniable data.
Skills Required
- CA(SA), CIMA, or equivalent financial qualification
- 7-10 years of experience in FP&A, commercial finance, or business partnering
- Proven track record in budgeting, forecasting, and executive reporting
- Strong understanding of pricing, margins, and customer profitability in FMCG, retail, or distribution sectors
- Advanced Excel and financial modelling skills
- Experience with BI/reporting tools (e.g., Power BI)
- ERP experience
- Syspro familiarity
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The Company
What We Do
Outsourced CFO offers founders financial management services including CFO Services, Cloud Accounting, Automation Services & Talent Solutions, building world-class finance functions for scaling companies.
