Commercial Finance Business Partner

Description:

So, what will I be doing?

We are looking for a Finance Business Partner to join our Central Finance team, you will partner our Commercial department, building great relationships and aiding great decision making in an ambitious and vibrant company.

This role is about enabling great decisions across Commercial whilst also providing strong governance. Partnering the Commercial teams, you will play a key, cross-functional role as an independent, critical friend to the Sales, Procurement and Marketing teams in service of timely and evidence-based decision making. You will assess, challenge and enable performance (both financial and impact) at customer and category level, in support of our strategic aims as an ambitious, purposeful and profitable business.

You oversee the Commercial Finance team's reporting and forecasting of marginal gross profit and relevant impact measures on a weekly and monthly basis. You use your expertise, professional judgement and influencing skills to develop insights and recommendations, working collaboratively to help address performance challenges and capitalise on opportunities.

This is a hybrid role split between the office and home, ideally 3 days a week minimum on site.

Key responsibilities:
Use internal data and analysis to ensure a deep understanding of performance and to draw meaningful performance insights, for example through identifying and understanding trends, performance deficiencies, risks and opportunities in the context of market and retailer trends. Liaise with the Commercial teams and challenge results and assumptions as needed.
Oversee and ensure the continuous improvement and business relevance of reporting of Marginal Gross Profit by the Finance Analyst and Commercial Costing Accountant via our weekly Balanced Scorecard, Monthly Performance Report and other monthly analysis to support the Commercial team.
Manage the cross-functional modelling and consolidation of inflationary and deflationary cost changes. Partner Heads of Category to ensure movements in our cost base are appropriately mitigated, to understand the impact on retailer open book costing models and enable progress against our impact measures.
Enable the business' budgeting and forecasting, on an 18-month rolling basis, ensuring the Commercial Finance team's processes are efficient and completed in a timely manner. This includes appropriate partnering of the Commercial teams to ensure accurate forecasting of customer volumes, sales, marginal gross profit and relevant impact measures using your independent judgement to assess the appropriateness of assumptions and provide supportive challenge.
Escalate risks and opportunities through established reporting routes, including S&OP, month end reporting and risk registers.
Make recommendations and work collaboratively and with influence to enable great decisions that are timely and evidence based. Focus on actions that address performance challenges and capitalise on performance opportunities in support of our strategic commitments.
Facilitate the achievement of our Marketing plans by ensuring latest spend is being regularly reviewed by the Marketing team and that outturn is updated in line with future plans coming from the Current and Future Demand strategic boards.
Attend cross-functional product launch and post-launch review meetings to enable and support the optimisation of our product portfolio and marginal gross profit and to ensure that appropriate controls are in place, such as minimum profitability targets.
Support compliance activities as required (risk management, audit, tax etc.)
Advocate for robust governance and controls, in line with defined policies, process and frameworks
Support the Senior Commercial Finance Business Partner in ad hoc projects as required Sounds interesting, what do I need?

Essential:
Qualified accountant (CIMA/ACCA/ACA) with post qualification experience
Experience of budgeting, forecasting and performance management across multi-site/departmental organisations
Comfortable analysing and assessing data to draw insights, assess performance and identify required interventions
Demonstrate a solution-oriented approach with an ability to challenge assumptions and maintain objectivity
Communication and influencing skills cross-functionally and at all levels of the business
Willingness to adopt a flexible working approach, including regular travel between Acorn and HQ, and other sites as required Desirable:
Experience with Dynamics AX, Power BI, IFS
Experience within the Manufacturing sector and multi-site FMCG companies with standard costing
Experience of working with major retailer customers
Experience within food sector Why should I join the family?

We're independent, British and proud to be making the highest quality yogurts, desserts and ice cream under the Yeo Valley brand and for many of the UK's major retailers. Operating from four dairies and two logistics centres in Somerset and Devon, we employ over 1700 staff and produce more than 25% of the UK's packaged yogurt.

We're sure you don't need convincing, but there's a whole host of benefits that we offer including:
25 days holiday allowance
non-contributory pension scheme
life cover
healthcare cash back plan
cycle to work scheme
subsidised Yeo Valley products and services
preferential rates with our partners
annual bonus (as part of the Employee Benefit Trust, based on company performance for the year)
learning and development opportunities; we're committed to ensuring all of our employees have the chance to grow Our closing dates are a guide for when the application window should close, although we may close the advert sooner if we can. So, we recommend you get your application in straight away - and don't miss the opportunity to join us!

Unfortunately, we're not able to provide employment sponsorship to candidates at this moment in time.

Please note that Yeo Valley do not accept speculative agency applications; we will only accept applications from preferred suppliers that have been submitted to us via our recruitment portal at the point of instruction