Senior Specialist - Finance Operations FP&A

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

Global Business Services (GBS) aims to provide globally unified services based on standardized and automated solutions across different functions and markets. This will enable us to drive operational efficiency, quality services, improved agility and better decision-making whilst reducing complexity and workload.

It delivers high quality services in the areas of Order to Cash (O2C), Source To Pay (S2P), Record to Report (R2R), Planning & Reporting and Hire to Retire for adidas companies and subsidiaries located in Europe, North America and Latin America.

Planning and Reporting team supports the business by providing information that will enable the financial decisions, by promoting transparency in the actuals reporting and increasing the accuracy in the Planning activities, such as forecast and budgeting.

Key Responsibilities:

• Act as an offsite lead for Europe Retail channel and ensure to maintain proactive communication with the stakeholders.
• Demonstrate strong sense of responsibility and deliver the assigned reports on time to the stakeholders with accuracy and quality
• Execute budgeting, forecasting and cost monitoring processes ensuring data quality and integrity across various systems and tools
• Support the supervisor to partner with the business within the assigned area of responsibility
• Engage the creation of transparency on budgeting, forecasting and cost monitoring processes and contribute for the integrity of those activities
• Ensure data mechanization and daily/ monthly maintenance of the information in the reporting / budget systems
• Ensure smooth operation of day to day business by taking on ownership for related actions
• Look continuously for improvement of daily tasks to optimize controlling, FP&A and overall finance execution and allow improved sharing of key financial information
• Execute standardized reporting with end-to-end sense checks and partner with adidas finance teams/market controllers for ad-hoc analysis
• Manage cost centers and support cost center managers in all financial tasks (e.g. investment and recruitment requests, cost recharges, etc.)
• Manage / support small sized projects; support the implementation of findings and sustainability of achievements
• Develop demand forecasts (operational forecasts) at multiple levels of aggregation for multiple time horizons as part of a demand planning function
• Review historical sales trends, research demand drivers, prepare forecast data, develop statistical forecast models, and evaluate forecast results
• Closely coordinate and communicate Market action plans with supply planning

Key Relationships:

• GBS Controlling Team and Finance teams
• adidas Europe Finance Team
• adidas senior management team
• adidas Europe Market Controllers
• Accounting
• HR

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Strong financial acumen including thorough understanding of P&L structure, KPI's and ability to understand business context of the discussions etc.,
• System expertise: Very good MS office skills (especially Excel), Power BI including Power Query, SAP S/4 Hana and SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) skills preferred
• Ability to handle large data sets and bring out meaningful reports
• Experience of Central Finance (CFIN) implementation (preferred)
• Proficient in reading, writing, and communicating in English in a business environment. Ability to pay close attention to detail.
• Good Problem solving and analytical skills
• Proven track record in successful team work being part of global, multinational projects.
• Multi-cultural awareness, open minded to working in diverse business environments.
• Able to constructively work under stress and pressure when faced with high workloads and deadlines.

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• University degree in Commerce/Business Administration/Finance/ Controlling or similar

• 7 plus years relevant work experience in FP&A, controlling areas

• Broad and deep theoretical understanding of job function

• Experience in a Shared Service environment

• Lean training