Finance Manager - Buying & Merchandising

A bit about the role

Responsibilities

This role will lead the provision of high-quality commercial support for sales, margin and stock across all trading divisions & will present information concisely back to business partners in a way that drives clear tangible actions.
Business partner to the Buying and Merchandising teams.
Preparing weekly and monthly trade commentary, as well as commentary and analysis on key trading events, for distribution to wider business and executive team.
Support the sales and margin budget and forecasting processes by creating summary views to help highlight the overall expected outturn to senior management and work closely with the B&M function so that the detailed output is aligned to expectations.
Undertake detailed profitability analysis to understand the impact of proposals of new brands or conversions from Own Bought to Concessions and identify ways to maximise profitability and density contributions.
Review and challenge requests for the setup of new departments, ensuring the commercial terms are aligned to the business strategy.
Undertake a regular reviews and updates of Freight and Duty rates held for each supplier in our systems to ensure that the B&M function have accurate estimates of delivery costs to help decide which mode of intake is chosen and understand the impact of that decision.
Support the delivery of savings via the Stock Productivity workstream, producing business cases for new initiatives, challenging assumptions and tracking benefits delivered.
Work together with the B&M function to develop reporting for Continuity Stocks, showing Out of Stock levels against targets and identify lines that are old and not selling to help generate actions to improve performance and deliver benefits back to the business.
Pro-actively identify and highlight risks & opps across sales, margin and stock to senior management and be able to clearly model their impact on overall profitability.
Ensure timely and accurate production of balance sheets with complete monthly reviews and signoff.
Participate in ad hoc projects where required providing sound financial analysis and clear decision-making support.
Management and development of two Finance Analysts.

General Responsibilities

To represent the finance community in line with the Selfridges values and embed into the teams ways of working
Understand and support the delivery of the Selfridges Strategy and initiatives
To contribute towards the creation and delivery of the Finance People Plan

A bit about you

Experience

Specific experience in a role supporting sales, stock and margin
Experience of managing a team
Held a number of previous roles across a broad spread of finance areas
Sound business knowledge, preferably in retail or FMCG

Technical Skills

Qualified - CIMA/ACCA/ACA or international equivalent

Personal Attributes/ Behavioural Skills

Able to take accountability for their own development plan as well as coach and guide direct reports with theirs.
Able to understand and articulate both financial and non-financial implications of business performance providing balanced and clear recommendations.
Able to work under pressure, manage a diverse and competing workload ensuring deadlines are met.
Comfortable working closely with business stakeholders.
Able to effectively manage team planning and prioritising workload up to 6 months in advance.
Good communication skills and interpersonal skills, with the ability to support business decision making.
Analytical and excel modelling skills with strong attention to detail.
Able to drive own initiatives through to completion.
Able to develop and improve working procedures and processes.
Highly organised and efficient.
Commercially aware and customer focused.
Verbal and written presentation skills with ability to adapt style based on audience
Flexible, open to change and proactive.