Unilever Procurement globally buys all raw and packaging materials that go into Unilever products. The more than 1600 Procurement FTEs operate in a dynamic internal business environment and face externally volatile markets. UL direct spend under management is close to €20 billion annually.
The Global Procurement Finance function business partners the Procurement organization around the world, and supports mainly the following key processes:
- Forecasting (Material Impacts Forecast)
- Contract Negotiations
- Payment Terms Management / Stock Reduction programs
- Buying & Product Logic Savings Management
- Overall Cash & Materials Performance Management
This role is a key part of the Procurement Finance organization and has a clear global responsibility that is mainly linked to forecasting and performance management.
The team supports Procurement and the wider Unilever business functions by providing insights on material costs in various ways. The information and insights provided often are based on big data coming from various systems and sources.
A big part of the job is to translate those trends into actionable information that are meaningful for the different businesses. This role and Procurement Finance jointly enable stakeholders to make founded decisions based on relevant, understandable and actionable knowledge.
The Central FC team consists of a Manager (this role) and two Analysts who collaborate closely to support the business comprehensively.
The Central FC team coordinates and cooperates with a consistent number of external consultants (particularly in Cap Gemini).
This position has an interesting exposure to Unilever Global scale and the overall material costs forecasting process of Unilever.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Leads and project manages the material FC calendar for both Big Cycle and Light Cycle FC cycles and ensure costs availability on time for markets to cash up.
- Managing quarterly Full Cycle Forecast activities ensuring that all the dashboards/reports related to Materials impacts are published accurate and on time.
- Managing monthly Light Cycle Forecast activities (What-If Scenario analysis tool) for simulating impacts on key Materials, due to volatility in Macroeconomic factors like Commodities prices, Foreign exchange rates and Inflation.
- Maintain and develop cutting edge Power BI dashboards and visuals to support Business Partners worldwide mostly, but not limited to, the areas of Procurement, Supply Chain Finance and Divisions for any UL geography, network and market.
- Ensure systems availability, master data integrity and process efficiency in coordination with internal business partners (UniOps/IT) and external resources (3P, consultants).
- Direct support to the Packaging buyers in the Anaplan pricing tool for queries related to financial impacts during a full FC cycle
- Work closely with other Procurement Finance teams like Value Partners, CRM, Controlling, MBS for any financial data support related to business cases, external markets, auditing, tax purposes
- Continuously improve existing and develop new tools in order to make MI processes more efficient, effective and relevant.
- Participate in various ad hoc or recurring projects related mainly to Digital Transformation, Operational Effectiveness, simplification and integration or transition of Procurement network portfolios toward the integration of forecasting tools (Anaplan, What-If, BPC, Data Lake).
- Participate in various M&A initiatives impacting integration/spin off from/to systems, processes, outputs (recently Tea separation, Nutrition business integration).
- Produce ad hoc models to run sensitivities or support the networks for visuals and charts to facilitate business insights forums.
- Lead learning and on boarding initiatives for the areas of competence.
- Take care of Career & Development initiatives for direct reports.
- Translate business requirements needing 3P supports into negotiation initiatives aiming at the most efficient allocation of budget/resources available.
Given your responsibilities you will work closely with the Procurement Network and the Procurement Finance Teams that are based around the world with different time zones, culture and ways of working.
The scope and responsibilities of the MI Team are growing and being newly developed simultaneously. Challenges expected in this role: stakeholder management, prioritization process, business continuity in a fragmented landscape, high flexibility in response to high volatile markets and the continuous improvement of the team’s tools and processes to meet customer expectations fast and efficiently.
Especially the capability to gather information from a wide variety of stakeholders is crucial.
KEY REQUIREMENTS:
- Master’s degree, business and/or financial (e.g. Business Engineering or Economics).
- Fluent in spoken and written English.
- Leading edge knowledge of MS Excel and Power BI.
- Familiarity with either VBA, Alteryx, SQL and Tableau Software is a big plus.
- Analytical power and ability to handle big data.
- Minimum of eight years experience in Finance (preferably in IT-Finance, iOps-Finance and/or management reporting).