Senior Executive, Accounts Receivable - Japanese speaker

This role is accountable for the processing of transactions and activities in Customer-Invoicing-To-Cash (CI2C) and support the transformation management within the Sanofi Business Services (SBS) China, Asia and/or JPAC region.

This position is integral in the development and successful ongoing implementation of the end to end Demand to Cash organization within Sanofi Business Services. This includes the strengthening of the business partnership to maximize the value and efficiency of the business & finance process in line with strategies provided by Global CI2C while acting as a critical gate keeper function to adhere to relevant company policies.

As a Senior Executive, this role will be assisting the Team Supervisor and/or Team Lead to support day-to-day operational excellence and trouble-shoot operational issues of other team members on top of his/her own. This role will be the key contact person in SBS to connect with relevant neighbouring stakeholders/business partners through the end to end Customer Invoicing to Cash process to ensure all assigned operational deliverables are met.  

Key Job Responsibilities:

Operational Excellence

• Achieve CI2C operation objectives by becoming a subject matter expert to independently executing the operation tasks determined in Core Model in the areas of credit management, accounts receivable, revenue analysis and reporting, collection management and other ad-hoc reporting amongst other things.
• The key responsibilities include but not exhaustive: customer master data, invoice management, cash application, credit management, collection, dunning & bad debt, month-end closing activities and sales order reconciliation and processing. Key responsibilities depend on the countries that the role will be in.
• Actively participates in credit assessment for new and existing customer, perform periodic customer credit review
• Assess the credit exposure and credit risk of blocked sales orders and to propose the release or rejection of sales. Proactively consult relevant stakeholders in Commercial/Trade, Finance and Treasury to understand impact. Ensure approval obtained to release of blocked sales order as per DOA.
• Perform collection activities, manage dunning process and monitor AR bad debts according to the country’s collection strategies.
• Perform all cash applications as per SLA and to follow up on all unallocated receipts promptly with relevant stakeholders.
• To perform month-end closing activities and reporting such as Group’s management and statutory reporting on sales and AR, AR Ageing report and etc.
• To ensure timely & quality month-end closing and reporting of legal statutory account within Sanofi Group Calendar timeframes
• Support/Response to enquiries from internal and external customers, Country Finance and other stakeholders
• To be an effective backup for other team members as assigned
• Assist Team Supervisor and/or Team Manager to onboard new team members and help trouble-shoot issues for other team members
• To update Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) as and when required and obtain validation from Team Supervisor/Manager
• To support ad-hoc projects implementation (New tools, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), process improvement projects)
• Contributes in meeting and improving the SLAs and KPIs agreed by working effectively across teams in SBS and neighbouring functions, assisting on urgent tasks and filling in gaps as and when needed in accounts receivable and credit management areas.  
• Enhances Sanofi organization reputation by accepting ownership for accomplishing new and different requests, exploring new opportunities to simplify and add value to the business.

Stakeholder Management

• Partners with stakeholders within SBS and neighbouring functions to understand, support and deliver key business requirements laid out under Operational Excellence above.
• Proactively manages interaction with external customers whenever applicable, with regards to hardcopy invoices, remittances, collections and issues management.
• Supports the compliance and risk management processes by providing information and analysis needed to internal and external auditors.

Compliance & Risk Management

• Comply and execute internal controls put in place as per CI2C Core Model and ensuring compliance to SoX controls and local credit policies.
• Supports SoX and yearly control self-assessment and testing, IC&P initiatives and other audit activities where applicable, including external audit, internal audit and governmental inspections if any.
• Ensures legal/VAT compliance checks if relevant for the covered scope.
• Ensure documentation is stored and archived as per Records Management and local legal/tax requirements.

Core Model and Target Operating Model evolution

• Leverage operational experience and provide process expertise to line manager and other stakeholders such as the Global / Regional Delivery Centers as required and when needed to contribute to standard process design, to propose evolution improving consistency and efficacy either in the Global Design of Standard Process or Regional one at all relevant process levels
• Support the implementation of the standard processes as defined by Global Process Owners and Regional Process Management Teams

Key knowledge, skills and experience:

• 2-4 years of relevant working experience in the Finance/Accounting sector
• Exposure to multinational and/ or regional corporate business environments,
• Familiar with matrix organization
• Experience in a Finance shared services environment, familiar with customer-facing and service-oriented corporate position
• Good English communication skills, both verbal and written
• Other language skill is required (both verbal and written) if supporting countries below:
  •  China (Mandarin), Japan (Japanese), Korea (Korean) and Thailand (Thai).
• Self-motivated, mature, independent, hands on, ability to work independently, and follow projects through completion
• Ability to demonstrate good analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Working experience with SAP, specifically Fi/Co desired
• Proficient in the use of applications in the MS-Office suite, including MS-Excel
• Lean/Six Sigma exposure or equivalent desired

Qualifications Minimum Qualification:

Degree in Accounting/Finance/Business