Senior Finance Manager - Retail Change & Labour

Division/Department

Finance / Commercial & Retail Finance

Location

Holborn Store Support Centre

In a nutshell

This role is responsible for proactively partnering with the Director of Change, the broader Retail &Digital Leadership Team, Central Retail and other Retail Stakeholders, providing insightful analysis, challenge and influence to drive decisions and actions that improve the bottom line. The job holder will lead a team to develop the assets required to effectively business partner, focussing on achieving performance targets, maintaining a strong control environment and enhancing value creation. They will set the direction for the team and provide strategic challenge to the business area to collectively strengthen performance.

What you need to do

Act as key Finance Business Partner for the Retail & Digital Leadership Team and other retail stakeholders, leading your team to interpret management reporting to provide insight, analysis and commentary to stakeholders and providing challenge to the business

Hold the business to account for P&L performance and Balance sheets across Sainsbury's and Argos identifying areas for value creation and building action plans that are put into place

Drive the 'Save to Invest' agenda by supporting the Retail & Digital division with the planning, implementation, review and tracking of all retail savings initiatives. This involves providing the necessary financial rigour, insight, analysis and challenge to ensure we deliver on our cost reduction targets

Business Partner the Director of Change on all end-to-end and multi-year savings initiatives, liaising with the Cost Reduction Support Team, other areas of Finance and third-party experts

With your team, support the business in identifying risks, anomalies and opportunities. Take the lead in prioritising these and work with the business to manage them

Provide effective leadership to the role holder's own teams through clear vision and plans, and to provide transparent and open communications to ensure that the team is totally engaged

Challenge the business on existing strategic initiatives and identify new strategic opportunities, helping them to prioritise appropriately

Complete ad hoc / bespoke analysis for the business area as required to drive improvements

Own the design of corporate management reporting, ensuring it is fit for purpose and streamlined

Develop, in conjunction with Business Stakeholders, ambitious yet achievable financial plans as required throughout the financial year (to include Budget, Corporate Plan and Latest Views)

Role model collaborative working with the Finance Transformation team, ensuring that Retail Finance have a clear voice within the programme and support the success of the programme

Support the Retail Reporting & Change team to work with our data team (ADA) to ensure analytical resource is used effectively and business priorities and resource allocation are well understood and aligned

Develop uniformed reporting and performance evaluation across Retail & Digital enabling your business partners to quickly establish their areas of focus through the Channel, Cost line and other relevant lenses

Ensure there is appropriate governance around capital expenditure and support the business to prioritise capital spend in areas giving the best return or alignment to the maintenance programme

Challenge all investment decisions ensuring they are appraised, monitored and reviewed through the correct channels and all learnings are carefully considered in future investment decisions

Own Centrals reporting across the Retail and Digital teams, ensuring best in class reporting and holding the business to account on its performance

What you need to know and show

Professionally Qualified Accountant (ACCA/ACA/CIMA)

An inspiring leader, supporting colleagues to build successful careers

Strong commercial acumen with a clear focus on driving excellent financial and commercial performance

A desire to achieve best in class business partnering - holding the business to account while striving to support success with demonstrable energy and determination

Effective communicator and challenger with stakeholders up to and including board level, including audiences of varying financial and commercial acumen

Proven track record of managing commercial relationships and influencing senior decision makers

Self-motivated team player, able to work autonomously

Proven history of effective prioritisation and ability to push back when appropriate

Experience of maintaining strong financial controls

Committed to driving change and comfortable with managing any associated conflicts

Demonstrate resilience, and the ability to be flexible and able to cope with time pressure, risk and ambiguity

Demonstrate forward-thinking and able to anticipate areas of focus well in advance of risks manifesting or opportunities being missed

What decisions I can make including budget

Set direction for the team and provide challenge to the business

Leadership and development of the team

Allocation and prioritisation of team resources

Allocation and prioritisation of team activity

Creation and implementation of management information and insight

Identification of focus areas and challenge of business performance

Directly or indirectly manages

Directly manages a team of 2 C5's and indirectly a team of 4 C4's

Indirectly supports the Retail Reporting & Change team and other Business Partnering teams

Support we will provide

Sainsbury's L&D offer

Line management support as required to develop a best in class Business Partnering Finance function

#LI-BB1