Cost Accounting Process Design Manager - 18 Month Fixed Term Opportunity

Finance at AstraZeneca has a clear vision to become trusted partners, creating value and leading change. As such, Finance has a pivotal role to play in shaping our long-term financial health, partnering to deliver great results through insight, delivering excellence in financial operations and safeguarding AstraZeneca's assets and reputation.

In Finance Transformation, we support this ambition by being trusted partners for change excellence and building long-term capabilities to make us future-fit. This is where you could come in. Working in Finance Transformation is fast-paced, dynamic and challenging. We are looking for people who want to seize the opportunity to take an exciting step in their personal development journey and play a fundamental part of delivering a world-class finance organisation.

This role supports the Cost Accounting Process Design Lead and Business Process Lead for a global manufacturing accounting project where the key objective is to improve and standardise the end-to-end manufacturing accounting processes, delivering more granular cost performance reporting and insights to enable better decision-making. The full set of processes covered within this project are Standard Product Costing, Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and Performance Measurement, split across SPC (Standard Product Costing) and APC (Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and

The Process Design Manager will provide accurate analysis and insights, supporting the Process Design Lead and Business Process Lead in designing and supporting the deployment of AstraZeneca Operations' new global functional global processes, standards and policies. In addition you will be getting significant exposure to other process areas (ensuring that we have a cohesive end-to-end solution). Driving what is right and not just what is easy, is a fundamental approach we are taking across all process areas.

This role will require an understanding across Standard Product Costing, Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and Performance Measurement as well as some knowledge of manufacturing processes. The role requires liaising with other process areas and workstreams across the project and with the end users of the solutions, providing insights and guidance to ensure successful delivery of the target outcomes.

In this role you will:

• Support in the development and implementation of standardised best practise global cost accounting processes delivering efficiency and effectiveness, including defining and running workshops, capturing outputs and interpreting to ensure clear requirements are defined
• Support GFS (finance shared services) in adapting globally standardised cost accounting processes & policies to ensure regional compliance
• Support the Business Process Lead and Process Design Lead in defending and driving the adoption of the solution, analysing deviations or localisation to determine where there is valid justification driven by business criticality or statutory requirements
• Provide analysis to support the definition of the SAP ECC and SAP BW solutions, based on defined requirements ensuring the end deliverable meets the requirements laid out by the Design team
• Support in the development and implementation of global cost accounting policies, standard operating procedures (SOPs), KPIs and month-end-close processes SLA's in accordance with:

• International Accounting Standards
• AZ internal policies and guidelines
• Industry best practise

• Support the development of global standardised inventory accounting reports (identifying standard SAP ECC reports, defining SAP BW reports, Fiori and 3rd party tooling reports populated through SAP data) and providing knowledge transfer and training to end users on interpreting reports
• Support the development of process and systems roles according to segregation of duties
• Contribute into required master data definitions, usage and policies - including analysis of business scenarios and their impact on master data
• Support UAT and validation of test results, including analysis to support defect resolution

Essential Skills and Experience

• Degree or equivalent professional qualification
• Experience of cost accounting and best practices within the Pharma industry
• An understanding of relevant International Accounting Standards
• Some knowledge of cost accounting process design and relevant controls
• Able to support Leads in client workshops to drive design decisions, solutioning and system demonstration, including defining, drafting, facilitating and gathering outputs for workshops
• Strong Excel modelling and analytical skills
• Hands on experience of SAP ECC and BW systems including providing functional expertise, hands-on delivery, customization, guidance, presentation, and instruction
• Experience of at least 1 SAP full implementation project lifecycle (from a functional perspective), preferably from scoping and planning through to post go live support
• Demonstrable success in a team environment seeking and providing coaching and feedback to team members
• Experience of working in large projects with a multivendor environment
• Possess and apply strong written and oral communication skills together with effective negotiation, influencing and presentation skills

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Chartered accountancy qualification (or part qualification)
• Work experience in supply chain finance
• Prior experience and knowledge of SAP, SAP BW and BW on HANA functional capabilities as well as business processes and industry best practises
• An understanding of the functional, application and technical architectural elements of an SAP programme.

Opening date: 1.7.2021

Closing date: 15.7.2021

Competitive salary and benefits apply

Date Posted
01-Jul-2021

Closing Date
14-Jul-2021

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.