FINANCE (BUSINESS) ANALYST

Due to promotion of existing incumbent, this position has become available. The South African Subsidiary belongs to a high profile world wide multinational that has a footprint throughout the globe. Therefore, it can offer excellent career growth opportunities for candidates of superior calibre who are driven, ambitious and wish to further their education to supplement their skills. This challenging, demanding and performance focused position is requiring a candidate with exceptional analytical ability, commercially orientated and is numerate. The geographical Region will focus on each country in Africa and the candidate will report into the Finance Director for the Region. It will also require working very closely with the other members of the finance team who are few in number, but highly qualified and experienced. Notwithstanding the difficult economic times, this Group and the Region continues to be highly profitable and is even on a growth path. The Finance (Business) Analyst will be responsible for financial planning, reporting, budgeting, forecasting and analysing a variety of different accounting, finance and allied data for both the regional and Group divisions using Hyperion and Advanced Excel. It should be emphasised that the global culture of the Group is highly demanding, results driven, output based and deadlined orientated. PowerPoint presentations are used extensively across the Group in a professional and well delivered manner.

Key performance areas, inter alia, include:

• Prepare financial plans and forecasts including the annual operating plan which is projected on a quarterly basis and revised when necessary. This information is consolidated and sent to different entities. It also projects 6, 9 and 12 months for the current region and the data is extracted from SAP onto Hyperion and then examined & analysed.
• Annual Budget which is prepared in August/September (for the December year-end) and drills down into the following year using minutae of detail. The attendance at the Budget review meetings is mandatory and risks and opportunities are assessed, in addition to critically reviewing and analysing the business and especially the latest best estimates. Areas of importance include revenue & margin analyses, price sensitivity analyses, cost of goods sold, supply chain, sales & marketing and expenses.
• Naturally, in a position of this nature, a critical requirement is the analysis of actual to budget and all the variances thereof. There is exceptional focus on sales expenditure and a detailed presentation is prepared for the Management Team using PowerPoint.
• As the Shared Services Centres are based in a number of countries, assistance will be provided for the month-end close to ensure accurate monthly reporting. These include accruals, provisions, bad debts, fixed assets adjustments, etc. The need to gather and analyse all this relevant information will result in providing financial reports as and where appropriate for that particular area.
• There are ad hoc projects which arise from time to time where the candidate will be expected to provide leadership, financial counsel and oversight.

Requirements:

• A tertiary accounting qualification is required which can be CA, CiMA, Accounting Honours, BCom (Informatics) or similar.
• Minimum experience will be at least 5 years in an analytical role and ideally, in a product related industry. Furthermore, the need to have advanced Excel (V & H Lookups, Sum-Ifs, Complex Pivot Tables, Graphs, in-depth ability to manipulate data) as well as being able to prepare professional Powerpoint presentation is mandatory. Knowledge of Power BI & Hyperion HFM is highly recommended.
• If the candidate has progressive finance and/or sales forecasting experience, as well as commercial finance and sales analytical experience, this would be a major recommendation.
• Due to the diversity of cultures that this business deals with which covers the whole of Africa (including ex-pats), it is critical that the person has highly developed inter-personal skills, is an excellent communicator and will be diplomatic in a clear and focused manner.

Apply on-line or alternatively phone Gerald Lilian on (011) 4841790.

Be advised that if you do not receive a response within two weeks from date of submission of your CV, then please deem your application as unsuccessful.