Finance Manager – Domains

Role Responsibility

Selfridges is a successful luxury retailer, and is embarking on a Tech transformation journey, which includes continued investment in its digital offerings, and investment in underlying applications, infrastructure and processes.

As such, this means the operating cost base of the business is changing, with a move from a traditional tech cost base to a more agile, domain led operating model, and we need a strong finance business partner to provide support and finance challenge in three ways:

• To work closely with the Tech & Product teams, to help navigate the impact of changes on the Operating Model and total cost of ownership of the each of the new domains (which comprises costs associated with the Tech team, but also other functions)
• To support the Senior Finance Manager with material central contracts, to support (and challenge where relevant) the Procurement department on deals, financials terms, and contractual discussions.
• To have financial oversight of our Investment Capital Portfolio, mainly focusing on the Sell - Omnichannel, and Customer, Data & Insight domains
• To support the ongoing tracking of spend by squad, and by domain both on a monthly basis, and on a more detailed quarterly review (with appropriate monthly re-forecasting maintained throughout the year)
• To establish & support the ongoing tracking of benefits delivered by the squads within each of the domains

Scope

Strong communication and stakeholder management skills are needed in this role, along with an acumen for contracts understanding and interrogation (particularly IT / Software contracts), Project accounting and an appreciation of both waterfall and agile project methodologies (and the implications from a finance point of view of each).

A bit about the role

As the Finance Business Partner to Tech Exec and Leadership Team, the below responsibilities will be key:

• Deliver to the 5YP, Budget and Forecast Process set by FP&A for the function
• Business partnering, month end management accounting processes, and monthly P&L review with the domain leadership teams
• Proactively work with domain leaders to review squad resource profile and re-forecast on a regular basis to identify any risks or issues from a budget point of view and advise appropriate remedial actions where appropriate
• Establish a baseline for benefits tracking and reporting, and work with the relevant busines partner from either the digital or stores teams to provide regular reporting against targets for these
• Complete Month End Process proactively and efficiently
• Have a solid understanding of the budgeted costs by area, and challenge for delivery when appearing off track. Help deliver a rolling forecast with proactive call out of risks and opportunities.
• Oversight of the further projects in flight and in pipeline as part of the IT roadmap; this includes creation of the business cases for investment, monitoring of spend during the project lifestyle, and then close down of the assets with financial accounts.

Leading and managing a team

• To coach and develop the Finance Analyst who supports this role
• To set and review the objectives of the team member, offering feedback on performance and agreeing actions and objectives
• To role model excellent customer service and high professional standards.
• To plan own work effectively, to communicate clearly with others and provide guidance, ensuring the right information is delivered to the right people right first time.

The Ideal Candidate

• Have a recognised accountancy qualification, ideally ACCA
• Experience of organizing, managing and developing a team
• Ability to work to a high standard of accuracy with excellent attention to detail
• Highly organized and efficient, with an ability to work under pressure
• Ideally exposure to IT capital projects, both waterfall and agile delivery methods and an appreciation of the impact of SAAS on accounting
• Excellent communication/ interpersonal and influencing skills
• PC skills - Good excel, excellent powerpoint skills sought
• Receptive to change with a desire to continuously improve processes and outputs
• Proactive

Relationships

• Exec: Tech and their leadership team
• Head of FP&A
• Head of Customer Experience
• Programme Managers (where applicable)
• Commercial / Procurement Department

Selfridges