Commercial Finance Manager, SEA

Southeast Asia (SEA), comprising of 14 countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, is part of the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. This role will be reporting directly to the Senior Finance Manager for SEA. The primary purpose of the role is to support P&L management and commercial activities in multiple countries within SEA.

Commercial Finance

• Key business partner to commercial and marketing teams based across SEA markets.
• Partner the commercial team in building promotional plans, evaluating and approving ROIs, validating customer claims and ensuring proper documentation in place.
• Collaborating with RGM team, to implement pricing per Global/APAC guidelines and drive value chain analysis and understand channel level strategy within each market.
• Drive conversations between marketing, trade marketing and commercial teams in optimizing trade investments.
• Collaborate with demand planning team to review for market opportunities and mitigating risks in conjunction with every forecast cycle.
• Review inventory depletion performance against shipment forecast with understanding of market share.
• Support annual joint business plan and distributor target setting.
• Instill commercial discipline and upholding compliance standards, proactively reviewing current processes to address control deficiencies.

Month-end Closing

• Reconcile and support market-specific BI accruals.
• Monthly journal entry preparation for price support accruals. Ensure timely and accurate recognition of accruals of trade spends.

Reporting & Analysis

• Analyze P&L by market/brand performance and provide insights to assist commercial team on business and financial improvement opportunities.
• Initiate market-specific price builds, pricing reviews and trade terms analysis and ensure reports in place to guide management decisions.
• Provide insightful commentaries and supporting team reporting deliverables (weekly/monthly/quarterly/ad hoc).

Planning & Forecasting

• Drive the development of the annual budget, 3-year strategic plan in line with market and brand priorities.
• Proactive identification of risks and opportunities and engage commercial team in discussions on gap closing initiatives.
• Manage monthly forecast cycle, participation in all demand-related conversations.

Process Improvements

• Make recommendations on simplification of processes including pricing maintenance, month-end reporting, forecasting and business planning.
• Promote financial awareness and understanding within the business.

Others

• Develop and manage 1 direct report.
• Drive project implementations within SEA.
• Support business case for innovation or new business opportunities.
• Build relationships and strengthen ways of working within SEA Finance team.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Finance or Accounting.
• 5-7 years of relevant industry experience in a similar capacity.
• Stakeholder engagement and management – demonstrated experience in influencing and managing multiple stakeholders across geographies, building mutually beneficial, profit-focused business relationships.
• Systems/software – experience in using advanced Microsoft Excel (essential), as well as previous exposure to ERP and management reporting/consolidation systems (preferable).
• Experienced in writing succinct and insightful business performance reports, and summarizing business analysis.
• Strong in building financial models and understanding value chains.
• Cross-functional working – proven experience in working proactively across commercial functions to deliver total business performance solutions.
• Fluency in English.

Job Specific Competencies

• Strong commercial skills and high level of business acumen.
• Collaborative team player with ability to work in cross-functional teams.
• High attention to detail; objective focused.
• Tenacious, agile and rigorous.
• Excellent verbal, written communication and interpersonal skills.
• Culturally sensitive attitude and approach.
• Strong time management, able to prioritize a diverse workload and deadlines.
• Good problem-solving skills.
• Able to manage large amounts of data.