Commercial Finance Controller at Grand Cereals Limited

Purpose Statement

• To provide financial and business advisory support to the Commercial Function & and management with a view to ensuring the relevance and integrity of the financial information required for management decisions and support the commercial team in all commercial and marketing activities such as pricing, new product development, promotion, consumer activities, distributor management, route to market evaluation, etc.

Key Accountabilities
Reporting and Performance Management:

• Timely preparation of weekly and monthly sales performance reports, Quarterly Performance Reviews, investigation of exceptions and working with the teams to design and implement corrective action plans.
• Continuously monitor debtors and receivables levels to estimate the impact on business figures (free cash flow) and propose required corrective measures to management.
• Develop a divisional sales performance report showing the performance and profitability of each division

Efficiency of Trade & Marketing Investments:

• Perform pre and post-evaluation of all promotional and marketing investments and activities.
• Responsible for monitoring, reviewing and recommending the rebate/discount payable to distributors.
• Provide and analyze accounts receivables reports and provide exception reports on unauthorized and overdue debts.
• Develop and manage Credit Policy to guide the granting of credits to distributors. Advice management on credit approval for prospective credit customers based on submissions by Commercial Function

Pricing Policies:

• Partner with Sales & Marketing in formulating policies to deliver long term objectives, e.g. product pricing policies by ensuring that product pricing recognizes all relevant costs and acceptable margins.
• Active involvement in all innovations and pricing decision-making processes.

Planning and Budgeting:

• Active involvement in the annual budget and monthly forecast.
• Develop and track annual and monthly sales and marketing budgets and actual spending.
• Timely submission of credible planning assumptions for budgeting and forecasting purposes i.e. market share, volumes, prices, discounts, commissions, rebates, transport rates, key input prices etc.

Projects:

• Finance lead for all commercial projects with pre-evaluation and conducting post-evaluation after implementation. By performing credible investment appraisals such as return on investment and payback and one or two additional key performance indicators to gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of the project.

Overhead Control:

• Proper and rigorous control of overheads across Sales and marketing to ensure no loss of control resulting in overspending. This should be done through training of functional managers as well as reviews with the Commercial directors

Internal Controls:

• Consistently ensures the application and effectiveness of key controls in different areas of Sales and marketing through risk assessment and identification of key areas for improvement and ensure corrective measures are executed within agreed time frames.
• Drive implementation of various action points from internal and external audits. Ensure that commitments (actions/deadlines) made are subsequently respected at all times.

Educational Qualification & Experience

• First Degree in Accounting plus ACA/ACCA
• Minimum of 10 years experience in a commercial function of a FMCG
• Knowledge of IFRS
• Knowledge of SAP
• Advanced Excel skill

Knowledge, Skill & Ability

• Business Partnering
• Professionalism
• Numerate/Analytical Skill
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint
• Good Inter Personal Skills
• Entrepreneurial Skill
• Good negotiation/influencing skills

Tools/Systems:

• SAP
• Microsoft Office Excel.