Finance Controller Africa Cluster Consumer Health at Merck Group

Job description

A career at Merck is an ongoing journey of discovery: our 50,000 people are shaping how the world lives, works and plays through next generation advancements in healthcare, life science and performance materials. For 350 years and across the world we have passionately pursued our curiosity to find novel and vibrant ways of enhancing the lives of others.

The Controller is a key business partner, providing robust and insightful decision support to Business and Finance Management, to enable delivering on financial objectives both operational and strategic.

The Controller pro-actively works with Management to identify business risks and opportunities, find pragmatic approaches to challenges, and implement gap closing actions and best practices across local organizations. Ensure financial transparency and disclosure of risks. The Africa region consists mainly of Southern Africa with South Africa been the key market and Central Africa with Kenya been the key market.

Major Accountabilities

• Develop and maintain a Business Performance tracking framework including Key KPI’s and core financial reports such as P&L,
• Design, maintain and drive monthly Business Reviews, ensuring complete, accurate and timely submission from Local to Regional
• Drive P&L management with focus on accurate Sales Forecasting, cost control and resource allocation
• Run the Planning and Forecasting processes in coordination with key stakeholders to deliver consistent, ambitious and reliable plans.
• Challenge and investigate financial results with the objective of identifying performance gaps, checking progress towards budget achievement and recommending gap closing action
• Engage with Business Stakeholders, with the objective to build insight into key business drivers and tactics, to identify opportunities and support solid business case preparation.
• Partnering in business development activities, owning the valuation tool to provide tested business assumptions for evaluating the opportunity, challenge financial evaluations to ensure most profitable outcome.
• Prepare monthly management reports together with qualitative performance insights.
• Pro-actively review and assess Business Performance Reporting landscape, driving changes and enhancement recommendations in collaboration with Regional Controller

Personal Skills

• Support business to meet operative plan
• Understanding consumer market specificities and evaluation processes, awareness of related legislation
• Ability to recognize problems, develop solutions and implement them
• Meet deadlines for all project deliverables with speed and accuracy
• Willing to take ownership for his/her work and challenge the status quo
• High quality and timely delivery of financial actual, budget and accuracy of forecasts
• Ability to build and maintain effective interpersonal relationships, and communicate effectively
• Team Player, Flexible and Can Do attitude
• Resilient and ability to work under pressure
• 10- 20% of your time would require travelling to central Africa.

Minimum requirements

• University degree in Economics / Finance
• 5 + years’ experience in financial reporting and business controlling
• Experience in Pharma/Consumer environment preferred.
• Outstanding analytical skills and strong execution track records.
• Advanced financial modeling skills (Excel)
• Knowledge with regards to ERP/Consolidation tools (Embrace, TM1 or similar).
• Fluent English

What we offer: At Merck, there are always opportunities to break new ground. We empower you to fulfil your ambitions, and our diverse businesses offer various career moves to seek new horizons. We trust you with responsibility early on and support you to draw your own career map that is responsive to your aspirations and priorities in life. Join us and bring your curiosity to life!

Curious? Apply and find more information at come2merck.com