FPA Specialist at Bridgestone South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Job Purpose

The role is to support the FP&A Manager in consolidation of the BSAF business by ensuring that key business issues are reconciled, recommendations are proposed and the Management Information (MI) is prepared in order to support effective insight and conversations for the monthly business review. This role is expected to have a clear grasp of current business performance and leverage opportunities to improve business performance through delivery of the agreed strategy. This role will report to the Planning, Forecasting and Reporting Manager.

Responsibilities

• Analyze data and forecasts, reports, and recommendations so that senior management has accurate and timely information for making decisions.
• Analyze resources optimization and profitability. Including long-term aspects of the organization’s financial policy.
• Support FP&A Manager with business analysis across the 3 divisions Wholesale, Retail & Otraco.
• Examine and evaluate the cost-efficiency of each department of the company, in light of what percentage of the company’s financial resources each department consumes.
• Support functional leaders in managing yearly allocated spend by providing monthly expense reports and flagging 
• Work with individual divisions to prepare budgets, forecasts and consolidate them monthly and yearly for overall corporate budget
• Submission of budgets and forecasts in SAC system
• Support in preparation of internal reports for executive leadership in supporting their decision-making.
• Create, update and maintaining financial models and detailed forecasts of the company’s future operations.
• Compare historical results against budgets and forecasts, and performing variance analysis to explain differences in performance and suggest improvements going forward.
• Support in delivering the digitalization objective for FP&A.
• Ad-hoc requests for senior leadership

Requirements

Knowledge and Experience:

• Financial accounting GAAP and relevant technical accounting knowledge and ability to apply to the situations
• Experience of working with relevant financial systems such as SAP, GL Wands, Power BI
• Experience of working within the Manufacturing, Sales and Retail Industry
• Experience in analysis and forecasting
• Advanced Microsoft office experience i.e: powerpoint, excel, Skills and abilities:
• Sound understanding of accounting concepts and principles
• Ability to manipulate large volume of data and experience of carrying out detailed analysis of data, especially during the year end to provide the results that is easily understood to external auditors and senior management
• Ability to plan, organise and prioritise workload, including co-ordinating with others and ensuring that statutory and other deadlines are met.
• To work as part of a team and independently to deliver a common goal or objective
• Ability to deal with difficult situations and make decisions on the best course of action
• Excellent computer skills including Microsoft Excel and Word
• Self starter/ Initiative/creativity/innovation
• Strategic thinking, problem solving, critical thinking and analytical skills
• Proficiency in relationship building, networking, persuasion and influential skills
• Good technical, business and global acumen
• Excellent verbal, written communication and negotiation skills

Qualifications and Experience

• Bcom: Accounting, Finance
• Big 4 audit articles (beneficial)
• Large Corporate/commercial accounting experience.
• Extensive reporting and analysis background