Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organisation:

Ensure the purposeful, controlled and efficient use of financial resources by providing dedicated financial planning & analysis within Europe. Provide value adding analyses and insights to the management team, to country clusters and to adidas. Coordinate planning processes and target setting. Manage projects to drive healthy Cash Flow and Stock.

Key Responsibilities:

• Coordinate the Planning and Budgeting process for Europe, from setting the timelines and deliverables to final system submission to SAC planning.
• Track the overall profitability development and highlight risk and opportunities to the senior finance leadership.
• Perform P&L simulations beyond the current year and ensure that drivers are always aligned with the related responsible.
• Provide ongoing business partnering and support to Finance Leadership Europe, Europe Senior Leadership Team and other key stakeholders e.g. Demand Planning, Business Development, HR, depending on defined processes and projects
• Ensure that FP&A teams, senior market-, country cluster- and adidas Group-management are provided with correct, timely and in-depth financial insights regarding P&L and Balance Sheet
• Collect and provide commentary packages and presentations to support senior management and FP&A teams to identify drivers and trends on Sales, Margin and Costs in close collaboration with the Commercial Finance and OPEX teams.
• Ensure financial forecasts are submitted on time and in alignment with the sign-off from senior management.
• Own and further develop the monthly commenting process together with the European FP&A community with the aim to improve quality and speed.
• Take ownership of further simplification and standardization of financial reporting and controlling processes & tools
• Ensure that the reporting and visualization opportunities from Power BI and SAC are made use off and drive the required change from Excel to automated dashboards and reports.
• Foster team spirit between the Herzo based team members and our colleagues in Chennai to ensure that all are working together towards the same goals and in an efficient and respectful manner.
• Develop strong business partnering with different stakeholders (Senior Management, Finance and Demand Planning, Europe FP&A, Supply Chain Management, Local FSS Teams, Global Finance, etc.)
• Conduct quality control of monthly, quarterly, and annual closing.
• Support and participate in cross- and inter-functional projects such as TRANS4RM.
• Manage the total portfolio of tasks within the Team (Chennai / Herzo).

• Drive the further standardization and harmonization of financial processes across Europe finance.
• Keep team engaged by delegating challenging tasks and responsibilities within the team.
• Ensure constant growth of team members.
• Lead by example by living the adidas values.

Key Relationships:

Global: Group Finance (Market Finance, Corporate Planning & Reporting, Group Functions Finance, Group Accounting, Group Treasury, TradeCo, Performance Management)

Market: FP&A teams in Europe, Demand Planning, Business Development

Country clusters: Finance Directors, FP&A teams

Demand Planning: IBP, DP Directors.

Supply Chain: Europe & Global Supply Chain Finance

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Demonstrated ability to grow into an M2 role within the next 1-2 years
• Analytical and financial modeling skills, comfortable with Finance and Accounting principles and strong financial statement analysis ability.
• Ability to coach, guide, manage and develop a multinational team
• Experience in Project Management
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong results orientation
• Constantly challenge status quo and strive for improvements
• High degree of customer orientation and proactive management of workload for the team
• Independent handling of a variety of tasks with different levels of complexity by developing effective plans and organizing work efficiently
• Acting in a goal-oriented manner, prioritize and complete tasks depending on importance and urgency
• Thinks beyond the obvious and does not stop at the first answer
• Digital skill-set to confidently handle the transformation towards PowerBI and SAC
• Fluent in English

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• University degree in business administration with a focus on Finance / Controlling
• Functional: min 5-7 years professional experience
• Broad and deep knowledge in Finance environment
• Leadership: min 1-2 years leadership of experts