Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organisation:

• Drive the Credit Management processes for the business.
• Provide Credit Management Services for the wholesale / franchise business of Central Europe incl. associated Alliance Key Accounts, B2B business, etc.
• Effectively manage debtor risk and balance against the commercial objectives of the entities managed.
• Effectively steer the Central Credit team (Direct Reports/Team & GBS Credit Team) and ensure that they meet the required objectives for Cluster Central Europe and adidas as a whole.

Key Responsibilities:

Cluster Order To Cash (O2C)

• Be the go-to-person of the VP Finance Central in all areas of credit, risk, debt and dispute management, also supporting in the preparation and implementation of the Central Credit Strategy
• Ensure consistency, efficiency and a common approach on Central level on all aspects of O2C
• Aggregate, control and provide Cluster view on all relevant requests and reporting schemes that fall under the O2C responsibility within the Cluster
• Lead, provide guidance and on-the-spot support to the Zone Credit Senior Manager(s) on all relevant topics that refer to the Zones / AKA specific handlings
• Act as a key liaison for all GBS related issues, ensuring a constant communication flow between the GBS organization, Central Cluster and the Zones / AKA
• Business Partner to Sales and Account Operations on Cluster / Zone / AKA level, driving decision making and ensuring a smooth implementation of best-in-class Credit processes, operations, tactics and strategy across full remit.

Zone / Cluster Debt Management

• Ensure that the debtors’ ledgers are accurately stated and are up to date on a timely basis.
• Ensure that cash is collected from debtors in a timely manner and in line with agreed payment terms.
• Work with Sales teams to gain customer insights/help chase cash/resolve issues and ensure that the teamwork with their sales contacts.
• Visit customers (and ensure the team do the same) to establish good relationships, improve payments, improve efficiencies, gain knowledge to better assess risk and to resolve queries.
• Highlight risk to sales forecasts/order conversion resulting from reduced credit worthiness of customers or negative news in relation to customers.
• Regular review, at least monthly, the ageing of the debtors’ ledgers to highlight potential bad debt risks or unresolved issues and ensure that all risks are highlighted to VP Finance and Sales where appropriate.
• Ensure that when a customer goes into administration, or equivalent, that the best position for the adidas Group is secured including making ROT (retention of title) claims, ceasing shipments and facilitating conversion of outstanding order books with the administrators.  Ensure that is such processes that we are getting the best performance from the lawyers that we use to act on our behalf.
• Monitor the performance of Cash Collection and DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) and take appropriate actions to optimise the level.

Zone / Cluster Risk Management

• Ensure that all customer accounts have an appropriate credit limit and credit rating.
• Ensure all new customer account requests are reviewed in accordance with the new account opening procedures, and in particular ensure that an appropriate credit limit is set based on the level of risk identified for that customer.
• Credit limits should be set based on external credit check information, internal information/history and information gained directly from the customer.
• Ensure that all credit limits are reviewed at least annually.
• Credit limits should be assessed versus the turnover expectation.  Where a credit limit is insufficient to reach the turnover expectation, this should be communicated to sales to ensure that they manage the order book intake.
• Review the future order book of customers and assess whether they can be delivered within their credit limit based on their payment profile.  Where this assessment suggests the order book is too large, consider raising the credit limit temporarily/permanently based on a financial assessment, payment plans, advance plans or through working with Sales, rephrasing the order book or cancelling some orders.
• Consider Sales, Margin and Stock risks when making a credit/debt risk assessment.  Avoiding a debt risk may move the problem to being a cash margin risk versus our target achievements or give a stock risk whereby we cannot convert the stock elsewhere.
• Ensure that negative information regarding our customers is assessed and acted upon swiftly, effectively, and appropriately to ensure the best position for adidas.

Zone / Cluster Dispute Management

• Ensure that customer queries/disputes are resolved in a timely and accurate manner, working closely with Sales, Customer Service, MOPS, FP&A, etc.
• Ensure that learnings are taken from such queries and disputes to reduce/prevent future queries and disputes.
• Ensure that credit notes relating to valid claims from customers are raised timely and accurately.
• Ensure that off invoices rebates are only raised when the customer has requested payment and that these have been approved by FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis), and that they raised accurately and timely.
• Ensure that credit note targets are set for each country and brand and by credit note type based on improving our efficiency and profitability versus prior years.

Zone / Cluster Customer Master Data Maintenance

• Ensure that Customer Master Data records are accurately kept and in a timely manner.
• Ensure that trade terms (including payment terms) are entered correctly in the system to ensure that orders and invoices are produced accurately and that customers do not receive incorrect discounts.
• Ensure that other customer master data attributes are correct to ensure that our internal reporting is effective and accurate; and that legal names and addresses, delivery addresses and contact details are correct to ensure that we are properly and legally covered for trading with our customers.
• Ensure that access to customer master data is restricted to avoid fraud and strong internal controls are adopted in line with the GCSA.

Zone / Cluster Reporting and Month End / Year End Processes

• Ensure that the ageing of the debtors’ ledgers are reported to VP Finance monthly with commentary regarding aged debt and potential risks, including feedback from follow up actions from the prior month.
• Ensure that the development of credit notes is reported monthly including tracking against target and prior year.
• Ensure that at the end of every month, but particularly at the end of each quarter and at the year end, there is an assessment of doubtful and specific credit note and bad debts accruals required and that these are discussed with VP Finance prior to be being booked in the accounting system.  Provide adequate evidence of the requirement of such accruals.
• Provide evidence and reasons for such accruals to auditors as requested as part of their audit testing.

Zone / Cluster Legal

• Ensure that Customer Terms and Conditions (Ts&Cs) appropriately worded to reflect the requirements of Credit Management to provide the best protection for future debt, including payment terms, retention of title, etc.
• Ensure that Customer Ts&Cs are filed and that there is adequate access to the annual customer trade terms letters.

Management of the Team

• Effective management of direct reports
• Effective steering of the GBS Credit team and coaching team members as required and/or ensuring that they receive adequate training.
• Feed into the strategically assessment of the development of GBS team members with a view to have the best Credit Management team and best Finance team, and that there are future successors to replace any movers and leavers, whilst considering the best development for the individual and adidas needs.
• Proactively discuss with GBS the best way for the team to be structured and how it operates so that it is as efficient and effective as possible.
• Be an effective member of the Central Finance & Europe FP&A team meetings and share best practice whenever possible.
• Ensure that the team operate with a ONE Finance Team approach for Europe.

Other

• Pro-actively drive small / mid / large scale projects from Credit perspective, e.g. S4EU (new ERP) implementation, process / system optimizations, etc. Ensure appropriate involvement, change management and training across own team, GBS Credit team and Business Partners (e.g. Account Operations, Sales, etc.).
• Ensure that system testing is carried efficiently and effectively so that the system meets accounting, taxation and reporting requirements for the entire remit.
• Recommend enhancements to the system to improve efficiency, ways of working and/or new business models.
• Improve Internal Controls within the Credit Management remit.

Key Relationships:

• Global Business Services (GBS) Credit and GPO team
• Sales and Account Operations teams
• FP&A Teams
• Accounting Teams
• Marketing teams
• Europe Finance

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• Qualified MICM (or equivalent), minimum 8-10 years Credit Management experience within a high-volume transaction business. Experience of managing and developing a team experience in a sizeable blue chip commercial business would be an advantage

IT skills:

• Knowledge of Microsoft Office (Excel, Powerpoint, Word).
• Excellent computer analysis skills on a variety of platforms; SAP/PowerBI an advantage