Senior Manager - Reporting & Future Capabilities

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

Be a key player in further improving, streamlining, and innovating Financial Planning, Reporting and Analysis processes, procedures, tools in the adidas Finance organization by exploring and leveraging the power of adidas standard – Business Intelligence Tools (MS Power-BI from Frontend and Backend perspective), Advanced Analytics (incl. Machine Learning) and other technologies. The position holder will support our Digital Finance transformation and the change to a modern Reporting, Planning & Analysis mindset within the FP&A community.

The India Hub team supports the business by providing information that will enable financial decision taking by creating transparency through highly accurate and action-oriented reporting and business analysis. Furthermore, the team partners with the rest of the Finance organization to increase accuracy in the planning activities, such as forecasting and budgeting.

The position holder will support building, managing, and coordinating the India Corporate Controlling / Future Capability Hub for the assigned area. They will collaborate with the rest of the Finance organization in conducting the right technical setup and tool portfolio for supporting the budgeting, forecasting, reporting and cost monitoring processes for the adidas company. As the single point of contact (SPOC) for the assigned area of responsibility, the position holder will support steering the business to achieve (financial) targets as well as strategic goals.

Additionally, the role involves the supervision of a team, that executes BI programs across the team in response to business needs. The teams perform detailed data analysis, implement dashboards and ensure decision support systems are in place that best serve the business in their decision-making, whilst adhering to Standards, policy, and legislation.

Key Responsibilities:  

• Leadership

• Build and lead an efficient and high performing team, with a strong quality, innovation, and service mindset.

• Develop functional, technical, and social skills within the team and drive continuous learning, and individual growth.
• Develop and continuously improve training, onboarding, and documentation processes to ensure long term knowledge retention.
• Create positive team spirit and a highly engagement, motivating environment to enable team members to perform and keep attrition low.
• Ensure smooth operation of the business by taking on ownership for related actions. 
• Drive the automation/standardization of processes, procedures, and ways of working across the assigned area of responsibility and cross functionally by analyzing deliverables and initiating both continuous improvement and / or change initiatives.

• Reporting 

• Design, manage & execute highly accurate, insightful, and visually appealing reporting solutions and ad hoc analysis
• Develop and implement adequate communication packages to present derived results, recommendations, and solutions 

• Innovation/Future Capability
  • Innovate Financial Planning and Analysis/Reporting processes, procedures, tools, and ways of working by pro-actively identifying opportunities to leverage analytics and technologies
  • Analyze existing processes and implement technological improvements, to drive efficiency in working procesdures across relevant teams
  • Improve storytelling through data visualization / dashboards specific to the needs of a variety of different stakeholders, i.e. senior executives, Finance professionals, cross functional business leaders / teams, etc.
  • Ensure End-2-End automation process between Business Intelligence Frontend (Power-BI) and Backend (Lakehouse-Databricks) for the ease of Visualization/Dashboard creation.

• Others 

• Lead small and medium sized projects, implement findings, and ensure sustainability of achievements. 
• Drive/Track Reporting, Dashboarding and Tool implementations from Project Management perspective.
• Provide comprehensive expertise for assigned functional areas/systems and processes towards the Internal HQ Corporate Controlling team

Key Relationships: 

• Finance Teams in assigned area of responsibility.
• GBS Finance team / GBS Innovation Team
• adidas Finance Team
• Business transformation team (TRANS4RM project)
• Global Data & Analytics Team (DNA)

• Accounting, Taxes, Treasury
• HR

Knowledge Skills and Abilities:  

• Authentic belief in the power of analytics and technological development, a strong will to innovate ways of working combined with the proven execution ability & stamina to effect lasting change. Experience in Digital Finance transformation a strong plus.
• Excellent BI Frontend/Reporting/Dashboarding capabilities: Power BI, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Analysis for Office (Power-BI Architect Level)
• Comprehensive understanding of Finance and Accounting principles, processes & structures.
• Technical expertise: Thorough understanding of relational databases /DW/BW (SAP, Databricks) as well as Microsoft VBA/SQL/automation tools
• Excellent communication skills and ability to manoeuvre in consistently changing environment. 
• Strong ability to translate business requirements into technical specifications.
• Excellent knowledge of Python, R or other statistical computing languages / tools and a working knowledge of the same.
• Comprehensive financial statement analysis capability paired with a well-developed business acumen and multiple years of hands-on experience in commercial finance in an operational Finance environment.
• Ability to coach, guide, manage, and develop mid-size teams. 
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills, managing large data quantities from multiple sources.
• Thorough understanding of the complexity, interactions, and dynamics within an international company 
• Proven track record in successful teamwork being part of global, multinational projects.
• High degree of customer orientation
• Able to constructively work under stress and pressure when faced with high workloads and deadlines.
• Ability to read, write and communicate in English in a business setting.

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications: 

• University degree in Commerce/Business Administration/Finance/ Controlling or similar
• University degree in Information Technology
• Leadership experience
• 8 -10 plus years relevant work experience as CPA or equivalent with at least 6+ years relevant work experience in Information Technology/as a Power-BI Developer/Architect or equivalent
• Broad and deep understanding of job function
• Experience in a Shared Service environment
• Lean training certification