Commercial Finance Manager - UK Hub

Lifestyle Brands (the LSB) is a growing house of like-minded brands under the SC Johnson umbrella including Method®, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day®, Babyganics® and Ecover®. Headquartered in San Francisco with additional operations in Chicago and throughout Europe, the LSB is home to 650 employees. Together we act as a force for bold, transformative growth with a focus on delivering positive impact for people and the planet. If you’re into pioneering the future and doing good while doing business, come join us.

The LSB is part of SC Johnson, a family-owned company and leading manufacturer of household cleaning, home storage, air care, pest control and shoe care products, as well as professional products. Originally founded in 1886 and headquartered in Wisconsin, U.S.A., SC Johnson and the Lifestyle Brands division are at work for a better world.

Commercial Finance Manager - UK Hub   

Internal title: Associate Manager, Financial Planning and Analysis

Location: Frimley

Contract type: Full time

People Leader: Head of Finance P&A

Function: FP&A Manager

Please note this role is not eligible for relocation. 

Remote work is available once per week for eligible employees.

If you are looking for a new challenge in Finance and you are interested in being the main Finance Business Partner for Sales and Marketing, we are waiting for you!

What’s in it for you?

• Competitive pay & benefits
• Flexible working hours + Summer hours
• ‘Build your own’ learning programme
• Free breakfast & snacks
• 25 days annual holiday
• Pension, Life cover & Health Insurance
• Volunteering days
• Season ticket loan
• Wellness days

Overview:

We’re looking for a numbers-guru, someone passionate about business partnering and providing financial insights. As we see the world differently and do things differently, we are looking for someone to challenge the status quo and provide thought leadership to improve our decision making.

You will be the right-hand person to the UK Hub Leader and Head of FP&A, a sparring partner to drive the business forward to achieve the seemingly impossible!

Responsibilities: 

• Bring your personality to our LSB team. Live and breathe the values of LSB and care for your colleagues.
• Work in partnership with the UK leadership team, establishing strong relationships with and the wider UK sales teams and Brand teams.
• Provide visibility to regional UK team via weekly, and monthly reporting, and pioneer the future by creating tools to enhance financial clarity and decision-making that is accurate, clear, and actionable.
• Lead all aspects of the monthly and quarterly financial forecast process as well as annual budgeting for the regional hub, determining drivers of risk and opportunity versus the operating plan.
• Partner closely within the S&OP cycle to ensure financial alignment, challenge assumptions, and support effective decision‑making.
• Deliver sound, strategic, and actionable course correcting recommendations to the respective leadership teams. Ensure spending is in line with budget or revised forecast expectations
• For all key decisions within the region (product/customer portfolio, promotion/pricing, cost savings actions, investments), provide credible financial modelling and influence the business with continuous guidance and advice on methods to improve, or maximize the financial opportunity of those considerations.
• Lead the UK region month end P&L close, ensuring accuracy of the UK region monthly P&L.
• Work closely with the sales and brand team to accurately capture all trade spend and brand spend activities ensuring no financially material surprises. Including ownership of the UK trade spend balance sheet reconciliations to allow for review of trade spend positions aligned with
• Review trade spends and brand activities ensuring that we are getting adequate ROI for the spend (recommendation our how best the region should be spending the money)
• Relentlessly pursue opportunities to enhance processes, improve forecast accuracy, assess risks, and drive urgency across the organization to maximize Net Sales, Delivered Profit Margin, and Operating Profit.
• Partner with wider LSB finance team in assessing other sales and general admin costs for the UK, the monthly close results and sharing actuals and implications to the broader organization.
• Partner with the Head of FP&A to maintain robust internal controls across the regional hub and ensure the appropriate retention of supporting documentation required for internal and external audits of Trade Spend and Pricing Management.
• Make objective recommendations that serve the best interests of the region and company as a whole.

Experience you’ll bring:

• Qualified Accountant with min. 5 years PQE with a strong academic record and substantial finance experience gained in a variety of environments
• Experience in commercial finance/FP&A a must, exposure to FMCG is a plus!
• Previous ownership of financial forecasting, and other critical financial process and analysis
• Proven ability to communicate complex financial information concisely and accurately to a broad audience
• Experience working with and influencing cross functional teams
• Embeds financial knowledge and understanding with business partners to ensure focus on supporting the right initiatives and business decisions
• Ability to build powerful influencing relationships at all levels while also creating the energy and momentum for required change
• System-savvy - an Excel whiz, with SAP and Anaplan experience a major plus

Behaviors you’ll need:

• Be relentless in pursuit of partnering, a born problem solver challenging the business and regional director
• Have strong commercial and financial acumen and will understand which levers of the P&L to drive performance 
• Have a desire to get stuck in to make processes simpler and easier,
• Have a positive attitude, be resilient and confident, with an ability to influence the leadership team
• Will possess the ability to navigate through complexity and prioritize
• Be great at building relationships and establishing great ways of working
• Show proactivity to drive the Hub/business agenda forward
• Have an eye for detail but also have the ability to stand back and see the bigger picture 

About us:

We are the people behind method + ecover. We’ve always done things differently – we’re fearless thinkers, mad scientists and adventurous designers who believe that making soap leads to brave ideas, bold inventions and beautiful bubbles. We started small but we have big plans to make the world a cleaner, greener, more colourful place. We invite everyone to join us as we pioneer a future where doing business is doing good for all.

Let’s get one thing straight – you’re not coming here to just sell soap, or cleaning products. You’re joining us to move the hearts, souls and minds of others all over the world that see the world differently. We think about cleaning as an act of creative expression, a gesture of rebellion, and, yes, an escape from the normal. We take cleaning seriously – but not ourselves.

Alongside our friends Mrs Meyers and Babyganics, we are collectively known as Lifestyle Brands and are part of the SC Johnson family.

Application:

Submit your application today here.

It’s a big, beautiful, colourful world out there and we should celebrate that. That’s why we’re working hard to be a fully diverse and inclusive place to work. Every day we strive to create an atmosphere where everyone feels valued, listened to, supported and where we can do our best work. Sure, there’s always more that can be done. But together with our team, partners, customers and community, we can make everyone welcome.

We advertise all our roles on Evenbreak, the specialist job board for disabled candidates. If you have a disability or a long-term health condition and would like support in applying for any of our vacancies, please visit their Career Hive – careers support for disabled candidates delivered by careers professionals with lived experience of disability. Find out more at https://hive.evenbreak.co.uk.   

We are happy to adjust our hiring process to ensure we are accessible to everyone – please let us know what we can do to support you.

Inclusion & Diversity

We believe that being a team of diverse people with different ideas, views and cultures will help us and our business thrive. We are committed to ensuring everyone who works at the LSB feels that they have a real sense of belonging and that they can show up as who they are, be valued, listened to and supported to do their best possible work.

Sure, there’s always more that can be done. But together with our team, partners, customers and community, we can make everyone welcome.