Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

PLACE: Opole Area, POLAND
REPORTING TO: MANAGING DIRECTOR (MD)

TARGET OF THE POSITION

In terms of strategic positioning, he/she is a key business partner of the Managing Director and Steering
Committee helping them to monitor changes and optimize processes in the company.
The CFO is taking part in the key decisions of the Company and may be involved in M&A activities.

The CFO guarantees a reliable, on time and qualitative information for local and group managers. He/she
guarantees that local administrative requirements are followed.

He/she is in charge of:

• FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis): under the supervision of the Group’s Head of FP&A (team of 2), detailed controlling of sales, gross margin, opex, and capex and implementation of the budgeting and reforecasting process. He/she supervises controlling team consists of manager and 3 controllers
• Accounting and other administrative services, (including IT) for the businesses in Poland and in
• Germany. He/she supervises a team of around 6 accountants, including a Chief Accountant who is also in charge of taxation matters.
• Cash management and cash flow monitoring and planning
• IFRS reporting to Group
• State of the art internal control environment / compliance with the Group’s guidelines

MAIN DUTIES

FP&A / Controlling

• Business partner of the MD and Steering Committee
• Implementing of an analytical monthly closing process matching with accounting figures and providing information on sales, cost of goods sold, gross margin, production costs by analytical view (product family, client, channel, country, line etc)
• Supervise, validate and provide all the financial reports and analysis to local team (internal reporting) and Group (Operating & IFRS reporting)
• Implementation of a state-of-the-art COGS computation scheme (standard costing)
• Optimizing all process in the company – ensuring full compliance with Group guidelines with respect to internal control and Group manuals, conducting reviews and evaluation of costs optimisation opportunities
• Managing budgeting, reforecasting and long-term planning (4-year BP) for the whole company
• Systems: operational reporting is published in Anaplan and the IFRS statutory reporting in a bespoke system designed by Group.

Accounting & taxation

• Supervision of the chief accountant in charge of accounting and taxation matters
• Managing the company’s financial accounting and all the local reports (taxes, administration, banks...)- In the context of the acceleration of month-end accounts closing (which has been recently brought down to 4 days), improve the monthly accounting closing procedure respecting accuracy, completeness and cut-off (accruals-based).
• Producing accurate financial reports to specific deadlines (Operations & IFRS reporting)
• Relationship with stakeholders (Divisional CEO & CFO, central finance, auditors, lawyer, bankers, statutory organization.)

Cash Management

• Managing the cash collection and the risk linked to customers (full credit management responsibility):
• detailed tasks are carried out by the chief accountant.
• Managing the treasury of the company in the context of the Group cash pooling
• Cash flow analyses:
  • monthly cash flow analyses
  • forward looking cash-flow forecasts (to group standards) reported on a weekly basis

Others

• IT:
  • Assessing IT environment and preparing (with outside help) and IT roadmap, possibly leading to an upgrade or change of current ERP
  • Coordinating local & operational IT department and key user in IT projects.
• Legal:
  • o In charge of legal subjects (follow up of the contracts, relationship with lawyer, doing all the legal duties of the company including the general assembly, control of the governance of the company) and tax issues.

ORGANISATION & INTERFACES

The CFO is reporting hierarchically to the Managing Director and functionally to the Divisional CFO.

This position is interacting with:

• Local management team – Steering Committee (operations, commercial, marketing, HR, quality)
• Divisional finance department (in particular Group FP&A head) as well as Group lead finance
• Group IT
• External (auditors, lawyers, outsourced services)

SKILLS

Technical skills
The CFO has solid experience in FP&A / controlling in industrial environment, ideally gained within an international company (IFRS knowledge mandatory), has a solid background in accounting and finance, and he has appetence for information systems.
The CFO will also demonstrate strong skills at monitoring transformation.

Personal qualities.
As a key manager in the organization, the CFO needs a strong team building and decision-making capability.
His/her curiosity and good relationship will help understanding business and production issues. His precision and ability to summarize is necessary to provide management with accurate, detailed and relevant analyses. The CFO needs to enjoy working in a fast paced industrial environment, in an international setting.

He has strong organisational and anticipation skills, allowing to respect of reporting commitments and to discuss in advance all tactical and strategic options.

Distinct entrepreneurial thinking as well as hands-on mentality and assertiveness. Structured, proactive,
results-oriented, and cross-functional way of working

Languages

• Native Polish, Professional Working Proficiency: English and German

High IT affinity:

• MS Excel expert
• Strong experience “hands on” with MS Power BI.
• Experienced user of ERP systems (and CRMs ideally), has taken part or lead ERP implementation projects.

EDUCATION

• Higher university/business school diploma with a focus on accounting and controlling.

EXPERIENCE

• 15 years in a finance position inside an industrial & international Group with a strong major in FP&A / controlling in industrial environments (mandatory)
• Experience of the management of change