Customer & Supplier Finance Operations Lead

Why this job matters

The Tower Lead role is a critical position within the organization, responsible for overseeing and improving the Finance   operational processes example P2P. This role requires strong leadership, excellent communication skills, and the ability to work across various organizational boundaries.
The Tower Lead’s responsibilities include:
•    Operational delivery of processes.
•    Assessing, developing, and implementing improvements in operational delivery.
•    Identifying, prioritizing, and delivering future developments.
•    Assessing key customer needs and aligning resources accordingly.
•    Defining, shaping, and aligning the tower’s functional, geographic, and business unit boundaries.
•    Driving standardization, efficiency, process effectiveness, and end-user satisfaction.
•    Adherence to both external (regulatory) and internal control requirements.
The role requires engagement with a broad stakeholder group, including the Senior Leadership, to drive necessary changes while maintaining operational delivery. If executed successfully, this role can provide a competitive advantage for the organization. It’s indeed a significant role with a wide range of responsibilities and potential impact. 
 

What you’ll be doing

•    People Strategy: Design and develop a people plan to enhance the success of the tower, balancing effectiveness, and efficiency.
•    Finance Strategy: Provide business insights for continuous improvement, bring best practices into BT, share knowledge of progressive finance practices and key trends, and contribute to the service catalogue for GFSS.
•    Organizational Development & Design: Work with senior leaders to review and augment the business unit operating model to align with business unit needs and support its strategic goals.
•    Culture, Values & Engagement: Collaborate with senior leaders to create engagement plans for the CFUs, articulate how outcomes and risks impact business goals, recommend solutions, and understand customer needs to execute a plan.
•    High Performing Teams: Coach and develop leaders at all levels, manage and mitigate people-related risks, ensure retention of key employees, develop leadership succession plans, manage capability and high performance, and maintain overall healthy churn.
•    Future Skills and Location Strategy: Collaborate with the business unit to develop plans for having the right skills in the right place at the right time by developing a fully integrated strategic and tactical workforce plan.
•    GFSS Effectiveness: Manage activities across teams and locations to ensure delivery against agreed SLAs with the CFUs and lead the CFU discussion for anything related to FC including current, future, and transitioning activities.
•    Regulatory compliance: Ensure strong processes and controls are in place to meet all regulatory compliance requirements
•    Stake holder connect : Work closely with the stake partners including GPOs, CFOs , FDs to ensure a strong process and control adherence with the right economic outcome
 

Skills required for the role

•    The core competencies, knowledge, and experience required for the role are quite comprehensive. 
•    Relationship Building: The ability to build strong relationships, coach people, and be seen as a trusted advisor.
•    Customer-Centric: Role modelling the importance of addressing customer needs and placing customer solutions at the heart of the organization.
•    Change Management: A track record of leading and implementing big change programs using strong change management and project management skills.
•    Complex Problem Solving: The ability to handle complex and difficult situations with thought and confidence, provide honest and respectful feedback, manage multiple senior stakeholders, and be comfortable in the absence of direction.
•    Commercial Acumen: Strong business acumen and commercial awareness to assess commercial or financial risk, understand people implications, and develop solutions to address these.
•    Data Analytics: Strong analytical skills and intuition to analyze data, interpret business insights and trends, and use data to support decision-making and develop the best solutions.
•    Collaboration and Influence: A track record of engaging, inspiring, and influencing people at senior levels.
•    Accounting Standards: Strong technical knowledge of accounting standards and their practical application, with the ability to translate complicated standards into something the teams can use.
•    P2P /OTC/ SSC Experience: Demonstrable experience of operating in a purchase -to-pay / SSC environment.
•    Travel Flexibility: The role requires flexibility with travel, with an expectation to travel between Kolkata and Gurugram locations.
•    These competencies and experiences are crucial for the role and will greatly contribute to the success of the individual in the position.
 

Experience you would be expected to have

•    Approximately 17 or more years of experience
•    Demonstrated ability to manage operations with a team size of 150+ 
•    Track record of transformation programs and continuous improvement in Finance/Supply chain operations 
•    Knowledge of operations best practices and improvement enablers for SAP (primary) and Oracle (secondary) based architectures.
•    Operational experience of delivering services to multiple business units across multiple geographies

Teleco experience preferred
•    Track record of delivering cross-team transformation
•    Qualified Accountant OR master’s in finance 
 

Connected leaders’ behaviours

This leader is expected to be a driving force in the organization, leading by example, fostering collaboration, and ensuring alignment with the organization’s strategic objectives. They will need to be adept at managing performance and creating an environment where teams are engaged, and individuals are held accountable. This is indeed a role that requires a unique blend of leadership skills and abilities.
•    Role model through their own behaviour and actions.
•    Inspire and coach others, holding both themselves and their team accountable.
•    Set the right cultural tone for shared services and other partners.
•    Be a strong collaborative leader who ensures delivery aligns with the vision and strategic objectives.
•    Exhibit strong performance management, agreeing on clear, measurable goals.
•    Create engaged teams and hold people to account across the business.
 

Key decisions

•    Transformation roadmap for Tower
•    Prioritization of resources to delivery Operational requirements alongside improvements