Assistant Manager Controlling, West Africa

WL:1D

Business Context:

Unilever Operations (UniOps) is the global technology and operations engine of Unilever offering business services, technology, and enterprise solutions. UniOps serves over 190 locations and through a network of specialized service lines and partners delivers insights and innovations, user experiences and end-to-end seamless delivery making Unilever Purpose Led and Future Fit.

Commercial Experience is a strategic asset within UniOps. They are an intrinsic and integral part of financial and management reporting, treasury, controls, supplier operations and finance expertise from invoicing to payment processing, budgeting, and cost optimization - an accelerator that fuels growth for Unilever.

Commercial Experience drives significant organization change including the roll out of new digital capabilities such as Concur, Coupa, Blackline, Tail Spend Management, and the establishment of new and value-added operations, including Treasury MO/BO, P&H Controllership, ZBB Program and Global Finance Excellence Team (FET) Overheads. Some of these operational lines are delivered through a 3-tier model, including the Operating Center, which oversees the third-party strategic partners and partners with the Markets organization.

The Commercial Experience Vision is to become a Best-in-Class solutions organization recognized both externally and internally. Within this context, it requires balancing sometime contradicting priorities around cost, experience, discipline, and compliance become critical and need very capable leaders at the helm who can steer and balance both challenge and support to the Markets organization.

With Regional Controllerships evolving around the world, we are in a process of piloting this initiative in West Africa (Ghana Nigeria and CDI).

The Assistant Mgr Controlling would be responsible for partnering with the Africa Controller and Controllers in Country leading/supporting the end-to-end processes to deliver service, continuous process improvement, process/financial control discipline in the assigned market. West Africa is one of Unilever’s complex geographies which require sharp focus on cost, controls, and market priorities.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THE ROLE?

• Support Country Controllers with Financial Reporting activities including but not limited to:

  • Coordinate period end close (PEC) with country and Operation Center lead by ensuring all entries are booked in the ledger.

  • Facilitate Sundry invoicing approval process in BMC from assistant controller.

  • Knowledge of, Management and posting of non-judgmental.

  • Management of recurring judgmental JE’s – Others (e.g. restructuring, impairment, dividends, SBPs, pensions, tax, IFRS 9, 133C reclass)

  • Financial report pre-close analysis to identify any corrections to be made.

  • Perform re-allocations and re-classes (GL, CC, PC)

  • B/S account reconciliations

• Work with country users for identification of non-judgmental journals to move to 3PSP

• Collaborate with OC lead and review balance sheet and trial balance to maintain the needed hygiene.

• Preparation of quarterly statutory accounts for the assigned market including provision of relevant information for compliance.

• Be the point of contact for provision of information for statutory and any other regulatory requirement.

• Provide support for year-end Annual Financial statements.

• Building collaborative partnering relationships with all key stakeholders.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU?

The role holder should be passionate about customer experience, business partnering, process, service delivery and must demonstrate the below key skills.

• Ability to identify improvement opportunities in the allocated country driven by local business needs and the Commercial Experience global agenda:

• In-Depth Accounting Knowledge / Financial Accounting

• Business Acumen relevant to the market

• Work experience in SAP

• Ability to maintain and monitor Controls.

• Change Management - Compliance & Governance

• Influencing/Collaboration

• Digital awareness- Data analytics

Relevant Experience/Qualifications:

• Qualified Accountant with business knowledge / understanding

• Very good accounting knowledge / various reporting requirements understanding.

• Knowledge on SAP FI / good understanding of other interfaces – i-finance 

• Microsoft office skills – Excel / Word / Power Point/ Power BI etc.

• English/French background

WHAT WE OFFER

• Hybrid work and flexibility

• Opportunities for the development and improvement of qualifications

• Sharing the cost of professional training & courses

• Benefits: life insurance, private medical care, pension fund, sharing the cost of sports activities, and many others

• Extra days off to take care of yourself and others

• Unilever store - Our products at attractive prices

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.