Commercial Finance Manager

DS Smith; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading packaging company in the UK is seeking a Commercial Finance Manager to drive financial initiatives and improve process efficiency. The ideal candidate will have a strong financial and analytical background, experience in project management, and excellent communication skills. The role involves coordinating cross-functional projects and implementing data governance standards. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact on the company's commercial transformation agenda.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in business, management or finance.
• Strong financial and analytical background with experience in reporting.
• Experience in top-tier consultancies or international businesses.
• Expertise in financial process designs and organizational transformations.
• Solid understanding of commercial finance and pricing frameworks.
• Advanced project management and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Ability to convey complex information clearly.

Responsibilities

• Lead and coordinate business requirements for strategic initiatives.
• Harmonize data and processes across sub-regions.
• Support KPI design for volume and revenue reporting.
• Ensure progress tracking for standardized finance reporting.

Skills

Financial acumen

Analytical skills

Project management

Communication skills

Stakeholder management

Data governance

Adaptability

Education

Bachelor's degree in business, management or finance

Master's degree (is a plus)

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Visio

Job description

As Commercial Finance Manager within Commercial Finance Transformation, you will play a pivotal role within the commercial transformation agenda for the EMEA Packaging Division. This is a highly visible position working across finance, commercial, Master data and operational teams to deliver impactful projects, drive process excellence, and ensure data-driven decision making. You will combine financial acumen with strong analytical and project management skills to lead initiatives that strengthen governance, standardization, reporting, and performance management across the division. The core responsibility is to lead the successful implementation of key initiatives for our customer's data, processes and tools as we look to 'pivot to growth'. You will be the driving force behind transforming existing workflows, ensuring increased efficiency and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. This role demands a hands-on approach, strategic thinking, and effective collaboration with cross-functional teams (SMI, Finance, Supply Chain and I&T) to achieve seamless process transitions, KPIs, tools development and adoption.

Responsibilities

• Successfully Lead & Coordinate Business requirements, follow-up and testing for strategic initiatives:
  • EMEA Price DB - requirements sign-off and platform development ("current prices" for similar like products)
  • Marginal pricing methodology / framework to support "Pricing to win" for all Customers (standardisation & governance)
  • Volumes Intercompany overview and framework
• Data & process harmonization between sub-regions and legacy organisations
• EMEA8020 methodology, process standardization, follow-up support (both from customers and products point of view)
• Coordinate the inter-functional and sub-regional alignment, KPIs design for Customer level volume and revenue reporting: forecast (at a minimum 80s vs 20s); support the 'Whales', XR, and the 'Most Wanted'
• 8020 Standardized Finance and SMI Reporting incl. progress tracking

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in business, management or finance (Master's degree is a plus)
• Strong financial and analytical background with proven experience in reporting and data governance
• Experience from Top Tier consultancies and/or international order producing businesses with ideally experience in commercial support with clear Change and Stakeholders management responsibilities
• Experience from financial process designs / re-design projects and reporting - demonstrated results from independently driving and implementing organizational transformations
• Solid understanding of commercial finance, pricing frameworks, and customer profitability analysis
• Project management expertise, including stakeholder engagement, governance, and reporting
• Ability to translate complex business needs into structured data and reporting
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to convey complex information in a clear and understandable manner
• Strong communication and influencing skills across senior stakeholders
• Comfortable balancing hands-on execution with strategic oversight
• Adaptability and resilience in navigating challenges associated with process transitions
• Advanced Microsoft office platforms knowledge (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Visio etc.)
• Very strong business understanding and acumen (value chain and data flow understanding, product families) - preferably from the Packaging industry
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills