APJ Finance Director

WORKDAY SINGAPORE PTE. LTD.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in the SaaS sector is seeking a Director of APJ Finance to strengthen its finance organization in the Asia Pacific region. This role will involve strategic leadership in business performance, guiding financial standards, and collaborating with senior leaders across multiple departments to ensure effective business operations. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in finance, particularly within technology companies, and possess strong analytical and leadership skills.

Qualifications

• At least 15 years of relevant experience in Business Partner Finance roles.
• Experience supporting a sales organization as a finance business partner.
• Proven track record of effectively managing and leading high-performance teams.

Responsibilities

• Establish and drive functional budget tracking standards.
• Develop financial and operational plans, including short-term budgets and forecasts.
• Monitor and report on key operational service metrics and P&L.

Skills

Analytical Skills

Financial Modeling

Strategic Thinking

Leadership

Cross-Functional Initiative Management

Education

15 years in Business Partner Finance

5 years in sales finance roles

3 years team management

Job description

The Director of APJ Finance is a key position within Workday Finance as we strive to become a world-class finance organization. Reporting to the Senior Director of Worldwide Sales & Marketing Finance Operations, this challenging role will serve as business and strategic advisor to the SVP APJ Sales and his leadership team, along with the Services Leadership team, to ensure the financial and operational objectives for the business are met. The APJ finance partner provides leadership in terms of strategic/forward thinking financial support, controls, decision support, and operational know-how to achieve the business performance targets.

The successful candidate will partner to establish business performance standards and metrics and create/drive internal financial processes and systems to be simple, predictive and accessible. He/she will ensure appropriate due diligence is applied to business decisions, maintaining the integrity of reported information, synthesising that information into a strategic asset, and forecasting with a high level of predictability. He/she will partner with APJ Leadership, Sales and Services Operations, Services, and Marketing Demand Gen and Corp Finance. This position offers the right candidate an influential seat at the table of a dynamic high growth SAAS company.

As the Director of APJ Finance, you will:

• Partner with APJ leadership to establish and drive functional budget tracking standards.
• Partner with APJ leadership team on cross functional Initiatives / OKR.
• Work to establish country level go-to-market investment (headcount and programs) based on market profitability and competitive/market opportunity.
• Provide cross functional leadership and analysis as needed and on ROI methodology and investment decisions.
• Provide leadership on cost to serve and route to market optimization.
• Work with the global operations to drive the development of strategic (multi-year) long-term financial plans.
• Work with service business leadership to develop and drive service bookings, revenue, and capacity models for short and long term plans and forecasts.
• Partner with service leadership on providing, monitoring, and reporting on quarterly bookings, revenue forecasting, and investments.
• Monitor, report, and advise service leadership on key operational service metrics and services full P&L.
• Manage Activities of Services Senior Financial Analyst.
• Develop and implement short-term financial and operational plans (budgets and forecasts).
• Ensure that business and financial plans include defined and measurable initiatives and programs aligned to support such plans.
• Set business framework for managing business investments, resource allocations, business planning, operations and performance measurements.
• Proactively monitor and put in place performance reporting processes to ensure both short-term and long-term objectives are met.
• Review and revise KPIs as needed to ensure they provide the right visibility into the business.
• Provide management team with insightful decision support/business analysis.
• Establish and maintain strong business controls.
• Understand competitive landscape, including business strategies, cost structures and key business metrics.

Required Education and Experience:

• At least 15 years of relevant experience in Business Partner Finance roles
• At least 5 years of experience supporting a sales organization as finance business partner.
• At least 3 years of experience managing a team
• Serves in a finance leadership position for a fast-growing technology company, preferably in the enterprise software or SAAS markets.
• Ideally worked at companies with rigorous financial training and business partnering capabilities.
• Ability to work across a geographically dispersed organization.
• Experience managing a P&L and delivering results.
• Ability to understand the business, beyond finance.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to think strategically.
• Strong financial modeling and analysis skills (holistic and detailed), with demonstrated ability to build reports and access large volumes of data across multiple systems.
• Intellectual curiosity and complete professional ownership.
• Proactive and constructive style of engagement with business leaders to earn credibility as a finance partner who adds value and helps drive business results.
• “Roll-up-the-sleeves” attitude and a “hands-on” approach.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives.
• Experience as a strategic thinker and effectively translate strategies into financial plans.
• A self-directed leader able to adapt quickly to changes in priorities and business conditions.
• Proven track record of effectively managing/leading high-performance teams