Commercial Finance Manager

About the roleAs a Commercial Finance Manager, you will play a pivotal role within the Finance team. You will provide influential insight in order to assist business leaders in making well-informed commercial decisions, and challenge the business to make improvements, such as reducing expenditure to maximise profit, improving financial performance and delivering on the Partnership goals.

The role also focuses on driving business decisions and subsequent actions in order to improve overall financial performance, specifically within the John Lewis Customer team. You will be responsible for mitigating risks, maximising opportunities and investing in new capability / propositions. This is a highly proactive position which will see you be jointly responsible alongside Business leaders to develop plans to meet the financial targets and ensure business leaders understand the financial implications of the plan. You will also be working with our excellent team of Senior Finance Analysts and Finance Analysts, supporting their development and ensuring delivery of outcomes.

• Salary - £61,300 - £89,000.

• Contract type - We are recruiting one 12 month fixed term contract/secondment role for the John Lewis Customer team.

• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. 

• Location - The role will be based at our Pimlico Head Office.

Key responsibilities

• You will be accountable for the financial performance for your assigned business area - driving financial performance in service of the Partnership Plan through utilising performance insight, commercial analysis and your own financial expertise and commercial acumen

• You will ensure recommendations provided to improve financial performance are acted upon by senior business stakeholders, driving incremental financial value

• You’ll be an expert in the business area you are partnering with, the financial context in which it operates and the wider market and competitor context. You’ll be responsible for the delivery of high quality verbal and written outputs to communicate insight, recommendations and influence decisions with stakeholders at all levels of seniority, providing appropriate ‘storytelling’, influence and challenge to drive effective decision making.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Accounting qualification with post qualified experience in a similar business environment

• Proactive and collaborative approach, strategic thinking, along with excellent communication and interpersonal skills to be able to liaise with and influence stakeholders to achieve desired business outcomes

• Highly organised, structured and analytical. Ability to analyse complex data sets to derive meaningful insights for decision making

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Retail or FMCG experience

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About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.