Senior Finance Manager, Stores, Format & Property

Home. There’s no place like it. And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do. We are the UK’s Number One homewares retailer offering over 85,000 products building a consumer-focused total retail business that delights customers through our multichannel operation. We are ambitious in our plans to drive further expansion of the business to more customers, shopping more frequently, with more choice, enhanced digital and physical services, and new capabilities to innovate and operate at pace in a fast-changing landscape. In developing the business for the long-term benefit of our customers, we are investing in our supply chain, stores and technology to improve the customer proposition as we move forward.

The Business Finance Team partners with the functions across Dunelm, to:

• Produce timely and accurate weekly and monthly reports and insight to inform trading and operational control and decision making
• Set targets (in conjunction with business) and provide independent view of forecasts and trends
• Hold business to account to deliver to targets and manage risks and opportunities
• Support and challenge tactical and strategic decision making, including financial appraisal (and post investment appraisal)
• Agitate for improving profitability and return on investment, and for best use of our resources

More information about the Stores, Format & Property teams which this role supports:

• c.190 UK stores, with plans to continue to open new stores, including different formats and new locations
• Manage a programme of renewals across the estate, including refresh of format and trials
• c.10,000 store colleagues, serving customers through in-store purchases, Click & Collect and in-store tablet selling

What you will be doing?

• Financial partnering on and appraisal of store location, format and renewal opportunities, including robust challenge, strong grasp of financial appraisal metrics across a portfolio of opportunities, presentation to Exec and Board, and post-investment appraisal
• Finance leadership on other large change programmes within Stores, for example the roll-out of self-check-out
• Support and challenge to the Stores team with weekly trading and operations, including partnering on store labour costs, one of our largest costs in Dunelm
• Control of Property and Store costs, including understanding and influencing on store level profitability, and identification of trends and opportunities to generate future improvement projects.

What we look for?

• Proven line management experience, delivering through others, prioritising workload, and coaching and developing
• Commercially minded, with a genuine drive to make a difference and support Dunelm to achieve its growth and profitability targets
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to condense complex information into clear messages to gain understanding and buy-in
• A good relationship builder building trust with key stakeholders and able to influence
• Finance qualified, with broad finance experience and knowledge, able to represent the whole finance function with stakeholders
• Equally comfortable in the high level and directional as the detailed and accurate and able to flex approach based on the circumstances
• Comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities and able to lead a team through continuous re-prioritization to ensure the best value outcomes are delivered

The Behaviours we look for:

• Communicating – Making the complex easy to understand, influencing and engaging others to achieve support for decisions and actions
• Curiosity – A desire to truly understand the business operations and to question why things are done the way they are. Always probing beyond the first answer.
• Adapting – Having the courage to change direction to achieve outcomes. Creating a safe environment for the team to experiment and learn.
• Thinking Big – Using internal and external networks and knowledge to suggest and influence change
• Challenging – Being the voice of constructive dissent to help reach better outcomes; shape opinions and challenge thinking