Head of Finance - Supply Chain in Bury

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni‑channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people‑led, innovative and customer‑focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Overview

The Head of Finance role is part of the Senior Supply Chain leadership team, responsible for managing (Opex budgetary setting & rigorous cost control) the UK and European supply chain expenditure as well as reporting on and ensuring standard best‑practice financial disciplines across the wider JD Group facias supply chains (NAM/APAC/MIG/ISRG). It is essential to be able to influence and manage teams remotely, with travel as needed, ensuring that all teams engage fully and work in collaboration to the set Group Supply Chain goals and objectives. In addition, the individual must create and manage strong business relationships across all Business Units, Partners and Suppliers to ensure service levels and costs meet set KPIs and budgets as a minimum. Continuous improvement is the standard way of working within the Supply Chain Team. This role reflects the importance of managing expenditure whilst delivering exceptional service to our Customers. It will require exemplary inter‑personnel and contract management skills as well as fostering a culture of partnership with all. This role will be responsible for managing a direct expenditure of £400m+ across UK and Europe as well as budgetary setting and reporting for a further £300m+ across other geographies. Detailed analytics skills coupled with the ability to translate this analysis into clear action plans and recommendations are non‑negotiable. An attitude to controlling expenditure that has 'it is my money' as the mantra should be second nature.

Role Overview

The purpose of this role is to collate, manage and challenge financial plans and present them to the JD Group SLT. The focus is commercial finance not accountancy which will be managed by the Central JD Finance Team. Setting and managing the UK and European budgets will require working with Supply Chain peers, having a fundamental understanding of the key cost drivers and service delivery metrics ensuring the best in class processes and reporting can be adopted across all other JD global facias, or vice versa from these facias. Standardisation of reporting across all facias will be the first task ensuring cross referencing can be done on a LFL basis by facia and Supply Chain discipline. Thereafter a process of continual improvement, identifying and deploying any financial analytics IT packages would be how the role evolves from a process point of view. In addition, recruiting, training and developing the Finance team is a core requirement of the role. As will also have an influence (support and challenge) over the other JD facia supply chain teams. Ability and commitment to travel as business priorities require internationally.

Key Duties/Responsibilities

• Commercial finance reporting
• Responsibility for presenting financial reporting metrics at JD board level
• Produce the budget plans and maintain thereafter the RF versions for all JD supply chain facias
• Governance of the financial processes, meetings and standard best practice
• Develop a continuous improvement plan across all areas of responsibility in conjunction with any respective Supplier Partner or JD operational team with a specific focus on service and efficiency
• Work alongside group procurement on formal Supplier tendering (all facias) for any contracts over £1m
• Work in collaboration with the Supply Chain Development and Capacity planning teams
• Identify commercial opportunities with key Suppliers - cost and service
• Ensure compliance is adhered to against legal, regulatory, policy and best practice
• Contribute to a central repository of documented business processes for use in any future project activities.
• Lead the finance team and mentor the wider finance teams in other facias

Skills/Experience/Knowledge needed

• Proven finance management and supply chain experience both UK and Europe, ideally internationally too
• Excellent external Industry network and knowledge of financial metrics and external best practices in other leading retail organisations
• Commercially aware, strategic thinker who is comfortable managing service, cost and availability in a complex global matrix organisation
• Proven ability to deliver organisational and business process change with experience of being involved in complex projects or change programmes
• Strong operational service orientation and customer facing skills with exemplary communication skills
• Strong analytical, conceptual, and problem‑solving abilities with the ability to interrogate data sets and report to senior level on process improvements and key actions
• Ability to demonstrate the successful delivery of Change Management
• Ability to effectively prioritise and execute tasks in a high‑pressure, ever changing work environment
• Experience working in a team‑oriented, collaborative environment
• Highly self‑motivated and directed
• Strong attention to detail
• A positive outlook, demonstrating a 'can do' attitude to colleagues and partners, treating everyone with respect
• General business awareness: empathising with the priorities and needs of a range of functional business groups. Understanding the subtleties and constraints they work under and tailoring our response to them.
• Collaborative style
• Proven Leadership attributes
• Self‑starter
• Thrives on responsibility and being empowered to take ownership of initiatives and turn them into tangible deliverables
• Driven to continually challenge the norm throughout the Supply Chain, continuous improvement mentality

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.