Commercial Finance Manager in City of London

Build your career at Sazerac! With almost 400 years of rich history, Sazerac Company has thrived as an independent, American family‑owned company with operations in the United States and around the world. Since the 2000s, Sazerac has averaged double digit growth every year! Sazerac Company produces and markets the most award‑winning bourbons and whiskeys in the world, including Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, Eagle Rare, Blanton’s, Traveller, and Sazerac Rye. Additionally, Sazerac owns many popular brands across a range of spirits, including Fireball, Svedka, Wheatley, BuzzBallz, Southern Comfort, Seagram’s V.O., Myers’s, Goldschläger, Parrot Bay, 99 Brand, and Platinum Vodka.

Sazerac UK is one of the UK’s leading spirit distributors with a diverse portfolio of award winning brands. Parented by Sazerac company, the #1 spirits manufacturer in North America that was founded in 1850 in New Orleans. Sazerac UK and Ireland are entrepreneurial businesses that were founded in 1999 and 2017 respectively, with both businesses experiencing exceptional growth that has resulted in becoming one of the top distributors. We believe in bringing the right brands to each consumer and have a flexible approach that allows us to work with brands with zero budget through to those with multi‑million pound budgets.

The Commercial Finance Manager is responsible for partnering with the commercial teams to drive volume and profitability of the UK and Ireland business units whilst owning the governance on pricing and discounts. This will include being the business owner of our price decision tool Vistaar, regular interaction with the sales team to ensure schemes are setup, accrued, paid and closed appropriately. Ensuring controls and insightful analysis is in place that enable policy adherence. A self‑starter who is naturally curious, building relationships with stakeholders to challenge and add value within our customer discounts to deliver profitability.

• Pricing Optimisation
  • Identify and implement execution plans to optimise customer and brand pricing that maximises volume and profit on key brands (BuzzBallz, Southern Comfort, Buffalo Trace, Fireball).
  • Partner with commercial team to deliver annual price increases, addressing outliers (loss making prices), enabling further investment in key brands.
  • Own Vistaar, be the subject matter expert and develop the pricing tool, driving insightful analysis and efficiencies through the Vistaar tool.
  • Implement and maintain pricing guardrails to support profitable brand growth across portfolio.
  • Proactively partner Sales to ensure price plans are submitted accurately avoiding undue delays.
  • Proactively partner Vistaar to ensure software meets commercial and business requirements.
  • Monthly analysis of pricing accuracy comparing ERP system to Vistaar.
  • Ensure accurate integration of pricing from Vistaar into ERP system.
  • Train and coach sales team to complete Vistaar price plans and invoice approvals to avoid undue delays in processing.
  • Drive pricing process improvements with Operations and Account Receivable.
  • Partner internal IT team to ensure timely integration of customer and product master data.
• Depletion Allowance Management
  • Pro‑actively challenge DA accruals with Account Managers and Sales Director.
  • Manage, coach and support the Commercial Finance Analyst to report and provide insightful analysis on the following:
  • Issuing Daily Sales report in PowerBI.
  • Weekly report on month to date DA accrual vs PY and Plan.
  • End of month analysis by customer and brand.
  • Ageing of DA's process and pay all DA accruals and invoices in timely manner.
  • Work with AR team to manage deductions, maximising cashflow and limit aged debt.
  • Ensure DA's are paid on a regular basis (monthly, quarterly, annually).
  • Implement continuous improvement in the depletion allowance (DA) processes that drives efficiency and effectiveness of DA.
  • Implement ongoing ROI analysis of promotions partnering internal stakeholders to ensure efficient use of EPOS data.
  • Partner external IT consultant to ensure ERP system continues to meet business requirements.
• Accurate and timely internal and external reporting
  • Work with Finance Director to enable “one version of the truth reporting” through local Power BI and global systems.
  • Monthly review of DA accrual for completeness and accuracy, providing insightful commentary on key drivers of the mix/variance analysis.
  • Own and prepare month end reporting/analysis and the annual auditing requirements for discounts, including Marketing accruals.
  • Ensuring all external reporting for customer claims are accurate for retrospective invoices.
  • Update forecast volumes (indirect DA’s) in conjunction with sales team to ensure accruals are accurate.
• Maintain financial internal controls
  • Monthly balance sheet reconciliations.
  • Partner the sales leadership team to monitor and track compliance with relevant policies and approval limits.
  • Ensure Discounts reported under IFRS and global accounting policy.
  • Accountable for NBD Value Chains creation and approval.
• Other
  • Commercial support to Finance Director and Finance Controller.
  • Represent UK and Ireland on key global projects (Oracle implementation, Marketing invoice automation).

Qualifications/Requirements:

• ACA/ACCA/CIMA qualified with commercial finance experience.
• Ability to communicate with all levels of an organisation.
• Demonstrated ability to work quickly and effectively in demanding situations.
• Detail oriented and demonstrated ability to perform work with high degree of accuracy.
• Good time management skills and a strong ability to prioritise.
• Working knowledge of MS Office Products (PBI, Word, Excel and Outlook), ability to manage large datasets is an advantage.

Personal Characteristics:

• Have a natural curiosity with the ability to operate in the detail and high level.
• Positive and pro‑active work ethic with a ‘can do’ attitude (Drive for Results mindset).
• Ability to build strong relationships within finance and non‑finance across several geographies.
• Good organisational and interpersonal skills.
• Be a team player with excellent attention to detail.
• Pro‑active in seeking and suggesting ways to improve process/system efficiency.