Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis, APAC

Job Description

Universal Products & Experiences
Universal Products & Experiences (UP&E) globally drives expansion of the company's intellectual properties, franchises, characters and stories through innovative physical and digital products, content, and consumer experiences. Games, fashion, and toys only scratch the surface of ways we take Universal stories and characters from the screen and put them into fans' daily lives around the globe. Along with franchise brand management, Universal Products & Experiences' core businesses include Consumer Products and Games and Digital Platforms. We take properties such as Jurassic World, Minions, Back to the Future, and Trolls from our creative content engines like Universal Pictures, Illumination and DreamWorks Animation partner with best-in-class category leaders (e.g. Mattel, Lego, Reebok, Target, Microsoft, etc.) to create amazing products for our fans.
Job Description
The Manager, Finance is an integral member of the NBCUniversal, UP&E Consumer Products Financial, Planning & Analytics team, responsible for providing operational and financial support to the APAC Consumer Products team, primarily supporting the Japan and Korea markets across all categories (Toys, Fashion & Living, Consumables, Stationery, Publishing, etc). The primary functions will be financial planning, forecasting and analysis, as well as support business development to drive growth and organizational performance. The qualified candidate must be highly analytical and able to multi-task on competing initiatives.
KEY ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
• Support Regional Finance Director across all financial cycles for Japan and Korea markets remotely in Australia: Annual Budget, Quarterly Forecasts, Quarterly Close and Long Range Planning cycles; assist in delivering presentations to senior leadership team
• Build and manage separate annual full P&L (revenue and costs) budget, forecasts and close for Japan and Korea market and own variance analysis and insights
• Partner with Japan and Korea Business/Commercial leads to achieve annual financial targets and provide trend/industry analysis to support key decision for business expansion and potential new business opportunities
• Ensure accuracy and consistency of financial data through validation of revenues and costs across systems and reports
• Identify key financial risks and opportunities, analyse variances between actuals and forecasts, identifying key drivers and recommending corrective actions
• Support cross-regional APAC functions including managing APAC revenue pivot tables and consolidating regional forecast deliverables
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other Departments across the organization (Commercial, Controllership, Legal, IT

Core Responsibilities
• Perform, report and deliver financial forecast analysis comparing vs. budget and prior year performance in forms of excel financial models
• Support licensees in forecasting and royalty submission processes, utilizing internal web-based systems and tools.
• Facilitate financial forecast discussions with key market commercial heads on a remote basis, analyze and identify key business drivers, risks and opportunities
• Own the Japan and Korea presentation decks for annual budget and quarterly forecast reviews and assist with Regional APAC presentation deck to be presented to the Senior management team
• Assist in research and data-driven insights on market landscape and key business metrics to help uncover business trends and opportunities on an ad-hoc basis
• Identify and implement improvements to forecasting, budgeting and reporting processes, including financial systems and tools to increase overall efficiency and accuracy
Key to the success of this role is your ability to provide strong technical support to your key stakeholders as well as promoting a culture of continuous improvement by leading and supporting process improvement initiatives across financial and operational areas.
Recurring processes:
• Annual budgeting process
• Quarterly financial forecasting / pacing and close
• Quarterly licensee reporting of royalties
Qualifications
QUALIFICATIONS
The Essentials:
• Minimum of 5 years relevant work experience in a finance function. Direct experience in Media & Entertainment industry, Consumer Products, or Retail Environment is a plus.)
• Qualified accounting and finance skills (i.e., certified accountant, Mastery in business administrations) are plus
• Advanced Excel skills (ability to create financial models from PowerPivot, Power Query and Data Modeling)
• You bring creativity into your data-driven presentations and align with our storytelling mission to influence your stakeholders.

Desired Characteristics:
• Experience with financial systems such as SAP and qualified accounting and finance skills (i.e., certified accountant, Mastery in business administration is not required but will help you stand out.
• Self-Starter: Someone who is driven to always be moving forward while working on competing projects.
• Precision: There's no detail too small for you to notice. We take pride in doing the right things the right way.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written
• Team Player: We are passionate in all that we do, and we are respectful of those we work with because we believe we are more dynamic, and better, together.
• Innovators: You're always solving, which means that multi-tasking comes as second nature and you're able to maintain focus with deadlines.
• Visionaries: You take a proactive approach to problem solving and are always in search of what's next.
• Experience in business partnering with international teams is also a plus
• Native/ Fluent language skills in Japanese (ability to facilitate and run discussions) would be a plus

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-864bk6-18-97-14-88-42 in your application.