R2R & S&OP Manager - EU FET

Job description

Job title: R2R & S&OP Manager - EU FET Location: United Kingdom – Kingston office Work Level: 2A Reporting to: Finance Manager S&OP and R2R – EU FET Europe is one of Unilever’s largest and most strategically important regions, generating over €11bn in annual revenue across more than 40 countries and fully managed by Unilever’s five Business Units (BUs). Europe operates in a highly competitive landscape and is critical to Unilever’s market share, growth, and profitability, with a portfolio of some of the company’s most iconic brands including Dove, Knorr, Magnum, Persil, and Simple. The Finance Excellence Team (FET) is a core pillar of the Unilever Finance Operating Model. FET works closely with Marketing, Customer Development, Supply Chain, and Business Unit Finance teams to deliver outstanding business insight, robust processes, and advanced analytics. Working within FET offers exposure to a fast paced, multi BU environment and the opportunity to directly steer frontline business performance while shaping the future of Finance across Europe. Europe FET is a multi disciplined organisation covering Management Reporting, Month End Close, Forecasting, Budget Control, S&OP, Cash up, Controls, and executive decision support. Together, the teams drive a high performance culture, strong pan European collaboration, and a continuous improvement agenda focused on resilience, standardisation, and value creation. Strengthening S&OP effectiveness, forecast reliability, and business steering across Europe is a key priority for the five European BU CFOs. Through the Europe FET agenda, the S&OP Manager plays a central role in enabling superior decision making, stronger governance, and a Compass fit operating model across all European markets. This is a high exposure role and a significant opportunity to build a reputation as a strong finance leader at the heart of one of Europe’s most critical performance and transformation agendas. ________________________________________ Profile This person sees R2R and S&OP as one connected performance-management agenda. They establish confidence in the actuals, convert results into forward-looking insight, and ensure that one consistent financial story supports European decision-making. The role requires a strong finance leader who is comfortable with complexity, constructive challenge and difficult trade-offs, while building engagement, capability and accountability across teams and markets.________________________________________ Main Job Purpose The R2R & S&OP Manager - Europe FET is accountable for the quality, governance and continuous improvement of European management reporting, month-end close and S&OP processes. The role ensures that accurate actuals and a reliable, unbiased forecast are connected into one coherent view of performance, risk and opportunity across Business Units and markets. The role provides strategic oversight across the R2R and S&OP teams, strengthens financial control and forecast discipline, leads cross-market interventions, and translates complex reporting and planning outcomes into clear recommendations for senior Finance and Supply Chain stakeholders.________________________________________ Key Responsibilities 1. R2R, close and reporting leadership · Own the European R2R performance agenda, covering management reporting quality, month-end close discipline and the integrity of reported results. · Ensure robust reconciliation between financial and management reporting views, including turnover, COGS, profitability and other key P&L lines. · Provide oversight of P&L sign-off, reporting controls, data hygiene and issue resolution across markets and Business Units. · Drive timely, accurate and first-time-right delivery of close and reporting activities in line with agreed calendars, materiality principles and governance. · Ensure reporting issues are identified, escalated and resolved through clear ownership and sustainable corrective action. 2. European S&OP and forecast performance leadership · Own and continuously improve forecast accuracy and bias across Europe. · Lead the European S&OP and cash-up performance agenda across all Business Units and markets. · Ensure one reliable, unbiased forecast supports decisions on service, margin, cost to serve and profitability. · Identify structural opportunities to improve forecast reliability, P&L visibility and value steering. · Provide Finance leadership with clear visibility of forecast risks, opportunities, assumptions and required actions. 3. Integrated actuals-to-forecast performance steering · Connect actual performance, close outcomes and forecast assumptions into one coherent European performance narrative. · Ensure recurring reporting issues, allocation errors and data-quality gaps are reflected in forecast risk assessment and root-cause action plans. · Use actual-versus-forecast analysis to challenge assumptions, improve forecast quality and identify emerging business risks or opportunities. · Lead cross-functional performance discussions that move from explaining results to deciding actions. 4. Governance, controls and accountability · Own clear governance frameworks for R2R, S&OP and cash-up, including standards, timelines, sign-offs, controls and escalation routes. · Ensure disciplined submissions, adjustments, manual interventions and approvals, with transparent ownership and auditability. · Drive consistency in KPI tracking, control execution, performance challenge and market accountability. · Align European ways of working with relevant global standards, reporting instructions and finance best practices. 5. Senior stakeholder leadership · Act as the Finance lead for the combined European R2R and S&OP agenda. · Lead discussions on reporting quality, forecast quality, risks, trade-offs and value opportunities with Business Unit Finance, Supply Chain leadership, controllers and global process stakeholders. · Provide concise, evidence-based recommendations and decision support to senior leaders. · Build strong partnerships across a complex matrix while constructively challenging unclear ownership, weak controls or unsupported assumptions. 6. Cross-market intervention and escalation · Act as the escalation point for material reporting issues, governance breaches, forecast-quality concerns and delivery risks. · Prioritise cross-market interventions based on business impact, control risk and recurring root causes. · Support markets in resolving structural, system, process or stakeholder challenges that affect reporting or forecasting outcomes. · Ensure lessons learned are converted into standardised improvements across Europe. 7. Transformation and continuous improvement · Lead simplification, standardisation and automation across R2R, close, reporting, S&OP and cash-up processes. · Drive the evolution of European forecasting and performance-management routines, including quarterly forecasting and enhanced cash-up governance. · Promote modern analytics, stronger data governance and scalable solutions that reduce manual work and increase insight. · Embed a continuous-improvement mindset and a resilient, process-led operating model across the regional FET network. 8. People and capability leadership · Set clear priorities and performance expectations across the R2R and S&OP agenda. · Coach team members to strengthen financial acumen, analytical thinking, business partnering and professional judgement. · Create an inclusive, high-performance environment that encourages ownership, learning, collaboration and constructive challenge. · Build succession, knowledge sharing and process resilience across the team. ________________________________________ Finance Skills · Experience in R2R, management reporting, financial control, S&OP, forecasting, business planning or financial performance management roles. · Strong understanding of the relationship between financial reporting, management reporting and forward-looking performance steering. · Proven business-partnering and senior stakeholder-management capability. · Proven ability to strengthen governance, simplify complexity and drive sustainable change in high-pressure environments. · Experience leading teams or multi-market agendas in a regional, above-market or matrix environment is strongly preferred. · Experience with finance transformation, automation, process standardisation or data-led performance improvement is an advantage. ________________________________________ Profile Professional Skills & Experience · Experience in R2R, management reporting, financial control, S&OP, forecasting, business planning or financial performance management roles. · Strong understanding of the relationship between financial reporting, management reporting and forward-looking performance steering. · Proven business-partnering and senior stakeholder-management capability. · Proven ability to strengthen governance, simplify complexity and drive sustainable change in high-pressure environments. · Experience leading teams or multi-market agendas in a regional, above-market or matrix environment is strongly preferred. · Experience with finance transformation, automation, process standardisation or data-led performance improvement is an advantage. Leadership Qualities · Strong ownership mindset and bias for action. · Combines attention to control and detail with a clear commercial and forward-looking perspective. · Comfortable challenging established norms, unsupported assumptions and inconsistent standards. · Able to make balanced decisions under pressure and maintain focus on material business outcomes. · Builds trust across functions and markets while holding others accountable for commitments. · Invests in people, c NOTES What We Offer Not only do we offer a competitive salary and pension scheme, we also offer an annual bonus, subsidised gym membership, a discounted staff shop and shares. You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with our renowned and exciting brands in a flexible and hybrid working environment. Whilst the role is advertised on a full-time basis, we would be happy to discuss possible flexible working options and what this may look like for you. We are a key advocate of wellbeing and offer a variety of support for our people including hubs, programmes and development opportunities. We strive to achieve a family-friendly and inclusive workplace and to, above all, create possibilities for all. Diversity at Unilever is about inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together for better business performance. We embrace diversity in our workforce. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity. We are also more than happy to provide reasonable adjustments during our application and interview process to enable you to be present your best self. To find out more, including about our Employee Resource Groups, please click here Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Unilever | Unilever. 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