Senior Process Owner, Travel & Expense

Location: London, UK

Reports to: Head of Continuous Improvement

Contract: Full time and permanent position

CHANEL

At Chanel, our values are grounded in creating the conditions for people to perform at their best and feel fulfilled and confident in their work.

As part of the Future of Finance initiative, Chanel underwent a global implementation of Concur, a travel and expense (T&E) management solution to harmonise our processes across the Source to Pay value chain (“S2P”). This rollout has helped harmonise the booking and expense claims processes within the Finance organisation, optimise processes, and help us shape our future Travel & Expense requirements.

Working with the Global Source to Pay Process Owner (GPO), this role is critical to driving process improvement initiatives, and activities related to Global T&E processes and strategy. You will leverage your expertise in project management, process optimization, and automation to refine and implement standard methodologies for end-to-end T&E operations.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, analyse processes, and drive efficiency to optimize the T&E operations. As part of the Continuous Improvement team, who is in charge of maintaining, continuously improving, and supporting all processes related to Source to Pay & T&E (team of 10 people) you are there to ensure CHANEL reaches our S2P objectives, including the digitalisation of T&E experience.

About The Role

Acting as the subject matter expert, this is a strategic and challenging role deploying technologically driven T&E processes whilst working with various regional and local markets and ensuring compliance with globally defined policies.

You'll be working alongside a regional process organisation, as well as the Chanel divisions, Super Users, T&E application owners, to enable successful deployments and support country project teams with functional expertise of processes in scope of transition by supporting in business change assessment, testing and go live enabling a clear and error proof deployment of CHANEL driven enhancements or as part of the Concur Releases and upgrades. This role is based in London, with travel to markets where required.

Some of the responsibilities will include:

Process Ownership

• Management of the global functional Travel and Expense team.

• T&E Reporting on the global, regional and market level definition and implementation

• Travel Management coordination.

• Local markets Travel Manager community animation and Travel Management best practices sharing through regular sharing session organization in relation with the T&E BPO.

• Expertise in T&E processes, irrespective of the solution/system used, whether Coupa, Concur; D365 (non-exhaustive list).

• Drive continuous improvements / iterations on process landscape to deliver a capable, stable meaningful business process that supports the business agenda.

• Review local process variations to standard model in alignment with principles defined by the Global Process Owners (GPO) and review/approve/reject with the governance boards as appropriate to minimize the number of ‘local’ process exceptions.

• On-going knowledge transfer into markets on process changes/modifications.

• Point of escalation for any process related change request from deployment teams.

• Work with country teams to drive the implementation of pre-requisites and alignment to the operating model to ensure early identification of country variances to standard processes and translate compliance needs (process & legal) into the processes for seamless execution.

• Directly managing the process lead.

• Leading potential new Travel Agency implementation (Project management, coordination) and Travel management related tools and solutions

• Supplier follow-up to include participation to regular business review to ensure SLA appliance and follow-up volumes.

Control and Reporting

• Identification of all risks in processes, plus identification and implementation of key controls required to mitigate any gaps and subsequent risks.

• Working with Internal Audit to monitor and report on the internal Control Process.

• Signing off on risk and control matrix and risk register with Internal Audit and the Global Process Owner

• Responsible for defining and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) / establishing targets within the processes and reviewing performance at agreed intervals.

• Travel policy alignment, program implementation and monitoring

Evolutions and Automation

• Driving further elimination / simplification / automation and/or offshoring of the Cost Management processes.

• Implement new technologies in the form of automation and robotics to drive process efficiency and value.

• Continuously scan the external / internal environment to benchmark, adopt best practices & generate transformation initiatives.

Communications and Training

• Write, review, and sign off process documentation & SOP’s including market localisations.

• To own T&E process streams SOPs and work with the Change and Communications Lead to ensure training material are kept up to date as changes are implemented.

• Create T&E process community made up of regional/ market SME's to ensure alignment across regions and share common issues and best practice.

• Build strong relationships with regional leaders and key stakeholders ensuring high levels of buy in and confidence in the global system.

What you will bring/have

• Experience of working in a complex, matrix organisation with a global scope.

• Expertise in influencing change on a global and local level

• Travel and finance background with a good understanding of T&E processes and process compliance.

• Proven T&E experience with a Tier 1 platform and Travel Management Providers (ideally Concur and Amex GBT).

• Experience working in a Finance / Internal Control / Travel.

• Excellent communication skills (both verbal and written), confidence in presenting virtually and directly to large/senior audiences.

• Detail-orientated and with good data analysis skills.

• Proactive nature, time management, prioritisation skills, and a strong customer focus.

• Ability to think strategically, self-motivated, and capable of working with little supervision.

• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills.

• This role will be expected to write and speak in English. French and any additional language skills would be celebrated.

You are energised by

• Working in global organisations with the highest degree of complexity.

• Working in and with a flexible, highly professional open-minded and multicultural team.

• Successfully prioritising and efficiently managing multiple assignments.

• Building meaningful relationships with your stakeholders and pre-empting their needs.

At Chanel, we are focused on creating an inclusive culture that nurtures personal growth, contributing to collective progress. We believe the uniqueness of each individual increases the diversity, complementarity, and effectiveness of our teams. We strongly encourage your application, as we value the perspective, experience, and potential you could bring to CHANEL.