Associate Director - Finance Business Partner

Overview

Serve as the Financial and Strategic Advisor to the Beverages GM and Beverages Finance Director. The Category & Franchise Finance Planner plays a pivotal role in shaping and driving Business Decisions, financial performance by providing strategic support to key Leadership team members in the Beverage Structure. The role requires the incumbent to proactively lead the beverage category and franchise function. The role directly leads planning/forecasting the two biggest cost lines – STB and A&M, including driving end-to-end discussions with Category/Franchise stakeholders as well as Bottler discussions/negotiations. Requires strong understanding of the Beverages value chain and financial planning acumen. The Role partners cross-functionally across the entire beverages structure from Franchise, Category, Growth Office, RGM, Insights, R&D, Supply Chain as well as Bottling Partners.

Responsibilities

Daily Management

• Franchise Partnership: Build bottler relationships, lead the discussion on STB discussions with Bottler, Financial Planning / Forecasting STB Spends, Build shadow Bottler P&L and Support JBP and ad-hoc bottler engagement discussions on issues facing the Business, support franchise teams, GM and other cross-functional teams.

• Category Partnership: Lead the Planning and forecasting of the Marketing Spends, actively engaging with the Marketing leadership team on the Marketing Budget, modification as well as distribution across brands/channels. Finance Governance on Stagegate Process, Innovation Process, Hold the governance on ROI based investment prioritization, support category teams, GM and other cross-functional teams. New Channels. Finance Business Partner for New Emerging Growth Channels (AFH & Ecom), Drive investment decisions and Channel profitability improvement.

• Governance and Stewardship: Support business and governance agreements (BDA, CMA, EBA).

• Strategic Finance: Drive building up of Long Term Financial Projections; Hold governance on ensuring Business Decisions are in-line/accretive to the Long term P&Ls. Drive effective Performance management reviews: Month end reviews, forecast reviews, MBR, etc. forecasts, risk mitigation, long-term financial projections, strategic investments, analytics, bottler shadow P&Ls, system value chain and JV financials, revenue management support, competitor analysis, capex governance, OPEX and marketing spend efficiency.

• Stakeholder Management: Role requires effective stakeholder management across Franchise, Category, Growth Office, RGM, Insights, R&D, Supply Chain as well as Bottling Partners.

AOP Exercise

• Partner with Cross-functional stakeholders (Franchise, RGM, Category) to lead the Category and Commercial AOP Agenda – Volume Build up, Mix Management, Pack Price Architecture, A&M/STB build up.

• Drive Choices discussion.

• Navigate discussions during year to drive delivery of AOP targets.

Strategic Partnership

• Serve as a strategic advisor to the India General Manager, Chief Marketing Officer, and Leadership Team, driving high-impact business initiatives, shaping long-term growth strategies, and leading resolution of critical business challenges.

• Competition analysis/benchmarking.

• Business Development: Actively partner and contribute to whitespace opportunities, new geographies, channels, brand growth and business models.

• People Management: Coaching, development, training, bench planning, OHS initiatives and engagement across teams including GBS.

Qualifications

MBA from Top-tier institute or Chartered Accountant with 9 to 12 years of experience with experience in Business Planning and FP&A.