Finance at AstraZeneca has a clear vision to become trusted partners, creating value and leading change. As such, Finance has a pivotal role to play in shaping our long-term financial health, partnering to deliver great results through insight, delivering excellence in financial operations and safeguarding AstraZeneca’s assets and reputation.

In Finance Transformation, we support this ambition by being trusted partners for change excellence and building long-term capabilities to make us future-fit. This is where you could come in. Working in Finance Transformation is fast-paced, dynamic and challenging. We are looking for people who want to seize the opportunity to take an exciting step in their personal development journey and play a fundamental part of delivering a world-class finance organisation. 

This role supports the Standard Product Costing Business Process Lead for a global manufacturing accounting project where the key objective is to improve and standardise the end-to-end manufacturing accounting processes, delivering more granular cost performance reporting and insights to enable better decision-making. The processes covered within this project are Standard Product Costing, Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and Performance Measurement, split across SPC (Standard Product Costing) and APC (Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and Performance Measurement).

The project is replacing existing non-standard, manual, regionally defined processes with efficient and effective global processes, underpinned by consistent systems configurations and tooling. The scope of the project covers the largest sites in AstraZeneca’s manufacturing network across APAC, EMEA and NAM. The programme deliverables are highly visible across Global, Regional and manufacturing site audiences and will form an important input into supporting Operations identify initiatives to optimise production and hence achieve the target of reducing COGM by 2% per annum (realising the business case of the project).

The Process Design Manager will provide accurate analysis and insights, supporting the Process Design Lead and Business Process Lead in designing and supporting the deployment of AstraZeneca Operations’ new global functional global processes, standards and policies. In addition you will be getting significant exposure to other process areas (ensuring that we have a cohesive end-to-end solution). Driving what is right and not just what is easy, is a fundamental approach we are taking across all process areas.

You will have experience in this process area within a manufacturing context and have significant project experience, being comfortable preparing, and supporting the facilitation, execution and write up of workshops with multiple stakeholders to insightfully drive out requirements. In addition, whilst the Business Process Lead will be focussed on driving business adoption and supporting regions that have gone live, you, alongside the Process Design Lead should be comfortable working (with some support) semi independently conducting deep dives, performing integrity led analysis of business scenarios, drafting required materials for Design Authority briefings and providing options and recommendations for the Business Process Lead’s decision and then onward presentation to relevant stakeholders.

The scope of this process area incorporates costing master data, material procurement pricing, direct and indirect cost allocations, calculation of local standard costs and calculation of group costs.

This role will require an understanding across Standard Product Costing, Cost Accounting, Inventory Accounting and Performance Measurement as well as some knowledge of manufacturing processes. The role requires liaising with other process areas and workstreams across the project and with the end users of the solutions, providing insights and guidance to ensure successful delivery of the target outcomes.

Your new role!

• Support in the development and implementation of standardised best practise global standard product costing processes delivering efficiency and effectiveness, including defining and running workshops, capturing outputs and interpreting to ensure clear requirements are defined

• Support GFS (finance shared services) in adapting globally standardised standard product costing processes & policies to ensure regional compliance

• Support the Business Process Lead and Process Design Lead in defending and driving the adoption of the solution, analysing deviations or localisation to determine where there is valid justification driven by business criticality or statutory requirements

• Provide analysis to support the definition of the SAP ECC and SAP BW solutions, based on defined requirements ensuring the end deliverable meets the requirements laid out by the Design team

• Support in the development and implementation of global cost accounting policies, standard operating procedures (SOPs), KPIs and month-end-close processes SLA’s in accordance with:

• International Accounting Standards

• AZ internal policies and guidelines

• Industry best practise

• Support the development of global standardised standard product costing reports (identifying standard SAP ECC reports, defining SAP BW reports and providing knowledge transfer and training to end users on interpreting reports)

• Support the development of process and systems roles according to segregation of duties

• Contribute into Standard Product Costing related master data definitions, usage and policies – including analysis of business scenarios and their impact on master data

• Support UAT and validation of test results, including analysis to support defect resolution

• Support the production of communications and training materials

• Be the change champion and assisting in the governance of change management

Your essential qualifications, skills and experiences:

• Degree or equivalent professional qualification

• Experience of costing processes and best practices within the Pharma industry

• Experience in designing best practise processes, process re-engineering skills (e.g. Lean Six Sigma)

• An understanding of relevant International Accounting Standards

• Some knowledge of standard costing process design and relevant controls

• Able to support Leads in client workshops to drive design decisions, solutioning and system demonstration, including defining, drafting, facilitating and gathering outputs for workshops

• Strong Excel modelling and analytical skills

• Hands on experience of SAP ECC and BW systems including providing functional expertise, hands-on delivery, customization, guidance, presentation, and instruction

• Experience of at least 1 SAP full implementation project lifecycle (from a functional perspective), preferably from scoping and planning through to post go live support

• Demonstrable success in a team environment seeking and providing coaching and feedback to team members

• Ability to manage appropriate stakeholder relationships in a project environment

• Experience of working in large projects with a multivendor environment

• Experience of developing project plans and project management

• Possess and apply strong written and oral communication skills together with effective negotiation, influencing and presentation skills

• Proven ability to understand, prioritise and execute multiple projects/tasks effectively

• Experience of change management and change management processes

• Process design experience

• Oral and written fluency in Business English

Desirable:

• Chartered accountancy qualification (or part qualification)

• Work experience in supply chain finance

• Prior experience and knowledge of SAP, SAP BW and BW on HANA functional capabilities as well as business processes and industry best practises

• An understanding of the functional, application and technical architectural elements of an SAP programme.

• Prior knowledge of upcoming changes in SAP FICO/CO-PC with SAP S/4HANA, as well as expertise in the latest SAP financial technologies

• Experience preparing design documents (User Requirement Specification, Functional specification, Solution design document)

• Solid working knowledge of SAP & BI tooling (BW would be a bonus)

Competitive rates of pay apply

Opening date: 1st July 2021

Closing date: 22nd July 2021

Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity.  We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills.  We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.  We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics.  We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.