Job title

Finance Manager - Governance, Risk and Control – Clothing & Home

Business area

Finance

Reward level and salary

D

Reporting to

Sophie Carton – Senior Finance Manager, Change & Controls

Scope of the role

You will be the day-to-day contact within our C&H business unit helping to deliver against the group risk and controls strategy. You will provide support to C&H teams (first line of defence) in identifying and monitoring risks, and in maintaining a strong control environment, through ongoing partnering and provision of effective guidance and training. This role requires excellent stakeholder management and communication skills to discuss risk, process and controls with senior finance and non-finance colleagues, supporting consistency and compliance across the function.

Whilst the role reports into Finance, you will be expected to work across both the Finance function and the wider C&H business to support initiatives and projects that improve the control environment.

M&S is an iconic British retailer focused primarily on own label businesses within Food and Clothing & Home (C&H), as well as M&S Bank. We operate as a family of businesses, selling high-quality, great-value products in the UK and in 71 international markets. Together our 64,000 colleagues across our stores, support centres, warehouses and supply chain serve around 32 million customers each year. Our vision is to be the most trusted retailer, doing the right thing for our customers, with quality products at the heart of everything we do.

Our C&H business is in an exciting period of growth, with significant transformation programmes underway to reset the function and set it up to deliver long-term, sustainable, profitable growth for our investors, colleagues, and wider communities. C&H delivers c.48% of M&S group operating profit, selling product across Womenswear, Menswear, Lingerie, Kidswear, Home and Beauty, in stores and through the M&S.com website and app. While primarily an own-brand business, we have a growing external brands department selling some of the nation’s favourite clothing, home and beauty brands – delivered through a mix of brand acquisitions (e.g. Jaeger) and brand partnerships (e.g. Early Learning Centre).

• Facilitating risk management across all areas of C&H to identify and assess key risks and controls, and drive forward mitigation plans, working with risk leads across all functions including logistics, sourcing, finance and commercial teams. This will include bi-annual updates to the Group Risk team, to support disclosures within M&S’ external reporting.
• Providing risk, process and controls expertise at the business unit level, including:
  • controls support for new business processes, projects and integration of acquisitions.
  • leading process reviews / projects that challenge existing ways of working and drive business unit level control improvements.
  • increasing awareness and knowledge of risk management and controls throughout C&H, driving an improved controls culture across the function.
• Liaising closely with Internal and External audit and the relevant C&H teams to help support effective and efficient planning and scoping of audits, and timely closure of audit actions.
• Tracking of open Risk, Internal Audit and Finance Change & Control actions in a timely manner and providing reporting of this to C&H leadership.
• Chairing quarterly risk & control updates at C&H Leadership Team meetings, and monthly risk & control meetings with the C&H Finance Director.
• Reporting into the Audit & Risk Committee annually on the C&H risk and control environment.
• Providing ad hoc support for central projects delivered by the Group Change & Control team e.g. enhancing controls around non-financial ESG disclosures.

JOB TITLE

Senior Finance Manager Control & Change

BUSINESS AREA / UNIT

Finance

JOB PURPOSE

To partner the wider business and finance teams through developing and maintaining a strong financial control environment in line with the increasing regulatory environment. To aid business growth and the transformation of M&S by supporting change and new business initiatives through identification of key control risks and establishing efficient and well controlled processes.

REPORTS TO

Group Financial Controller

NUMBER OF DIRECT REPORTS & TEAM SIZE

Direct reports: 2

Total Change & Control team size: 6

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

Area of accountability

• Delivery of the Finance strategy objective to achieve an ‘advanced’ controls maturity status
• Act as the senior financial controls team presence in the Manchester Business Service Centre, business partnering senior Finance leadership in the Manchester, including supporting with best practice for controls and processes, and advising on control changes as a result of new process or process change
• Lead and direct the SAP GRC team responsible for the SAP Access Control ruleset in SAP GRC
• Responsibility for driving the bi-annual Finance Risk register review with senior finance stakeholders, including the completion of associated actions
• Support the development and delivery of the annual Controls testing workplan, and reporting results to the Finance Leadership Team. This includes monitoring controls Key Risk Indicators to proactively identify processes experiencing issues with controls
• Advising and partnering the evolving business (subsidiaries, joint ventures or new business acquisitions) to ensure appropriate governance, controls and processes are in place to mitigate financial risk, including where relevant, entity level controls
• Responsibility for maintaining the Financial Reporting Controls management system (SureCloud), and PowerBI models that drive financial controls reporting
• Champion and support the continued enhancement of the finance controls framework across Finance, including updating and monitoring of key risk indicators, creation and delivery of controls learning & development training and driving a ‘Find, Fix, Learn’ (FFL) approach to issues identified
• Delivery of our controls framework to mitigate risk of financial misstatements through identifying key controls, control owners, a robust programme of controls testing and documentation, specifically:
  • Document “as is” accounting, process, and controls by working with process owners and IT colleagues
  • Document, track and agree changes to process and controls to remediate control weaknesses with key stakeholders
  • Document the “to be” accounting, process and controls; and train people to operate “to be” controls
  • Communicate and report the findings from testing to senior Finance and Business stakeholders as required
  • Monitor and drive the completion of any remediation arising from the process reviews and subsequent testing
  • Work with the BSC functional teams to support the integration of new business initiatives into the BSC in a controlled manner to minimise the financial statement risk for the business
  • Leverage the use of data analytics procedures and techniques where possible to increase testing efficiency
  • Develop and deliver relevant training for control owners and operators
  • Support Finance stakeholders with ad-hoc process and controls queries/improvement requests from the business as required

Leadership and nature of impact

• Confident in presenting recommendations and advise finance colleagues on key control issues, remediation solutions and best practice
• Drive a culture of controls and risk mitigation across the finance team and business wide senior control owners by bringing energy and fresh ideas to financial controls
• Line management responsibility and day-to-day coaching and leadership of two Senior Finance Analysts
• Indirect support for wider Manchester based C&C team members through ad-hoc guidance and advice (this is not formal line management responsibility)

Job & business knowledge & expertise

• Experienced Chartered Accountant (ACA, ACCA, ACMA)
• Extensive financial controls experience (Industry in a similar role/Internal audit or Professional services advisory/External audit) – controls testing & design, best practice
• Strong knowledge of relevant technical standards e.g. US SOX, COSO, 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code changes, including Provision 29
• Shared services experience
• SAP S4 knowledge or experience advising on financial control impacts of ERP system change, desirable
• Experience/understanding of IT General Controls, desirable

Problem solving

• Willingness to challenge the status quo, and a drive for continuous improvement
• Support on ongoing projects in the Control & Change team e.g., entity level controls assessment, end-to-end process reviews for new business initiatives (recent examples include third party brands, MyHR implementation, drop ship)
• Identify opportunities for control automation and collaborate with teams to drive process change to automate controls ,this includes championing the use of SureCloud (GRC tool) across control owners, control evidence owners and control peer testers

Interpersonal skills

• Self-starter who possesses the ability to the help drive Financial Control strategy and a team, as well as operate independently
• Effective communication skills (verbal and written) to translate control risks to senior stakeholders (Audit Committee, Finance Leadership Group, and non-finance colleagues)
• Proven ability to build strong collaborative relationships and influence individuals and key stakeholders
• Strong project management skills with experience of planning and delivering on multiple workstreams/projects with competing deadlines
• Work collaboratively with Internal Audit, Finance and Data & Technology to support delivery of the Group Financial Control Strategy and Finance Risk agenda

Key relationships and stakeholders

• Group Financial Controller
• Head of Finance Business Service Centre
• Head of Record to report
• Head of Internal Audit and wider IA team
• Wider Finance teams, including BU Finance Directors and Heads of Finance
• External Audit Controls team based in Manchester

What you will get from the role

• Frequent exposure to Group Financial Controller, the wider Finance leadership group and Group Finance Director (as required)
• Play a key part in driving the M&S Financial Controls Strategy (examples of current key projects across the team include: preparing M&S for the requirements of the 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code Provision 29, on-going SAP 4 Hana project and consolidation of Ocado Retail joint venture). Development opportunities, if successful, to drive key elements of these projects and gain exposure to high profile leaders across the business.
• Oversight and understanding of the Group Corporate risk management framework
• Development of a broad network across M&S finance and commercial teams

Key benefits

• Flexible working approach, with a balance of being in the office and working from home
• 33 days holiday (including bank holidays)
• 20% discount on all M&S products
• A range of well-being support (including free virtual GP for you and immediate family)
• 25% off gym memberships, access to online fitness classes and discounts for complementary health services, such as nutrition and lifestyle coaching