Global Finance Business Partner G&A

At the Syngenta Group, our 56,000 people across more than 90 countries strive every day to transform agriculture through tailor-made solutions for the benefit of farmers, society and our planet – making us the world's most local agricultural technology and innovation partner.

Role purpose

Finance Business Partner providing operational and strategic decision support for G&A Functions. Focused on enabling productivity through cost transparency, efficiency and savings through anticipation of internal and external business challenges.

Accountabilities

• Global Finance Business Partnering for G&A functions
• Direct financial support to Global G&A Function Leadership in-order to support key business decisions and validate results against KPI's
• Generate business insight through data and financial analysis and provide recommendations to drive business outcomes
• To help develop, design and execute functional strategies from a Finance perspective
• To advise, guide and influence functional leads, senior managers and all kind of stakeholders within function on Finance subjects such as target setting, budgeting, business cases and projects and key trade-off decision
• Clearly communicate a cohesive and concise story around business drivers behind financial data and potential implications
• Partnering with business stakeholders for monthly/YTD performance review. Creating Outlooks for year and ensuring delivery of all departmental objectives
• Support global finance transformation, digitalization projects, Ad hoc analysis, projects and requests as necessary to enable decision support
• Ensure high quality month end closing activities: cost centre review, variance analysis, focussing on understanding root cause and driving actionable recommendations
• Work closely with Finance Teams in Regions, Finance Operations in Centres and in HQ
• Establish and drive adoption of best practices to improve processes/services to business / stakeholders

Accountabilities

• Global Finance Business Partnering for G&A functions
• Direct financial support to Global G&A Function Leadership in-order to support key business decisions and validate results against KPI's
• Generate business insight through data and financial analysis and provide recommendations to drive business outcomes
• To help develop, design and execute functional strategies from a Finance perspective
• To advise, guide and influence functional leads, senior managers and all kind of stakeholders within function on Finance subjects such as target setting, budgeting, business cases and projects and key trade-off decision
• Clearly communicate a cohesive and concise story around business drivers behind financial data and potential implications
• Partnering with business stakeholders for monthly/YTD performance review. Creating Outlooks for year and ensuring delivery of all departmental objectives
• Support global finance transformation, digitalization projects, Ad hoc analysis, projects and requests as necessary to enable decision support
• Ensure high quality month end closing activities: cost centre review, variance analysis, focussing on understanding root cause and driving actionable recommendations
• Work closely with Finance Teams in Regions, Finance Operations in Centres and in HQ
• Establish and drive adoption of best practices to improve processes/services to business / stakeholders

Planning Cycle

• Support the budgeting / latest outlook (LO) process
• Support business stakeholders in the preparation of the Budget / LO through analysis and guidance

• Support and work in coordination with Finance Lead and/or Finance Head to ensure full alignment with Function Strategy
• Support the scenario planning and target setting process

People:

• Direct reports: 3-4

Critical success factors & key challenges

• Ability to work cross functionally and build partnering relationship with different business, finance and functional stakeholders across global and regions
• Attention to details without losing sight of the bigger picture
• Customer centric
• Strong leadership skills
• Team player
• Proactive planner – Strong accountabilty and sense of urgency around timelines
• Adaptable and flexible
• Technology awareness: Understands emerging technology platforms and services across industries, bringing innovation and taking risks in pursuit of valuable digital opportunities

Critical knowledge / capabilities

• Bachelor/Master/MBA in Economics or Finance
• Holds professional Finance qualification i.e. CA, ICWA or equivalent will add advantage.
• Minimum 10 -15 years of experience in multinational environment / FP&A
• Controlling experience (Cost Analysis, Variance Analysis, MIS, P&L reporting and management)
• Experience in the understanding and effective communication of financial results to non-finance stakeholders
• Understanding of reporting, budgeting, forecasting and planning processes
• Sound understanding of key financial concepts, solid theoretical background in finance and accounting and reporting
• Ability to effectively analyse numbers, present conclusions and recommendations in a clear way
• Ability to influence finance and non-finance stakeholders
• Ability to work under pressure while keeping high quality of output
• Good at people management, networking and collaboration skill
• Problem solving to deliver unique or new solutions
• Familiarity working in an international environment in a complex matrix organization
• Operates independently with limited supervision in a complex environment

Critical knowledge / experience required for the job

• Ability to deliver against objectives, deadlines.
• Ability to proactively work in a cross functional environment
• Good working knowledge of Financial Accounting and Management Reporting systems (e.g. SAP , EBI / BW, SBFC, SAC) or should be a quick learner to learn the technology and tools used by Syngenta
• Experience with FP&A tool (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI, Smartsheet) is an added advantage