Controlling Manager Belgium

PRESENTATION OF THE CONTEXT AND TEAM

The organization Strategic Programs and Group Operations Finance and Risk regroups the transversal functions within Group Operations in the areas of Tax, Corporate Legal, Accounting, Finance Controlling & Performance, Compliance, Data Privacy & Internal Control. They are composed of 5 teams with respective accountabilities:

• Strategic Plan, Efficiency and Finance Transformation

• Manage and actively follow the objectives of the strategic plan of Group Operations, productivity as well as the reports on investment/profitability

• Manage the finance transformation, improvement, and simplification of the finance processes (example: invoicing, client management) and internal (BU responsibility)

• Costing

• Centre of expertise for costing to support the transformation of AXA GO in order to evolve the model of « cost control » to a model of « product orientated », transparent and competitive

• methods for calculating costs,

• Controlling

• Produce the detailed financial information, up to date and targeted to allow analysis of changes and assist the decision-making process

• Create regular dialogue and confidence with the entities through governance, invoicing and structured, transparent reports

• Ensure a financial support to operational teams in charge of « IT Products » and « Non-IT »

• Accounting / Tax & Corporate Legal

• Harmonize the accounting procedures (Technical / Application Products and countries)

• Simplify the inter-company contracts and align of the pricing policy

• Produce reliable and accurate accounting data respecting the accounting principles recognized locally and by the Group

• Put in place the global Corporate governance which will ensure the conformity to the applicable legal obligations within each country

• Compliance & Internal Control

• Support to team to guarantee the respect of and adequate application of the relevant regulations (data protection, legal provisions, sanctions ….) in the different processes in the departments

The teams share a common objective to improve productivity through:

• The simplification and the improvement of finance process and rules

• The globalization of the governance, the alignment of procedures between countries and securing the adherence to applicable legal obligations within each country

• The management of strategic objectives and the regular creation of reports on investment and profitability

• The financial support for operational teams

POSITION MISSIONS & MAIN ACTIVITIES

Main missions:

The Controlling Manager will support finance missions by managing the local controlling activities and support costing.

The Controlling Manager is to be a trustful partner for the business, clients and top management, providing key insights into the activity and meaningful advice to help steer the business.

The objectives are to:

• Bring fast business insights to key decision makers in the Group Operations (GO) organization

• Track, assess and report performance of the GO organization

• Enable day-to-day operations by monitoring budgets and cost through standard workflow processes

• Be the financial partner for the Belgian entities. Create trust by providing timely, transparent, and adapted information

• Contribute to a solid operations and accounting foundation

Main activities of the position include:

• Managing budget & forecast processes at local level to achieve data quality and timely submissions to group as well as providing insights about key variances and evolutions to internal stakeholders.

• Ensuring adequate tools and processes are in place to achieve desired objectives.

• Producing key business drivers and proposing recommendations to achieve higher performance levels

• Providing regular analysis of actuals vs budget variances to group and senior leadership

• Supporting operational senior leadership with Finance inputs or ad hoc analysis as needed

• Promoting good communication and trust with clients through governance and reports

• Initiating and participating in dialogue about financial outcomes of client relationship

• Ensuring compliance with AXA Group Financial standards

• Supervise implementation of product pricing / costing models at a local level

• Challenge both finance and operational teams, that could be under direct or matrix management, to provide the best analysis and decision proposals to the local management and global finance team.

• Deciding on investment strategy by:

  • Validating the value creation for AXA Group (Business Cases, Appropriation Requests …)

  • Considering cash and liquidity risks

• High level repartition (indicative NEW JOB) :

• Team management 25%

  • Team organization / management

  • Secure succession plan

  • Federate and inspire teams

• Team supervision 25%

  • Supervise and guaranty the quality of team’s productions (incl. offshoring / nearshoring)

  • KPIs follow up

• Interactions / Stakeholder management 30%

  • Relation / coordination with other finance Exec.

  • Stakeholder management with AXA Go local top management

  • Interactions with Group and OPCOs Execs to demonstrate the transparency and build the trustwith AXA Go

• Specific projects 20%

• Strategic projects / Reorganization

  
  

PROFILE, SKILLS & COMPETENCIES

The Role is at the junction of local and global organizations and requires an aptitude at interacting and managing local and global stakeholders and local and global teams. It is therefore critical that the candidate be recognized in his leadership skills and his abilities for team management.

The new group operations organization requires a new and strong focus on the controlling side. The implementation of a structured tool, Anaplan, the new matrix (product/market) of responsibilities at the operational level also requires a finance candidate with particular track record in controlling and budgeting.

These two skills should be priorities. Below is a more detailed view of the required skills

Hard skills

• Financial skills, understanding of business economics, business case foundations

• Proven experience in efficiency monitoring, business transformation & complex business cases construction

• Excellent knowledge of data analysis and forecasting methods

• Outstanding analytical and problem solving skills, able to work with details while making quick synthesis and C-level summaries through an 80-20 approach

• High level understanding of IT service delivery, able to be credible speaker also in front of technical audiences (while not deep diving into technical aspects)

• Understanding of HR processes and communication channels with worker councils (what, when, how) with specific understanding of French environments

Soft skills

• Strong managerial skills, able to monitor, drive and motivate a local competent team and be inspiring for them. Ability to develop and empower people

• Able to have peer relation in front of senior executives, excellent oral and written communication, presentation & negotiation skills and relationship building and relationship management skills

• Strategic vision, ability to think out of the box and put in perspective short and long term

• Able to work in a matrix organization, functional management and remote management

• Dynamic and entrepreneurial, capable of influencing decision making at the highest levels of prospective business organizations

• Out of the box thinking - key in a strongly evolving and transforming environment. Able to cope with uncertainty

• High confidentiality is a must, able to adapt speech and level of discussions with multiple counterparts, deciding in autonomy content and format of appropriate communication line

• Ability to cultivate and maintain valued business relationship at all level

• Strong and effective leadership and change management skills, able to drive momentum and cultural change challenging the status quo

• Ability to work in a matrix environment, influence stakeholders and solve conflicts effectively at all levels of the organization

Language skills

• English full proficiency must

• Other languages nice to have

Education and experience

• Master’s degree (or Phd) in Business Administration, Industrial Management, Engineering, Finance, Economics

• Internal experience and mindset

  
  

AXA is becoming a sustainable tech-led company and at AXA Group Operations we are one of the major catalysts for this transformation.

• State-of-the-art Data Technology to drive customer experience
• State-of-the-art Procurement & Sourcing to drive efficiency and better manage risks
• High-Performing Global Team for stronger partnerships with AXA entities

We bring together the expertise, cultural diversity and creativity of over 8,000 employees worldwide and we’re committed to equal opportunities in all aspects of employment (gender, LGBT+, disabled persons, or people of different origins) and to promoting Diversity & Inclusion by creating a work environment where all employees are treated with dignity and respect, and where individual differences are valued.