Reports to: Senior Director, Accounting
Location: Connecticut
Email: resume@bpsearches.com
Position Summary
As [Company X] has grown substantially in size and complexity, this dynamic company requires an individual to further drive the effective usage of our accounting systems and available technology including, SAP, BPC, BI and BlackLine. The Senior Manager, Accounting Solutions will be embedded within the corporate accounting department and responsible for supporting technology systems to further enable our utilization of available technology, define and enhance the leverage of systems in our processes and improve our teams’ system capabilities. This individual will be responsible for defining globally consistent processes and system capabilities to our global accounting.
This individual will be a key leader in our global accounting team and have a goal to partner with our accounting team members to drive efficiencies in our accounting processes, streamline the financial closing process and improve system automation. This individual must be comfortable learning new system technologies, identifying and implementing creative solutions, driving change, managing through uncertainty and supporting a high growth company.
This individual will need to possess outstanding process and project management skills, problem solving capabilities, attention to detail and an ability to adhere to deadlines. This role will be required to partner with IT counterparts to directly support baseline solutions, define and support the system demand planning where not able to be resolved directly, and oversee the system delivery for accounting solutions. This position requires excellent written and oral communication skills and an ability to express oneself in a clear and concise manner. This individual will need to be self-motivated, analytical and able to make well-reasoned and timely decisions.
Principal Responsibilities
Key responsibilities include the following:
Super User Accounting Systems – SAP FICO, BPC, BI and BlackLine
- Enable and improve overall system capabilities of corporate accounting team through education, training and partnering to resolve user requirements
- Team lead for BI Query Designer to enable end users more proficient data mining capabilities
- Deliver and support enhanced reporting capabilities, including multi-product P&L, US GAAP and Non-GAAP, consolidated and legal entity, intracompany shared service allocations and intercompany recharges.
- Deliver and support monthly closing solutions that automate and streamline our close procedures, including service receipt accrual capabilities, automated gross to net revenue calculations, closing cockpit oversight and other data extraction processes to improve analytical capabilities and oversight to SAP transactional data
- Partner with IT delivery teams to improve IT/Business partnership and support capabilities to accounting technology, 1st level trouble shooting capabilities and root cause identification of issues within systems and testing of proposed solutions.
Business Process Design, Execution and Improvement
- Record and document user requirements for system enhancements and identified issues
- Analyze, design and propose process improvements, functional specifications and implementation plans to better leverage system capabilities
- Support project oversight of Accounting system implementations to ensure data requirements are appropriately captured, testing defined, training materials prepared and presented
- Support demand planning and development of an accounting system roadmap for accounting technology solutions
- Lead accounting representative to Closing Solutions Governance Council and oversight of accounting solution prioritization
Accounting Systems Master Data
- Improve utilization of and maintain oversight to financial systems, verifying integrity of processes, accuracy of data and owner to modules including SAP FICO, BPC, BI/data warehousing
- Develop a shared master data workflow and process for all global accounting master data items
- Owner to accounting master data changes, including chart of accounts, document and transaction types, profit centers, allocation rules and entity ownership
- Oversight of system enhancements and test plans for accounting areas of responsibility
- System administrator to BlackLine software program, workflow design and frequency of reconciliations
- Responsible for user role definitions and segregation of duties for accounting modules
Qualifications:
- Minimum ten years of accounting operations experience; bio-pharma or life sciences industry experience preferred
- Minimum five years of direct SAP FICO experience and participation in at least 3 SAP implementations representing accounting needs as a super-user, business process owner or accounting project lead
- Experience with financial systems and consolidation software, SAP FI/CO modules, BI and BPC required, with a clear ability to demonstrate enhanced utilization of system capabilities
- Thorough understanding of one or more of accounting processes such as record-to-report cycle, allocation and assessments, gross to net revenue recognition or reporting.
- Demonstrated experience in writing accounting process requirements, constructing business process flows, drafting test specifications and supporting implementation efforts
- Experience applying process improvement techniques such as Kaizen and Six Sigma to accounting operations
- CPA and/or strong knowledge of US GAAP a plus
- Advanced skills utilizing Microsoft Suite of Products
- Strong organizational, interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to work collaboratively across departmental functions
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, MBA or Master’s degree preferred