Senior Manager, FP&A

At Nielsen, we are passionate about our work to power a better media future for all people by providing powerful insights that drive client decisions and deliver extraordinary results. Our talented, global workforce is dedicated to capturing audience engagement with content - wherever and whenever it’s consumed. Together, we are proudly rooted in our deep legacy as we stand at the forefront of the media revolution. When you join Nielsen, you will join a dynamic team committed to excellence, perseverance, and the ambition to make an impact together. We champion you, because when you succeed, we do too. We enable your best to power our future.
About Nielsen
Nielsen shapes the world’s media and content as a global leader in audience measurement, data, and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their audiences—now and into the future. Nielsen operates around the world in more than 55 countries. Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram).
Scope of this role
We seek a detail-oriented, highly analytical FP&A Sr. Manager to join our finance team. The FP&A Sr. Manager will be the finance business partner for the CTO of Audience Measurement, based out of India. In this role, the Sr. Manager will play an integral part in the forecasting, planning, and reporting of operating expenses and capital expenditures, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud costs. The ideal candidate will have strong financial modeling skills, a solid understanding of accounting principles, project/ process management skills and excellent communication abilities. While this role reports directly into the VP of Finance in India, they will be a key member of the Audience Measurement Finance Team. The Audience Measurement FP&A team is a fast paced, high performing team that executes financial planning and analysis. Cross-functional partnership is required across the entire Nielsen organization to develop and improve reporting packages, planning processes, financial models and analytics. This role will also provide ad-hoc analysis as needed to support and influence senior leadership. Strong financial acumen including experience with forecasting, budgeting, and variance analysis is a requirement.

Responsibilities

• Perform mission-critical financial reporting and business partnering activities for the Technology team within Audience Measurement (planning, forecasting, budgeting, advise, etc.)
• Play a key role in the financial planning cycle including monthly/quarterly forecasting, variance analyses against operating plan, trending analyses, and walks vs. prior year
• Support month end close process through the review of actual results and the creation requested journal entries, working closely with the business as well the accounting team
• Own and maintain the consolidation of all reporting needs for Technology financials
• Provide financial mentorship to leadership to ensure compliance with Nielsen’s financial policies and procedures
• Provide leadership as the single point of contact for all cloud financial reporting and tracking for all of Nielsen
• Partner with Cloud Ops org to help streamline cloud usage and reporting data for all of Nielsen
• Drive operational improvements and implement best practices around forecasting, budgeting and management reporting
• Assist leadership in monthly financial variance analysis
• Preparation and consolidation as part of the financial cycle including monthly/quarterly budgeting & forecasting, annual plan setting, variance to plan and forecast analysis, etc.
• Support cost savings initiatives by developing relevant analytics, validating sources of savings, and providing updates to cross functional teams
• Partner with various groups including IT, Operations, Commercial, Accounting, HR and Finance to report out findings, trends and identify solutions for potential issues and process improvements
• Seek continuous improvement of the FP&A function through the identification of opportunities across people, processes, and technology

A Little About You

• A successful FP&A Sr. Manager will be detail-oriented, and have a strong analytical mind with the ability to identify and strengthen areas of business risks and capitalize on opportunities in the company (FP&A Organization). They should help forecast the right numbers and help achieve and report those.
• They should also drive synergy across all processes and ensure standardization and adaptability with the latest company priorities.
• This requires a lot of diligence and an attitude to take on new tasks with a solution mindset.
• Strong work ethic, self-motivated work style, attention to detail, effective communicator
• Ability to organize multiple responsibilities and deliver results in an accurate and timely manner while adapting to changes in priorities
• Ability to influence and strategically partner with individuals of various educational and technical backgrounds, both inside and outside the organization
• Strong business acumen and analytical skills with a demonstrated ability to gather, analyze, and present data
• Ability to business partner and communicate with non-finance stakeholders effectively and articulately
• Ability to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines under pressure
• Self-starter with a strong sense of urgency and follow-up skills

Qualifications

• MBA (Finance) or CA required
• Prior FP&A Experience required (7+ years minimum); ideally experienced communicating directly with senior stakeholders
• Background in technology and Cloud accounting is a plus
• Knowledge of IDSW and Capitalizable labor practices
• Comfortable working in a matrixed organization
• Experience manipulating large data sets and turning them into actionable insights
• Experience in financial management, strategic thinking, commercial and business intuition, reporting, accounting, business partnering, communication, and storytelling;
• Knowledge of SAP S4 HANA (required), GAAP & SOX Compliance
• Ability to develop constructive relationships with executives and colleagues across the organization
• Experience with analytics tools such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Power BI, Google Data
• Studio, and spreadsheet tools (excel, Google Sheets) is required