Job Introduction

Welcome to Card Factory - and your opportunity to be part of our exciting future. As the country’s largest, independent gift and greetings card retailer with over 1000 stores in every corner of the UK and Republic of Ireland. We have an outstanding growth story, consistently opening 50 new stores a year in recent years – with more opening all the time.

We are also developing new routes to market for our products in the UK and overseas. These rapid growth areas include franchise operations and wholesale agreements with major retailers in the UK and Australia.

We are now looking to strengthen our existing Finance department and are recruiting an FP&A Manager to develop and manage the Group FP&A processes including weekly and monthly forecasting, month end Board and Bank reporting, annual plan and 5 year strategy, liquidity reporting and control; to be the Group lead for FP&A systems and processes.

Role Responsibility

• Responsible for day-to-day management of Group forecasting, planning and cash flow reporting processes – consolidates and reports to stakeholders at all levels
• Business partner with the various finance teams to deliver robust plans and forecasts – provide guidance, review and interpret inputs and challenge back where necessary
• Provides scenario analysis to support impairment, going concern and viability workstreams
• Owns the day-to-day relationship with the Group’s banking syndicate for the purpose of reporting and liquidity management. Communication of Group forecasts to external banking stakeholders, applying judgement to manage those communications carefully and ensuring appropriate liquidity is maintained through banking instructions
• Group lead for Anaplan system develop and maintenance –project managing implementation as a finance model builder alongside expertise in wider Commercial Finance team, and coaching others to build Anaplan knowledge across the business
• Supports other corporate finance activities, including annual insurance renewals / claims, refinancing activity and treasury processes.
• Provide annual planning and business strategy support to indirect reports who business partner functional heads (Commercial, Retail, Property, Transformation, IT, People) – helping them to manage their cost centres and to deliver in line with plan/forecast
• Review and challenge existing approaches and identify opportunities to improve and simplify
• Deputise for the Head of Group Reporting, and support on ad hoc business projects and analysis, as required

The Ideal Candidate

• Industry experience in FP&A, group or commercial finance
• Working knowledge of Anaplan (or similar systems), either as a model builder, regular user, or project manager
• Strong Excel skills
• High attention to detail
• Ability to build strong relationships across the business

Sportswift Ltd T/A cardfactory