Senior Commercial Finance Analyst, Ukraine & CIS

A career at Brown-Forman is just like a good bottle of bourbon: unique and refined, with a bit of a kick. Making our products from barrel to bottle requires detailed planning along each step. Just like bourbon production, our employees work in many different aspects to create the best possible product. This way, our customers can enjoy the world-class brands we promise to deliver. Here’s the kicker - we, too, get to enjoy this process, just one of the sweet benefits of leading the market with the world’s favorite whiskey. Whether in the ground, in the store, or in the office, we hand pick all of our ingredients in order to be proud of what we achieve.

Who is Brown-Forman?

B-F’s business in Ukraine and CIS covers 11 markets. The business has significant growth opportunities for the long-term, but also faces high levels of VUCA to manage.

B-F has two of the top premium brands in these markets:  Jack Daniel’s and Finlandia Vodka.  We are also expanding and developing the Jack Daniel’s family of brands and super-premium whiskey.

We use a 3rd party route-to-consumer model, working with 13 different distributor partners and collaborating with and influencing their sales & marketing teams. Ukraine is the largest market in B-F’s European & African alliance with Coca-Cola Hellenic.  

The area is organized in two business units -- Ukraine and CIS -- each with a GM.  B-F has a 7-person marketing team, including the Marketing Manager.  Each distributor partner has its own brand managers assigned to the B-F business.  The B-F Marketing team must engage and influence the distributor partners to gain fair share of attention and ensure alignment on plans & execution.

Meaningful Work From Day One

This position will provide financial management support and analytical insight to the Ukraine and CIS markets. Being in this role will enable a curious employee to understand the performance drivers in the cluster, to influence and participate in the resource allocation process across brands and markets, and to gain further visibility to the B-F and distributor teams. The role will deliver competitive advantage to the leadership teams by providing both day to day management reporting information as well as strategic analysis to support the objectives of the business. 

What You Can Expect?

Financial Management

• Work very closely with the country  team to manage Ukraine P&L topline and bottomline, acting as the main point of contact on finance related issues.

• Achieve a deep understanding of Ukraine business and give support to the team in areas such as pricing, margin control, new SKU creation, performance evaluation, brand investment opportunities.

• Provide monthly management analysis and insights for the Ukraine and CIS Leadership Teams; collaborate with the Accounting team on tracking and report on discounting and brand expense to ensure that internal and external stakeholders are informed and remain within budgets/projections.

• Participate in and lead financial aspects of monthly business reviews (MBRs) with EA&IMEA region on Ukraine and CIS.

• Work with internal and external accounting teams to ensure our financial results are accurately reported (proper expense classification within the P&L line items, properly supported accruals, monitoring of receivables, etc.).

Budget, Projection and Long Term Planning Processes

• Consolidate, maintain Rolling Forecasts throughout the year.

• Responsible for timely submission and  integrity of data input throughout planning & monthly projections

• Identify and explain key drivers for variances vs. last year and key business targets

• Support the development of long-term strategic plans and multi-year investment case proposals.

• Independently work with the Financial Planning and Analysis Team as needed to resolve issues.

Commercial Support and Analytical Insights

• Interact with distributor finance teams, take part in business reviews with the distributor, understand and keep the pulse on the overall business through trade visits.

• Maintain knowledge of external industry trends, utilizing data sources such IWSR.

• Maintain and analyze price structures/value chain for each market, ensuring the structures properly reflect the current market conditions (transfer prices, margins, shelf pricing, taxes, etc.).

• Through utilizing Revenue Growth Management tools and scenario analysis, support decision making in areas such as volume, pricing, margin control, investment efficiency and new SKU introductions.

Brand Spend and SG&A Monitoring and optimization

Collaborate with Accounting and:

• Track A&P spend to ensure that the Marketing teams (or) distributors are within permitted spend

• Provide projections for the area SG&A cost centers during planning and forecast as needed throughout the year

• Analyze monthly SG&A reports to heads of department and perform quarterly reviews with them to track YTD spend and ensure there is no full year overspend.

• Evaluate effectivity of our spend and recommend optimization of the investment mix

Ad hoc projects

• Provide ad hoc support to UA/CIS cluster on special projects; such as RTC reviews, systems implementations, market analytical deep dives and strategic plan developments, etc.

What You Bring to the Table?

• University Degree in Finance, Economics or a related field 

• Superior business analytics skills

• Experience in the wine and spirits industries or FMCG

• Demonstrated ability to make decisions independently 

• Strong influencing, communication and interpersonal skills

• Proven track record of managing consumer goods pricing, product value chains, budgets and financial performance evaluation

• Ability to run planning process, monthly business analysis and reporting back to the key stakeholders

• Experience with computer applications, in particular advanced PC skills incl. G-Suite, Excel and PowerPoint; experience with Tableau and BW is preferred

• Fluency in Russian and English

Nothing Better in the Market

Total Rewards at Brown-Forman is designed to engage our people to ensure our sustainable and profitable growth for generations to come. As a premium spirits company, we offer premium and equitable pay & bonus for individual and company performance. We offer a range of premium benefits that reflect our company values and meet the needs of our diverse workforce.

In Brown-Forman Ukraine we offer the competitive benefits package including, but not limited to flexible-working options, life insurance, medical insurance for you and your direct family, along with vibrant career opportunities and the set of other perks.