Finance Director - Information Technology

Job Title: Finance Director - Information Technology

Location: Bangalore, India         

About Unilever:

Be part of the world’s most successful, purpose-led business. Work with brands that are well-loved around the world, that improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We promote innovation, big and small, to make our business win and grow; and we believe in business as a force for good. Unleash your curiosity, challenge ideas, and disrupt processes; use your energy to make this happen. Our brilliant business leaders and colleagues provide mentorship and inspiration, so you can be at your best. Every day, nine out of ten Indian households use our products to feel good, look good and get more out of life – giving us a unique opportunity to build a brighter future.

Every individual here can bring their purpose to life through their work. Join us and you’ll be surrounded by inspiring leaders and supportive peers. Among them, you’ll channel your purpose, bring fresh ideas to the table, and simply be you. As you work to make a real impact on the business and the world, we’ll work to help you become a better you.

About UniOps:

Unilever Operations (UniOps) is the global technology and operations engine of Unilever offering business services, technology, and enterprise solutions. UniOps serves over 190 locations and through a network of specialized service lines and partners delivers insights and innovations, user experiences and end-to-end seamless delivery making Unilever Purpose Led and Future Fit.

Background:

Compass reflects an ambitious reset of Unilever to a new purpose-led and future-fit organization, structured around the strong category focus of five empowered Business Groups sustained by a common Business Operations function. UniOps aims to transform Unilever operations by transforming, simplifying, and digitising our operations through making our global processes and systems more streamlined, better integrated, and easier to work with to harmonize with the new Compass business model.

Delivering a digitally enabled Future Fit Operation will free up resources and unlock value to deliver Fuel for Growth, one of Unilever's five strategic pillars and would enable focus on customers and consumers for profitable and sustainable growth.

In that context, Information Technology is a key enabler to drive these objectives. Unilever recognizes the pivotal role of Information Technology (IT) in achieving its overarching ambitions. Technology has become a critical component of strategies across all functions within One tech organization. The annual spend on IT in Unilever is around €1.2Bn along with €0.2Bn of capital investments on new capabilities.  

Main Job Purpose:

This is a leadership role within Unilever operations finance team where this position would be responsible for representing finance in the IT leadership teams of Unilever, partnering & collaborating with CIO, CISO & CDO functions and leadership team.

As IT Director Finance, this position would be responsible for driving seamless IT operations for Unilever, partnering, collaborating & driving business strategies to ensure sustainable future fit operations, critically evaluating business cases and building/driving strategy around effective utilization & deployment of IT capital investments of 200m~250mm over year.

The role would lead the delivery of some key strategic program of Unilever in tech space i.e. Cloud, Data as a Platform (DaaP), Cyber expansion etc and would also work closely with procurement team to finalize & negotiate key contracts with suppliers. Ensuring delivery of yearly targets along with driving the performance culture as an organization behavior would be among key financial responsibilities area of this role.  

Aside to ensuring resilient run operations for Unilever, this role would be a key enabler to drive IT Transformation journey of Unilever, focused towards driving simplification, increase in speed & agility, to provide innovation & differentiation in technology & data space for greater business value in the new Compass business model. The transformation programs would aim to increase operational efficiency and innovation for all services common across Unilever (the Power of One) and ambition to deliver €100M annualized savings in operational baseline costs.

As a learning experience, this job gives insight into the world of technology and specifically the way in which the business models of IT suppliers are evolving.

This position would be based in Bangalore, India and would be leading and managing a team of senior finance business partners, spread across between the UK and Bangalore. Motivating, Talent management and driving a high-performance team to deliver on KPIs would be the key to success to this role.

Stakeholders:

Key contacts fall into two categories: firstly, those within IT, who are based largely in the key IT hubs of Kingston, Port Sunlight and Bangalore who deliver and run the IT operations and secondly the wider business which uses and ultimately pays for the services. Key contacts will include:

• Unilever Business Operations Head of Finance

• UniOps VP Finance

• CIO/CISO/CDO

• VP’s and Directors within the IT organisation

• Colleagues in the UniOps Finance Leadership Team

Functional Finance Representatives E.g. Controller SCF, FD CMCO

Key Accountabilities:

• Work with the CIO/CDO/Cyber leads and develop the overall strategy for IT.

• Lead and drive IT Transformation journey of Unilever.

• Ensure the IT reaches ‘world class cost and competitive service’ benchmarks.

• Provide the financial framework for IT investment programs, ensuring that all major projects are supported by a business case and benefits promised are recognised and delivered by those responsible for delivery.

• Provide financial input for major IT contracts.

• Drive the decommissioning of obsolete services and equipment.

• Act as UniOps Finance site leader in Bangalore – be part of Site Leadership team.

Skills/ Experience/ Qualifications:

• The role will require the holder to apply demonstrate knowledge of a wide range of financial processes with good aptitude for outsourcing and virtual working.

• Ability to operate & prioritize in a highly focused, demanding environment. 

• Drive decision making by recommending, communicating and acting on findings.

• Ability to rapidly absorb new information and manage process changes.

• The candidate would also benefit by having supplier facing skills and having had significant interaction with external service providers.

• Strong change management skills required to implement new ways of working in IT and the impact of future finance.

 Minimum Requirements

• 12~15 years of relevant experience in finance and accounts domain, preferably knowledge of IT.

• Good inter-personal, communication and influencing skills.

• Relevant / Professional finance qualification:  e.g. CA, ACCA, CIMA or MBA.

Desired Requirements

• Business partnering skills from global or regional category, customer, supply chain environment.

• Understanding of Unilever overheads reporting and analysis, and taxation.

Standards of Leadership:

• Prioritization of team activities to the value moments that matter.

• Be able to play an influential role on Leadership Teams, stretching across functions and countries.

• Be able to identify growth / value creation opportunities and drive them through.

• Provide constructive support but objective challenge to drive improved business performance & financial results. Specifically having the courage to stop investments which do not make commercial sense.

• Leading diverse and often virtual teams across time zones and different cultures.