Associate Director- R2R Record to Consolidate

Location: Luton, UK / Warsaw, Poland / San Jose, Costa Rica

Competitive salary and benefits apply

AstraZeneca is one of the world’s most exciting bio-pharmaceutical companies. From scientists to sales, lab techs to legal, we’re on a mission to turn ideas into life-changing medicines that improve patients’ lives and benefit society. We are active in over 100 countries, and we employ over 80,000 people. We are an innovation-driven biopharmaceutical with over 60 years of experience. Working here means being entrepreneurial, thinking big and working together to make the impossible a reality.

Global Finance Services (GFS) is AstraZeneca Finance’s financial services division covering Record to Report (including Controlling), Purchase to Pay, Contract to Cash, Performance and Management Reporting and Tax delivered from our in-house and BPO service centres located across the globe. GFS was established to support AstraZeneca’s Finance function on a transformation journey with the objective of delivering excellence in financial operations and insight through global simplification and standardization that enable our customers to focus on AZ’s strategic priorities.

Record to Report’s (R2R) 2025 vision is to seamlessly deliver trusted financial reporting through scalable and sustainable R2R process excellence and there is a clear strategic roadmap in place to deliver the R2R vision. GFS R2R will play a key role in supporting the delivery of the R2R strategy, ensuring the transformation changes are efficiently embedded within our processes and operating model.

GFS R2R has two distinct operations- Middle Office and Back Office. The R2R Middle Office teams are aligned to the business areas and act as the single point of contact for their respective market or SET/business area. The Middle Office are customer aligned, providing controllership support and undertaking judgemental activities. The Middle Offices are located in house in three strategic regional locations – Warsaw (EMEA), San Jose (Americas) and Kuala Lumpur (Asia). The Middle Office works closely with the Back Office to ensure the financial results are robust and are in line with the business expectations. The R2R Back office delivers the standard, repeatable, non judgemental transactional activities and is aligned to a process tower structure, ensuring process excellence is delivered whilst driving productivity through process efficiency and automation. The Back Office is delivered via a BPO outsource provider and through an in house shared service centre.

We are currently searching for candidates in the GFS Record to Report process tower.

This role will sit within the GFS Record to Report (R2R) team. This team drives the global process delivery and oversight for the R2R process tower, translating the R2R strategy into clear operational deliverables within GFS R2R. The team drives the R2R global performance and service management, ensuring consistency across the service centres, as well as supporting the global transformation agenda. The role holder will report to the R2R Global Process Delivery Director (GPDD) and will work closely with the Global Process Owner (GPO), R2R Regional Leads and Site Heads to support the delivery of the R2R strategy across GFS. This role will focus upon the record to report and consolidation services offered through the GFS sites and you will be a key player in driving the GFS R2R vision whereby a globally consistent service is provided to the business through an efficient, lean process lead Back Office supporting the Middle office, who will be the single R2R point of contact for the business providing judgemental activities. Through utilising analytics, insights and leveraging the technology investments you will be a key player in driving the standardisation and automation agenda R2R whilst ensuring effective performance management and governance is in place. You will use your deep insight into the R2R processes to provide process expertise into global change initiatives and to identify, co-ordinate and deliver the continuous improvement agenda in order to drive process improvements and productivity across the service centres as well as the evolution of the operating model following the standardisation drive.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Supporting the delivery of global processes by working through a matrix model with members of the various sites (including the BPO outsource provider), setting deliverables and outcomes to ensure global consistency within the process tower.
• Providing process expertise within the scope of the R2R record to consolidate to drive the standardisation agenda, ensuring standardisation initiatives are in line with the R2R strategic roadmap.
• Accountable for driving and maintaining global consistency and standardisation across the transactional reporting record to consolidate processes across R2R, including representing the delivery teams on the key standardisation projects.
• Accountable for the end to end Balance Sheet reconciliation process within GFS from a quality and efficiency point of view, working alongside the Continuous Improvement lead to leverage the Blackline tool to deliver operational process productivity.
• Identify and act upon opportunities for innovation and automation from the R2R delivery perspective in line with the R2R technology strategy, including RPA and leveraging the investments made within existing technology, in order to drive further process improvements, standardisation and productivity.
• Utilise process and technical finance knowledge to provide efficient and effective resolution to operational challenges and process deviations.
• Ensuring that changes to processes from transformation activities are embedded into the service centres as well as identifying and acting upon further continuous improvement and productivity initiatives.
• Working in collaboration with the R2R Regional Service Leads to identify and drive continuous improvement and productivity across the sites.
• Accountable for adherence to global standards, process and policies across the back office sites, utilising the Process Control and Compliance team to identify and correct gaps in standard processes.
• Responsible for the standardised operational SOPs.
• Support in the design, implementation and measurement of key metrics and KPIs to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the process tower as well as derive the contractual targets.
• Act as a subject matter expert, providing process expertise within the scope of the GFS service as well as utilising the relevant insights to input into strategic change initiatives.
• Support the R2R global service and performance management processes utilising a robust governance model to provide a joined up and holistic view of R2R performance and effectively managing the GFS R2R service catalogue.

Essential skills and experience

• Energetic, proactive and self motivated qualified finance professional with the capability to build strong internal and external relationships with stakeholders.
• 5 years+ Record to Report/Controlling experience in a large/global organization.
• Solid understanding of finance and accounting principles including experience of accounting for complex transactions.
• Cross boundary experience including building relationships remotely and cross-culturally
• Ability to work well in and across diverse global teams whilst demonstrating ability to influence
• Experience in working in a matrix organisation
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the confidence to express clear opinions to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrable ability to lead and motivate teams through periods of high change
• Ability to remain objective & independent whilst under pressure
• Strong analytical skills with a high attention to detail
• Capacity to solve problems across a number of systems and processes, identify options and propose/implement a reasoned solution.
• Experience of implementing significant business change across different national and business boundaries
• Track record of driving simplification & continuous improvement across key business processes

Desirable skills and experience

• Master of Business Administration (MBA) or advanced scientific degree (PhD, MD, PharmD) viewed favourably.
• Previous experience of working within Biotech or Pharma would also be a significant advantage.

Why AstraZeneca?

At AstraZeneca, we ‘re dedicated to being a Great Place to Work. Where you are empowered to push the boundaries of science and fuel your entrepreneurial spirit. There’s no better place to make a difference to medicine, patients and society. An inclusive culture that champions diversity and collaboration, and always committed to lifelong learning, growth and development. We’re on an exciting journey to pioneer the future of healthcare.

So, what’s next?

Are you already imagining yourself joining our team? Good, because we can’t wait to hear from you! Are you ready to bring new insights and fresh thinking to the table? Brilliant! We have one seat available, and we hope it’s yours

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