Marketing Controller

Support the business steering of NIVEA Brand categories for SSA (Management Unit: Southern Africa & Central East West Africa) countries on topline, profitability, and marketing investments by bringing relevant insights promptly to the table to have meaningful discussions, right decisions, and actionable outcomes.

 

Perform marketing controlling activities i.e., forecast, planning, analysing, create standardisation and digitalisation across SSA with regards to processes, templates, reports, and dashboards used for business partnering with marketing teams.

 

Business partnering:

• Be the key contact person for MU Central East West Africa marketing director and SSA marketing teams on NIVEA categories and marketing controlling topics

• Provide data consolidation, analyses, simulations, and insights to the NIVEA Marketing Controlling Manager – SSA and marketing teams

• Actively steer the financial performance and defined KPIs for SSA with the marketing teams providing an objective viewpoint on the business situation, highlighting deviations, and initiating countermeasures.

• Work jointly with marketing directors and marketing teams for innovation business case, identifying white space entry and other business opportunities and support with business cases or investment evaluations, and other marketing-related processes

• Collaborate closely with sales controllers on the key finance processes, sales & operations planning (S&OP) and business review meeting

• Support the assortment review process to ensure maximum possible sales are delivered through a minimum possible portfolio of products to meet consumer needs

 

Marketing Controlling:

• Prepare monthly category business reviews (Net Sales, Gross Margin, Sales & Margin Driver) with focus on YTD & YTG performance vs Forecast

• Performance category analysis to identify risks and opportunities

• Ensure data quality in BASE, marketing budget tracking tool, and use it as a single source of marketing budget steering

• Support Marketing Controlling Manager – SSA on the marketing budget steering by preparing a monthly marketing budget tracking

• Ensure the hygiene of the marketing budget booking, including but not limited to reclassify the wrong booking and educate the demand owners

• Prepare closing activities e.g., monthly/quarterly/yearly accruals & provisions, consumption & release tracking for Marketing Budgeting spends

• Ensure that all documents especially for YE closing are complete, audit-proven, and stored centrally governed by standardized and efficient processes

 

Budgeting and forecasting

• Support the planning process for launch/relaunch and marketing budgets for SSA

• Create transparency in planning process with regards to:Media investments, Non-working media investments, Customer marketing spends

• Ensure the data quality in marketing budget tracking tool

 

Others:

• Initiate and drive marketing controlling related projects, striving to add value through automation 

This role will be based in South Africa or Central East Western Africa

Personal Specification

• Bachelor (CPA/Master is a preference) degree in accounting/finance, business, or management preferred
• Minimum 4 years work experience, ideally within an FMCG Company
• Exposure to Sales, Marketing or Supply Chain commercial concepts
• Must have handled large amount of data inputs and analytics
• Strategic thinking and strong data analysis ability, able to read through financial trend and market data – being able to translate data into recommendations
• Willingness to go the extra mile – ambitious winning mindset, yet humble
• Entrepreneurial spirit, open-minded, passionate about teamwork/winning together
• Organised, efficient & self-motivated.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines.
• High sense of urgency & responsibility
• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Comfortable in engaging with high numbers of stakeholders, including senior directors.
• Fluent in English
• Strong knowledge and advanced skills in XLS, PPT, SAP
• Knowledge in Power BI is a plus
  • Be able to attend the recruitment Summit in London on the 18th and 19th of April 2024