Commercial Finance Business Partner

Here at Harding+ we are hiring a collaborative Commercial Finance Business Partner to identify opportunities to maximise profitability and return on investment through the provision of reporting analysis and governance.

It’s a great time to join our team, as a growing and scaling retailer with a twist, working and innovating together helps us realise our purpose to ‘make every cruise better’.

In this crucial role as a Finance Business Partner, you will provide financial support to our Buying & Merchandising functions with specific focus partnering with our Lifestyle & Luxury Category Directors. You will be commercially astute and confident to challenge when needed as well as identifying new or improved ways of working across business areas.

The role is Avonmouth based and offered on a hybrid working basis – 2 days per week in office.

Compensation – competitive salary, bonus scheme, pension, 4 x life assurance, healthcare cash plan, 26 days annual leave

What you will be doing:

• Proactively create financial analysis to challenge and support the Commercial team in respect of trading performance and decision-making.  The remit of this includes but is not limited to – Sales; Gross Margin; Promotional Activity; Marketing; Stock
• Develop and maintain reporting to support the ongoing optimisation of the above
• Setting up and overseeing compliance with processes to ensure robust governance exists for commercial decision making
• Provide the link between Commercial and FP&A teams in setting and challenging sales, gross margin, marketing expenditure and stock for quarterly reforecasts, annual budget, and long-range planning
• Act as Finance representative in weekly Commercial trading meeting, and any other forums as appropriate (including setting up new forums where relevant)
• You will act as a Finance representative in range reviews and challenge teams on targets for sales, gross margin, inventory, SKU count and vendor base

About you:

• ACA, CIMA, or ACCA qualified, ideally with post-qualification experience in a similar business partnering role
• Ability to build strong relationships with and influence non-financial executives and managers
• Strong communicator with the ability to confidently present findings and ideas to senior executives and managers
• Excellent analytical skills together with the ability to turn data into actionable insights
• Self-motivated and comfortable setting up processes, reporting and analysis from scratch
• Inquisitive and challenging mindset; a curiosity to understand more and constantly question the status quo
• Advanced Excel skills; comfortable with handling very large data sets
• Experience working with Power BI would be a distinct advantage
• Must have an existing right of eligibility to work in the UK

About us:

Harding+ is the only 100% dedicated cruise retailer, proudly partnering with 12 cruise line operators globally, across more than 80+ cruise ships either in operation or under contract. Our mission is simple: make every cruise better. We operate over 300 retail shops across 80+ ships, covering 17,000m² of retail space and handling 6.6 million transactions annually.

Our team includes over 1,300 onboard team members and more than 270 landside employees, we stay at the forefront of retailing and consistently provide outstanding customer service, culminating in winning the Cruise Retailer of the Year award for 2022 and 2023.

Harding+ is an equal opportunities employer.  We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.  We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills.  We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify, and build.  Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a longstanding top priority for Harding+.

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