Southwest Surface Controller – Devices & Creativity EMEA

Job Description

Overview

Microsoft Consumer Sales Organization (CSO) works across all Microsoft products and services sold to Consumers, from Xbox to Surface, M365 and Windows. The CSO team partners with internal and external customers alike with the goal of maximizing revenue, market share, and mutual profit ensuring the highest ethics and compliance in any action.
As any finance organization in Microsoft, we:
• Land the company vision around the transformation of our business, consumption and customer orientation in the territories and externally.
• Drive strategic resource allocation and investments through local insights, ensuring optimal returns aligned with our worldwide strategy.
• Build trust to lay the foundation of long-term growth from a partner and shareholder point of view in a compliant way.
• Empower and inspire our people to lead and be part of top performing teams while providing diverse career opportunities.
EMEA CSO Finance is a truly global finance team highly engaged in developing its talent and making them evolve in a moving environment. EMEA CSO Finance spans all finance functions; we span working with Marketing to drive our product categories, with Supply and Ops to ensure we have the right product in the right places, Sales to understand our Partner Account mechanics and Channel Strategy, manage the organization’s Rhythm of the Business and are custodians of the P&L. We chart our Growth path in existing businesses and in net new areas for the company, whilst prioritizing creating a more Inclusive Microsoft across our products, our culture and our marketing and every customer engagement.
The SouthWest Surface Controller role is an excellent opportunity to be at the heart of a dynamic business. Partnering with Consumer Surface Categories as well as Channel Sales and Marketing to manage, grow and review the financial performance of the business, identify and critically assess investment opportunities optimizing between margin & share to drive profitable sustainable growth engines and shape the landing of our WW/EMEA strategy in market and territory. The role requires a strong financial acumen combined with a deep passion for our consumer business to evolve in that role.
You have a growth mindset, act as an entrepreneur that drives business impact, and continuously learn and innovate. You have the capability to actively contribute and build strong collaboration within diverse and virtual teams. You are action oriented and able to build and deliver strong results through others beyond the team as well.
You drive digital transformation in the finance function towards data driven (Machine Learning) forward-looking insights. You also engage directly with customers and business partners.
You simplify and inspire through storytelling and excellent communication skills.
Microsoft values and ethical behavior are a corner stone in our culture.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

Deliver the present

• Drive the overall finance performance and forecast accuracy for Consumer Surface business working with the Category and Territory teams to understand the drivers and the levers available to influence - proactively flagging upsides, risks, actions needed and managing the overall investments to drive maximum return.
• Drive reporting, common understanding and impact across Surface performance & KPIs.
• Deliver strong business performance storytelling across both revenue and key KPI performance.
• Across all investment envelopes (Rebates, Discount & Marketing) create efficacy and transparency ensuring investments envelopes are optimized.
• Ensure a strong culture of compliance across the teams leveraging data and analytics to identify our risks and treat audits as learning opportunities.
• Drive utilization of Standard Reporting to minimize the use of local reporting partnering with EMEA and Corp teams to design revenue/attach/mix reports that address business needs.
• Push the frontiers on how we use Power BI, predictive analytics, etc. to bring sharp insights, objectivity, and stability to how we assess and anticipate business performance and actions needed.
• Drive supply strategy to ensure we anticipate business needs while protecting our GM and
• Understand and ensure accuracy in the reporting of the financial and non-financial performance of the business (VTB, VTF, Growth, Share, Attach, Mix, Gross Margin etc.)
• Contribute to key financial process (outlook, forecast, budget) in conjunction with the EMEA team - be the voice of business partners, champion simplicity, drive consistency, focus & prioritization on what matters, provide objective risk / upside assessment - ensure all of this is delivered within the existing standard CSO finance processes
• Be the pillar of the EMEA Devices and Creativity Finance community and broader EMEA Finance Community.

Drive Growth
• Identify opportunities to grow above Budget and overall, through a more agile yet simple growth plan process.
• Improve Business Productivity leveraging best practice sharing and ROI analysis.
• Use existing frameworks (account analytics, benchmarking) to systematically identify opportunities and prompt discussion on how to realize them. Know the key accounts - and use that to drive deeper, more actionable opportunity conversation with the teams.
• Manage the implementation of our investments in the Territory - challenge ROI, ensure long / short term balance, alignment with strategy. Drive accountability on results including identifying key learnings and how we can scale.
• Drive "big bet" thinking - own the key Growth plan modeling, share insights with CSO Management team, work with consistent growth frameworks and gather feedback to continually improve them.
• Measure success/ROI of growth initiatives and drive future decision making as a result.

Shape the future
• Be a deep expert on the business - understand the business strategy, the Category priorities and the long-range plan and then understand your business in that context.
• Contribute to the team's thinking on how we achieve it and influence upwards to shape key financial factors like Pricing, Rebate, promo policy, margin targets.
• Anticipate what future change may mean for the business in terms of margin structures, rebate structure, inventory management, compliance, etc. and proactively engage the right teams to explore and address it.

Key indicators of success

• Ability to understand business drivers behind performance
• Driving accountability to Financial Targets and Business Scorecard accountabilities
• Improve the accuracy, timeliness and relevance of reporting and insights
• Be a catalyst for change in the approach to Investment decision making
• Ability to understand what is driving changes in business performance, rather than just describing what has happened
• Fiscal accountability & control
• Compliance and risk management
• Business Partner Feedback

Qualifications

• active experience in similar role and extensive experience in finance positions
• BA/BS or MBA degree in Finance
• Experience in Multinationals with multi-product/multi-segment finance roles is recommended
• Fluent in English
• Ability to drive the transformation
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong ability to analyze, interpret, and explain business results
• Positive mindset
• Experience and comfort presenting to Senior Management
• Excellent organization skills
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in complex environments
• Ability to manage multiple and competing tasks/priorities

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.