Commercial Finance Manager - Fashion, Home & Beauty

Summary

Fashion, Home & Beauty is one of the most exciting, fast moving and customer led areas of M&S, and our Commercial Finance team sits at the very heart of it. Partnering closely with creative, commercial and digital teams, we play a pivotal role in shaping strategy, driving performance and turning insight into action. From influencing pricing and proposition decisions to supporting major investments and day to day trading, this is a high impact environment where finance has a genuine voice and commercial insight really matters.

We're looking for an experienced Finance Manager - Commercial Finance to partner one of our businesses, one of the most strategically important and high profile areas within M&S. This role plays a critical part in shaping commercial and strategic decisions, combining strong financial insight with a deep understanding of customer, product and trading performance.

You'll act as a trusted business partner to senior stakeholders, helping to drive profitable growth through robust planning, forecasting, and data driven insight. This is a hands on commercial finance role, supporting both long term strategy and fast paced day to day trading.

To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected.

What you'll do

Your key accountabilities will include:

• Own the P&L, partnering with senior leaders to deliver sales, profit, stock and cash targets, and analysing key drivers of sales, margin and profitability to provide proactive trading insight and inform decisions across pricing, product mix, promotions and new initiatives.
• Lead forecasting, budgeting and strategic planning for the Lingerie business, providing clear visibility on assumptions, risks and opportunities, embedding key initiatives into plans, and owning a robust rolling Risks & Opportunities process against Budget and latest forecast.
• Drive stock and working capital performance, optimising return on stock investment and ensuring stock levels and commitments align with customer demand, forward plans and commercial strategies.
• Deliver strategic insight and decision support by identifying trends, shaping forward decision making, and producing ad hoc analysis including scenario modelling, pricing evaluation, initiative appraisal and promotional effectiveness.
• Act as a strong cross functional business partner, working closely with Merchandising, Buying, Online, Marketing, Finance Ops and Customer Insight teams to lead commercial conversations, improve performance visibility, and enhance the efficiency, accuracy and scalability of Commercial Finance processes.

Who you are

Your skills and experience will include:

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with relevant commercial finance experience.
• Strong FP&A capability, with experience in forecasting, budgeting and performance analysis.
• Highly analytical and curious, with great attention to detail and a passion for turning data into insight. Confident communicator, able to influence, challenge and build credibility with senior stakeholders.
• Commercially minded, with a strong understanding of how retail businesses operate.
• Advanced Excel skills; PowerPoint experience beneficial but not essential.

What's in it for you?

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone's welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.