Provide a high-quality business partnering role to the key stakeholders in Supply Chain and Bottling area and an integral part within the finance function.
The Senior Business Partner Supply Chain is the lead finance partner for bottling, packaging and related manufacturing operations. The role owns product and production costing, operational budgeting and forecasting, performance reporting, and the financial assessment of efficiency opportunities. Working closely with Bottling, Production, Planning, Procurement, Engineering, Supply Chain and Commercial teams, the role provides robust insight and constructive challenge to improve cost control, operational performance, decision-making and long-term value creation.
The postholder will maintain a strong financial control environment, ensure the integrity of standard and actual costs, explain manufacturing variances, and translate complex operational data into clear recommendations for senior stakeholders.
This role is also responsible for people management of the Purchase Ledger and Bottling & Costing Assistant role.
Product and Manufacturing Costing
- Own the end-to-end costing process for bottled whisky products, including liquid, dry goods, packaging, labour, overheads, warehousing and other manufacturing inputs.
- Maintain and govern standard costs, bills of material, routings, labour rates, overhead absorption methodologies and cost-centre structures.
- Lead annual standard-cost setting and in-year cost updates, ensuring assumptions are evidence-based, controlled and approved.
- Analyse actual versus standard costs and clearly explain purchase price, usage, yield, labour, overhead, volume, mix and efficiency variances.
- Provide accurate cost estimates for new products, packaging changes, limited editions, customer-specific requirements and innovation projects. Taking bottling format, pack specification, production location and batch size into consideration.
Budgeting, Forecasting and Planning
- Lead the annual budget and periodic forecast processes for bottling and relevant manufacturing cost centres.
- Develop cost forecasts aligned to production plans, bottling schedules, volume and mix assumptions, staffing, maintenance programmes, utilities, packaging prices and inflation.
- Build and maintain robust financial models to support medium- and long-term capacity, sourcing and investment decisions.
- Coordinate inputs from operational stakeholders, challenge assumptions and present a clear view of risks and opportunities.
- Provide timely scenario analysis for changes in demand, production volumes, line utilisation, material costs and operating constraints.
Project Support, Continued Process Improvements and Other Support
- Take part in strategic projects across the operations area from a finance perspective. Provide an analytical eye on projects to ensure the financial aspects are robust, accurate and not over-looked.
- Continually review processes in the department to ensure they are at their most efficient.
- Support with other ad-hoc areas in the operational finance team, including monthly reconciliations and month end close.
- Lead cross-functional improvement workstreams and promote a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
Operational Performance and Efficiency
- Develop and maintain performance reporting for bottling and manufacturing operations, with clear links between operational drivers and financial outcomes.
- Monitor measures including line efficiency, labour productivity, material usage, yield, waste, downtime, changeover performance, rework and overhead absorption.
- Partner with operational leaders to identify, quantify and prioritise cost reduction, waste elimination and productivity opportunities.
- Provide independent financial challenge to ensure reported savings are sustainable, incremental and reflected in forecasts and results.
- Support benchmarking across lines, shifts, sites, co-packers and product formats where appropriate.
Reporting, Control and Governance
- Deliver accurate month-end reporting for bottling and manufacturing, including accruals, prepayments, journal review, variance analysis and commentary.
- Own relevant balance sheet reconciliations and ensure provisions and accruals are appropriate, complete and supported.
- Support internal and external audit requirements and ensure compliance with accounting policies, authorisation limits and financial procedures.
- Improve reporting quality through greater automation, standardisation and disciplined use of data.
- Work with systems and master-data teams to strengthen ERP processes, data integrity and management information.
Business Partnering and Decision Support
- Act as a trusted senior finance partner to Bottling and Manufacturing leadership, combining commercial awareness with operational understanding. Influence senior operational decisions without relying on formal authority.
- Translate financial and operational information into concise insight, recommendations and actions for senior management.
- Attend operational performance reviews and ensure financial priorities, risks and opportunities are understood and acted upon.
- Challenge constructively while maintaining strong relationships across Finance, Operations, Procurement, Planning, Engineering, Supply Chain and Commercial teams.
- Support make-versus-buy, co-packing, sourcing, network, capacity and product portfolio decisions with rigorous financial analysis.
