Head of Operational Excellence – Site Controlling

Location: Manchester/Slough/Basle/VISP/Porrino

Hybrid Working.

Today, Lonza is a global leader in life sciences operating across three continents. While we work in science, there’s no magic formula to how we do it. Our greatest scientific solution is talented people working together, devising ideas that help businesses to help people. In exchange, we let our people own their careers. Their ideas, big and small, genuinely improve the world. And that’s the kind of work we want to be part of.

Role Purpose:

The job holder is a result and data driven professional with deep expertise and extensive experience in cross functional financial process, strong continuous improvement and change management background. This position supports the design and deployment of processes and assumes full ownership of operational support alongside project support and continues improvement initiatives within  the End-to-End Site Controlling process (Inc. Revenue Recognition) across Divisions, Business Units as well as across geographies. They will lead and drive a broad change in systems and processes to improve process compliance, efficiency and effectiveness, enhancing the internal and external customer experience. Furthermore, the Head of OE keeps in touch with recent technology, innovation and Lonza’s needs to further drive efficiency and automation of the processes.

Key responsibilities:

• Support global vision, roadmap and objectives for the end-to-end process and technology
• Drive global and high impact strategic projects determined by the Global Process Owners and Process Excellence organization
• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders across functions ensuring cross collaboration to deliver the best solutions, fostering frequent and transparent communications
• Pro-actively identify and support process re-engineering and continuous improvement initiatives across multiple financially related processes   
• Analyse data and identify improvement opportunities, create hypotheses, and once validated manage the change process to ensure they are deployed and deployed with minimal disruption including adequate user training
• Leverage existing tools (LBMS) to manage the continuous improvement process efficiently
• Monitor and test adherence to processes in place and address deviations in an efficient manner.
• Ensure appropriate and relevant controls are applied with the in scope processes, continuously monitor control requirements and drive appropriate control gap resolution
• Create and maintain Site Controlling and Revenue recognition processes documentation
• Provide coaching and trainings to Site Controlling and Revenue Recognition users in area of expertise, answer questions and give guidance to users as needed.
• Develop and provide right metrics to measure process quality and productivity for initiated key initiatives; provide meaningful feedback to key stakeholders
• Collect best practices, benchmarks and ideas from External Expert Network and the Business in general to drive world-class solutions. Help identify and own innovation projects and related business case.
• Participate and lead process and tool implementations, driving the most efficient process standards while providing the right level of reporting detail and user friendliness to our stakeholders.
• Based on defined initiatives, manage indirect reports, provide coaching and support to drive efficiencies and capabilities.

Key requirements:

• Strong functional expertise and understanding/interest in end-to-end business processes
• Strong analytic skills and tools knowledge (i.e. Power BI], Excel)
• Problem solving and root cause identification skills
• Ability to structure complex action plans that account for the end to end dependencies of their specialist process
• Ability to create and conduct presentations and trainings effectively
• Ability to adapt communication styles dependent on audience
• Ability to form strong relationships with CAPEX users to foster a culture of understanding and support to the users
• Strong decision making abilities
• Skilled and experienced in dealing with senior business managers
• Must be able to work both independently and with others
• Ability to influence others and move toward a common vision or goal
• Committed and passionate about continuous improvement

Every day, Lonza’s products and services have a positive impact on millions of people. For us, this is not only a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. How we achieve our business results is just as important as the achievements themselves. At Lonza, we respect and protect our people and our environment. Any success we achieve is no success at all if not achieved ethically.

People come to Lonza for the challenge and creativity of solving complex problems and developing new ideas in life sciences. In return, we offer the satisfaction that comes with improving lives all around the world. The satisfaction that comes with making a meaningful difference.

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