Accounting Process Controls Manager

Company Description

Informa is a leading international events, intelligence and scholarly research group.

We’re the specialist’s specialist. Through hundreds of powerful brands, we work with businesses and professionals in specialist markets, providing the connections, intelligence and opportunities that help customers grow, do business, make breakthroughs and take better informed decisions.

Informa is listed on London Stock Exchange and a member of FTSE 100, with over 11,000 colleagues working in more than 30 countries.

Global Support is Informa's sixth division, with major hubs in the United Kingdom, United States, Hong Kong and Singapore as well as several smaller locations.  As the team behind the teams, Global Support colleagues provide shared, efficient business services and function-specific expertise to each of Informa's operating divisions, enabling our commercial teams to focus on their markets and customers.

Job Description

The Internal Controls Team in Global Business Support (GBS) is responsible for monitoring effective financial control design and operation across GBS, leading initiatives to improve performance, efficiency and effectiveness of the GBS control activities, investigating controls issues as they arise and ensuring that the GBS drives compliance through the Informa business.

The Process Controls Manager reports to the GBS Head of Internal Control and is responsible for ensuring that the GBS Process Controls environment remains appropriate to Informa’s needs from both a regulatory and financial control perspective, whilst also ensuring that Business and GBS operations are able to function efficiently. 

Global Processes which are within the scope of the Internal Control Team’s activities include Purchase to Pay, Order to Cash and Record to Report, Tax and Financial Accounting, HRSSO and Payroll.

The primary aim of the role is to develop and monitor the effectiveness of the internal control environment within the Global Business Services (GBS), and to lead the building of a fit for purpose financial and supporting IT control framework across the Informa Americas organization and shared service centers.

A key requirement of the role is to maintain effective working relationships and communications with internal stakeholders inside and outside of GBS and Global Technology, including the Global Process Owners, Americas Regional Delivery Lead and each Americas SSC leadership team, SAP and Oracle ERP Teams, Internal Control Administrators and Informa’s Internal Audit team and its External Auditor.

Outcomes will be maintenance and improvement of a GBS Control framework that safeguards Informa’s assets and manages financial risk enabling the external auditor to move to a controls-based audit.

Key responsibilities

The Process Controls Manager (Americas) is expected to assume the following key responsibilities plus any other reasonable duties as required:

• Gain a detailed understanding of the GBS Control environment and how that fits into the overall Informa Control environment
• Support the activities of the Global Process Control Administrators and the activities of the SAP and Oracle GRC Managers for the in-scope Financial and IT Control environment
• Track remediation of identified control issues and prepare summaries for the fortnightly GBS Remediation meetings (Chaired by Head of GBS) and the monthly Controls Radar Meeting (Chaired by the Group CFO)
• Support collation of reporting of R2R, O2C and P2P fraud instances globally and every 6 months co-develop with the GPOs fraud reporting submissions on behalf of GFS to the Informa Group Audit Committee.
• Monitor the ongoing effectiveness of the Internal Controls, including ensuring there continues to be a focus on Internal Control activities during periods of significant operational change and control alignment within the Divisions, GBS, Informa Americas Region (Sarasota, Long Island, Cleveland and Sao Paolo) and between SAP and Oracle ERPs
• Liaise with Internal Audit during their review of Informa’s processes and financial controls in the Americas regions
• Lead ad-hoc control projects and investigations as required, including review of adequacy business process controls being transitioned into GBS (e.g. due to an acquisition) and make improvement recommendations if gaps exist.
• Able to travel internationally occasionally if required and be able to work outside normal “time-zone” working hours on request for short periods based on the Internal Control Team workload and priorities

Qualifications

Skills & Abilities

• Advanced skills in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook are essential
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to build good relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, internal departmen