Senior Project Manager - Finance Transformation - 6 Month Fixed Term Contract

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Job Summary

The Finance Transformation programme is an initiative to deliver a series of improvements across Finance at Group and business unit level. The project manager is responsible for managing people, tasks, setting and managing plans and schedules, and resources through the project lifecycle. This role encompasses successful delivery of finance related projects namely:

• Implement an Oracle balance sheet reconciliation tool (ARCS)
• Improve and automate the online sales/cash reconciliation

Overarching Requirements Of This Role Are To

• Coordinate and lead planning sessions for project development and execution.
• Work with the business representatives to understand, document and refine the business requirements as applicable.
• Work with the vendors project delivery team to co-manage delivery on behalf of the JD finance team.
• Conduct risk analysis to reduce unforeseen obstacles and costs.
• Create and maintain a RAID log for each project.
• Identify staffing and other resource needs to maximise potential for successful execution of the projects.
• Define the projects’ objectives and scope, identifying involvement of internal and external stakeholders.
• Report project progress to the Delivery and Business leads.
• Work with and support the Change lead in terms of project training and change management requirements.
• Delegate project activities and duties in accordance with team members' strengths and experience
• Provide summarised project plan documentation to departmental managers, clients, and other stakeholders as needed

Team Structure

The Project manager reports into the Senior Finance Manager – Finance Transformation and works closely with the Programme Delivery lead. The Project Manager Works Collaboratively With a Number Of Stakeholders Namely The Business Leads, Key Stakeholders Of Each Project. The Collaboration Will Lead To the creation of a detailed project plan co-ordinating activities, ensuring adherence to the agreed plan tracking and the plan and reporting progress at the Delivery managers meeting, taking action to manage delivery to the plan as appropriate. A core requirement is to ensure plans are developed in an integrated basis, taking account of cross functional requirements for example IT (incl. Cyber), Tax, Treasury, ICFR (Controls), data and process.

Acccountabilities

• Delivery against the project scope outlined in the signed-off project charter
• Projects’ scope documentation; ensure good control of the scope (being vigilant to manage against scope creep)
• Identify project goals and determine the potential challenges that can increase the cost or cause delays.
• Track and deliver the projects plans key milestones.
• Monitor and document progress of projects.
• Provide regular updates to key stakeholders.
• Maintain a RAID log, Risk management and tracking.
• Responsible for communication and escalation of the projects’ risk profiles to the appropriate decision forums.

Minimum Skills

Skills, Experience and Qualifications

• Highly familiar with project management tools and processes
• Ability to set and meet project deadlines while maintaining the highest standards.
• Risk identification, analysis and mitigation.
• Excellent planning, influencing and communication skills.
• Excellent documentation and reporting abilities in written and spoken form.
• Multi-tasking capability to efficiently manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Ability to build project teams, identify the right tasks for each team member, and delegate responsibilities accordingly.
• Ability to influence to challenge opinions and compromise where appropriate.
• Energetic with a great deal of self-motivated drive, enthusiasm and initiative
• A strong bias for delivery and ability to translate discussions and ideas into actions
• Ability to respond quickly to changing priorities.

Minimum Experience

• Experience of business, people and technology change
• Familiarity with large scale complex transformation programmes, governance and reporting associated with effective project delivery
• Experience with implementation of solutions, recognising cross functional requirements and dependencies including change management, communications and training.
• Accomplished at building strong networks and relationships with key stakeholders, agnostic of hierarchy.
• Managing and influencing teams through indirect means.
• Experience in project delivery into Finance with (ideally) experience of Expenses implementations

Compentencies

• Excellent executional ability with attention to detail
• Strong in planning, prioritisation and driving focus
• Ability to earn trust, engage, and influence people and teams at all levels
• Excellent written/oral communication skills
• Resilience and resourcefulness
• Ability to spot and analyse problems with limited information and in the face of resistance
• Relentless curiosity and desire to challenge status quo
• A high level of adaptability - the problems that we face change frequently

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work. Thank you for your time #JD