Finance Lead, South Africa

The South Africa finance lead is part of Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) Finance and carries the local accountability for the financials as well as statutory and compliance matters across all Microsoft commercial segments and products. Key responsibilities include - Land the company vision around the transformation of our business and customer orientation in the subsidiaries and externally. - Drive strategic resource allocation and investments through local insights, ensuring optimal returns aligned with our worldwide strategy. - Key focus is on New Business and consumption with an industry and workload perspective. - Build trust to lay the foundation of long-term growth from a customer and shareholder point of view in a compliant way - Empower and inspire our people to lead and be part of high performing impactful teamswhile providing diverse career opportunities **Responsibilities**: Key enabler of success will be cooperation with other orgs within Finance and Microsoft in general, enabling cross-group collaboration and bringing diverse expertise. The Finance Lead is member of the South Africa subsidiary leadership team and accountable for executing all finance deliverables to enable sustainable long-term growth. - People - Support the SubArea Finance Lead to build lasting org capability that delivers success across the team. Develop capabilities to bring deeper internal and external awareness of customers, competitors, and industries. Embody inclusion & trust within teams and foster a Microsoft Company Owner mindset. Maximise the potential of our finance organization by working effectively beyond reporting lines and geographies. Must embody our culture and values. - Prioritization - Ensure FRA and controllabe costs are met on a quarterly basis and deliver performance goals across the 4 solution areas. Drive longer term planning, set strategies and align to resource allocation for maximum return & long term growth in the local market aligned to propensity models and targeted share gains. Continually monitor resource allocation and ROI and make adjustments as required to maximise returns. Review Partner investments with focus to maximise the partner ecosystem to drive ACR at scale. Simplify & reduce time spent on internal ROB. Works directly with business partners to translate top-down targets to an accountable budget for each group. Partners and solicits insights from business stakeholders. Manages the rhythm of the business for area of responsibility including budgeting, and forecasting. Delivers results through tracking performance, forecast accuracy, and partnering with business leaders to maximize profitability. **Partnership** - Leverage deep actionable insights to drive topline revenue, customer adds, and consumption growth. Engage externally directly with BDMs and Partners around Digital Transformation, and connect MS solutions to customer priorities within different industries to help land customer wins. Drive programmatic collaboration with DD with the target to optimize deal economics across discounting, ECIF, Financing, credit concessions and ensure high quality DWR submissions. Focus on customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value. **Protect** - Compliance leadership & tone, monitor and support management’s responsibility to mitigate risk with special focus on preventing corruption, unethical sales, spend management, privacy and concession & discounts. Leverage One Finance, Centers of Excellence, HRDD, and external advisors to anticipate and mitigate emerging statutory, tax and fiduciary risks. Deliver timely and accurate financial and tax filings. Seek to proactively reduce complexity including number of legal entities where appropriate. Represent Microsoft in the local market when required. Measures of Success: - Improve ROI of resourcing and opex and drive productivity across solution areas - Ensure FRA and controllable costs are met on a quarterly basis - Deliver budget in total & cloud revenue & consumption/usage targets. - Lead with the digital transformation agenda (Win wires involving finance) - Improve deal economics by reducing concessions and driving down exit discounts - Improved compliance dashboard and audit results. Full process remediation -> no recurring Internal Audit issues - Number of issues proactively identified (rather than after the fact) and remediated. % of OLC cases founded reduced - Deliver timely and accurate financial and tax filings **Qualifications**: **Required/Minimum Qualifications** - Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, Economics, Data Science or related field AND 10+ years post-graduate financial analysis, accounting, controllership, or finance work experience - OR Master's Degree in Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, Economics, Data Science or related field AND 8+ years post-graduate financial analysis, accounting, controllership, or finance work experience. - OR equivalent exper