Senior Manager, Financial Systems

About the Role & Team

At Disney Financial Systems, you will team with the best in the business to create and build in one of the most innovative teams in any industry. Uniquely positioned at the center of The Walt Disney Company, the forward-thinkers at Financial Systems constantly pursue new insights and innovative technologies to help The Walt Disney Company’s many businesses drive value, all the while gaining something valuable from the experience themselves.

The Senior Manager, Financial Systems, will be the strategic financial systems partner working with key finance and business customers, process owners, and technology partners, to support the Disney Entertainment (DE) financial processes and systems associated with content licensing (i.e., revenue, billing, and amortization of content cost). This will include but is not limited to, partnering with the business to formulate system and process improvement options to address specific functional issues/requirements for the DE segment. This includes evaluating business goals and needs, current operational procedures and financial systems used to formulate and successfully implement the roadmap for finance and systems transformation into the future. This role will also lead medium to large projects in partnership with business clients, including new business integration, continuous improvements in systems and processes, and financial systems modernization efforts. The Senior Manager must partner with Controllership, Finance and Technology to manage and maintain responsibility throughout the project life cycle for financial and accounting related activities. This partnership ensures projects are coordinated to complement each other and tap into relationships where possible. They will also manage the ongoing Segment OTC support for system improvements and sustainment activities. This includes partnering with the businesses to gather requirements, manage overall testing of segment improvements and identifying segment specific impacts resulting from system changes/ enhancements.

What You Will Do

You must have a strong accounting/finance and project management background. Have extensive experience in SAP and with the financial processes associated with the revenue life cycle using Front of House systems. Be familiar with current best practices and new technological trends to be able to work with various teams to streamline existing processes. Have a proven history of building and maintaining excellent client service relationships, strong leadership experience to direct and mentor teams to meet goals, interact and partner with all levels of management to help drive collaborative business decisions, excellent communication skills, work in a fast-paced environment, and adaptable to business priority changes with ease. This position will report to the Director, Financial Systems. Come be part of this dynamic team!

Required Qualifications & Skills

Project Estimation

• Facilitate scope definition, and high-level planning, discovery, and estimation workshops for projects with cross-functional teams
• Quantify cost factors to deliver project deliverables including resources, project oversight, objective risk and related contingency
• Document key assumptions and dependencies established through estimation activities
• Prepare and present high-level plan with estimates for executives and cross-functional leaders based on estimate outcomes
• Project Planning
• Create project schedule and communication plans
• Ensure proactive scheduling of key deliverables, achievements and deliverable tasks
• Establish project financial forecasts including resource plans and other expense plans
• Develop the project plan and schedule with cross team functional partners
• Ensure necessary steps and dependencies to deliver projects and components are established
• Validate that scope can be completed within timeline and budget
• Estimate resource needs with help from functional partners

Project Delivery

• Confidently lead and drive cross-functional projects, and individual project tracks of large programs through full delivery life-cycle ensuring project is delivered on-time and on-budget
• Manage resource assignment, budget, scheduling, and scope prioritization, and change control
• Work with cross subject area team members to validate project assumptions and review project plans
• Ensure proper documentation of scope of work with help from cross team functional partners
• Serve as primary liaison among multiple teams, including DFS, Technology, vendors and key functional/business teams
• Communicate regular updates to project and executive team on delivery progress, plan updates and budget spend and forecast, including status report updates, financial/budget/variance reports, and other reporting as required
• Supervise adherence to schedule and achievement commitments
• Bring up key issues and risks to ensure timely resolution and mitigation
• Prevent scope creep, record causes of change, and facilitate change requests to ensure impacts to schedule or budget, as well as forecasts, are approved and communicated in a timely manner
• Use metrics, including burn-down charts, to drive performance, efficiency and forecast improvements
• Ensure proper project closure including lessons learned, transition and hand-off to ongoing maintenance support, and final financial reporting

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 10+ years work experience with financial or accounting, preferably in a large SAP installation
• 5+ years of staff management experience
• Experience working for large company and within a matrix organization

Preferred Qualifications

• CPA or CMA license, or equivalent
• PMP or other professional project management certification
• Six Sigma certification
• Experienced in using the Microsoft Office applications (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project)
• Experience in using SAP or another ERP
• Experience in using Business Objects and/or Cognos reporting tools
• Experience developing end user training

Required Education

• Bachelor's Degree in Accounting, Finance, Information Technology, Business, or a related field

Preferred Education

• Graduate Degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Information Systems, or a related field (e.g., MAC, MBA, MIS)

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, California is $163,200.00 to $199,400.00 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.