About

Finance Director
Trading Under Publicis Media
City: Sydney
Role purpose

The Finance Director is responsible for the financial leadership across one of our media agencies. The Finance Director leads a team to ensure the appropriate financial and commercial management of the media agency. Collaborating with the Agency CEO and Leadership team, the Finance Director provides strategic, financial and compliant guidance across the business within Publicis Media Australia.

Key outputs:

Business Partnering
• Support and direction to the Leadership team with all strategic financial decisions and actions
• Collaborate with other Finance Directors to align on ways of working, processes and best practices between media agencies to ensure optimized resourcing across teams.
• Actualise strategies, oversee and guide implementation.

Financial management
• Ensure an efficient and effective financial support to the agency and timely and accurate reporting to Publicis Media through:
• Oversee and manage accountability, month end reviews, audits and annual commits.
• Compliance to the budgeting processes and reporting timelines
• Collaboration with the Publicis Groupe FP&A team
• Appropriate structuring of the finance teams
• Application of the Publicis Groupe internal Control framework (In particular the implementation of FMCs) across the Agency Brands.
• Ensure compliance within Publicis Groupe operational and financial policies and processes.

People leadership
• Lead, coach and inspire the finance team working within the agency
• Ensure consistency with on-boarding, 100 day plans, reward & recognition program, career development discussions etc.
• Work with People & Culture to influence employer of choice credentials and model the behaviours we expect of our people
• Identify opportunities to create better efficiencies and streamline processes within the team.

Commercial and business optimization
• Initiate and lead optimization plans in order to:
• Increase staff utilization
• Accelerate PGD adoption
• Improve operational structure
• Reduce overheads
• Work with key stakeholders to ensure our clients engagements are profitable and efficiently managed
• Be proactive and mining for new ways to organically grow the business and improve probability, efficiencies, increase revenue and reducing costs.
• Build strong and trusting relationships with clients.

Skills
These are the technical and professional capabilities required for the role:
• Senior-level experience in a Media Agency (10+ years)
• CA/CPA qualification (desirable)
• Strong communication skills for stakeholder engagement
• Leadership experience, including team management
• Attention to detail
• Planning, organisational, and time management skills
• Systems expertise:
o BMD (media system)
o Hyperion (HFM)
o SAP
o Advanced Excel proficiency

Behaviours
These reflect the personal attributes and working style expected:
• Business-facing mindset, comfortable in a dynamic, matrixed environment
• Commercial acumen and understanding of the media landscape
• Highly organised, with strong attention to detail
• Resilient and adaptable, thrives in busy environments and enjoys problem-solving
• Growth-oriented, constantly learning and evolving
• Collaborative team player, culturally engaged
• Analytical thinker, asks questions to clarify and challenge
• Purpose-driven, committed to doing meaningful work
• Open and transparent, with a positive, can-do attitude
• Inspiring leader, capable of having difficult conversations with kindness and integrity
This position requires a relevant tertiary qualification or a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience in lieu for qualification.
Salary over threshold
#LI-DNI