About Evident
At Evident, we are guided by the scientific spirit - innovation and exploration are at the heart of what we do. Committed to making people’s lives healthier, safer, and more fulfilling, we support our customers with solutions that solve their challenges and advance their work; whether it’s researching medical breakthroughs, inspecting infrastructure, or exposing hidden toxins in consumer products.
Previously known as Olympus’ Scientific Solutions Division, we have over 100 years of history in the Micro Imaging Solutions and Test & Measurement businesses, with ~4,300 employees across 25 countries globally. We have six manufacturing facilities and four R&D facilities across Americas, Asia and Europe that enable us to deliver products promptly and efficiently to customers around the world, while developing and innovating products to meet our customers’ needs.
For more information, visit www.evidentscientific.com
About the Job
We are seeking a highly experienced Head of Accounting to oversee our European operations. This leadership role will be responsible for managing the accounting, finance, and financial reporting functions for our entities across Europe. Key responsibilities include overseeing the annual audit process, working closely with the Corporate Accounting teams in Tokyo to ensure accurate consolidated regional reporting, and managing the delivery of BPO services (AP, AR, & GL) from Poland and India to support business operations. The position also requires effective collaboration with finance and accounting teams across all regions.
Main Responsibilities
This role is responsible for the preparation and the presentation of:
(1) Europe consolidated financial reporting in IFRS for reporting to Corporate Japan;
(2) Timely management reporting to senior management team;
(3) IFRS for statutory accounts of the entities in Europe, plus HGB (German GAAP) for Germany) local statutory compliance, including corporate tax, transfer pricing, international payments, inter-company loans, and dividend payments to Corporate Japan;
(4) Oversees the preparation of local statutory accounts of the branches in their respective IFRS for local statutory compliance;
(5) Reporting to bankers.
He/she needs to ensure proper governance, maintenance of sound internal controls and quality over the accounting close process, acts as Europe accounting technical resource and be able to present a Consolidated Balance Sheet review of the Europe operations.
He/she would also lead any project on accounting standards/policies changes, M&A activities and IT projects, eg implementation of ERPs and OneStream consolidation software. Experience in implementing IT projects would be a bonus.
This role plans and manages the accounting and finance processes to ensure the integrity of the performance and statutory reporting plus business partnering with senior executives of group management, Tax, Treasury and Controlling department.
This role is responsible to develop and improve operational finance processes in SAP environment and represent Europe to work with global accounting teams to develop and deploy global systems for global standardized reporting and provides data analysis and dashboard reporting.
Job Scope:
- Manage the accounting teams for 3 legal entities, monthly/closing and Europe consolidation, and reporting to Corporate Japan for global consolidation purpose within stipulated timeline.
- Manage the deliveries from BPO teams to support the Europe business, including executing business process transformation. The BPO teams are located in Poland and India. He/She will collaborate with the Global Process AR, AP and R2R Owners to manage the BPO teams.
- Solid knowledge of IFRS and financial reporting, act as technical resource for the accounting teams supporting Europe and be able to liaise with external auditors and manage the annual audit process.
- Responsible for overseeing staff reporting to him/her to streamline and execute robust, efficient, and accurate processes that reflect the highly matrixed and complex multinational structures of Evident.
- Provide stakeholders analysis and reports.
- Ensure that IFRS standards and internal policies are appropriately applied.
- Ability to draft and implement accounting policy or accounting memorandum.
- Support the treasury activities during the integration and day to day operations, manage any new bank relationship (communication to be issued, credit cards, signatories).
- Ensure and establish effective accounting controls, processes, and tools to support efficient accounting activities
- Strengthen and administer effective infrastructure to diagnose issues and manage progress against objectives.
- Provide concise and actionable feedback to all levels of management regarding performance on initiatives.
- Participates cross-functional meetings for business issue resolution.
- Improve and oversee accounting processes, financial systems design and implementation, and business process efficiency tools.
- Analyze and explain results and variances; identify and communicate main drivers of fluctuations between comparative periods. Find source of issues and recommend corrective actions.
- Work knowledge on SAP ERP, including its implementation or migration, and working experience on consolidation software such as HFM and OneStream, is a big plus.
- Harmonization of business processes in place across Europe entities.
- Work closely with the Financial Planning & Analysis team regarding budgeting/forecasting to ensure efficient execution and submissions to the head office in Japan.
- Support potential M&A activities from accounting standpoint
- Collaborate to internal and external audit processes.
- Serve as lead and mentor to its direct reports and colleagues
Core Competencies
- Demonstrate forward-thinking, act with a change agent mindset to drive continuous improvement. With sense of urgency to address short term issues and opportunities, but with a proactive approach for sustainable execution.
- Experience implementing / migrating ERPs, possess interest and work experience in collaborating with IT to drive software implementation.
- Experience and expertise in working with BPO teams in Eastern Europe and Asia
- Ability to manage multiple priorities with overlapping deadlines, deliverables, and staff utilization in a fast-pace, ever-changing, and evolving work environment, in collaboration with multiple finance and operations teams.
- Result oriented, with a sense of quality.
- Deep knowledge and experience building Excel models and Business Intelligence tools.
- Proven track record of leading its teams as a business partner through teamwork, collaboration, and open communication.
- Skill to develop and motivate employees in its team.
- Excellent written, verbal, and visual presentation communication skills.
- Knowledge of German language is highly preferred.
- International outlook, with ability to work across borders and cultures
Experience
- Min 7 years of Europe financial accounting and controlling experience, including direct report supervision, preferably in an international corporate setting interfacing with multiple divisions and overseas entities.
- 3-6 years work experience in Big 4.
