The Senior Manager - Cost Intelligence provides data-driven insight, rigorous challenge, and disciplined execution, ensuring waste reduction, strengthens spend governance, and achieves sustainable savings. The role acts as a neutral enterprise change agent.
Job Responsibilities
1. Strategic Performance, Cost Intelligence & Advisory
- Act as the Executive's analytical partner, translating operational and financial data into actionable performance insights, forecasts, and recommendations.
- Lead rigorous, system-level cost and consumption analysis to uncover leakage, duplication, and inefficiencies.
- Maintain and enhance executive dashboards and early-warning indicators for costs, efficiency, and operational performance.
2. Cost Containment Framework, Governance & Execution
- Establish and own the Cost Containment Framework, setting standards, processes, and governance for cost management across functions and territories.
- Challenge budgets, spend assumptions, operational procedures, and supplier engagements with data-backed authority.
- Drive cross-functional cost-containment execution, embedding controls, eliminating waste, and ensuring sustainability of results.
3. Operational Efficiency & Value Realisation
- Lead analyses to identify productivity gains, resource synergies, and process streamlining opportunities across HR, IT, Facilities, Procurement, and other Shared Services.
- Formulate cost-optimisation strategies and business cases ensuring targeted savings, positive ROI, and acceptable payback periods.
- Support in prioritising transformation investments based on quantifiable value and efficiency outcomes.
4. Enterprise Reporting & Performance Monitoring
- Oversee preparation of quarterly Performance Dashboards, Operational Effectiveness Reports, and cost-management updates for the Board and Executive Committee
- Validate performance indicators, cost allocations, efficiency outcomes, and savings against agreed baselines.
- Maintain a rolling “Efficiency Tracker” consolidating Group-level savings and improvement initiatives.
5. Foundation & ESG Governance
- Manage the governance, spend allocation, and impact measurement framework for the Foundation.
- Ensure alignment of disbursements and reporting with ESG/CSR mandates.
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics, Business Management or a closely related discipline.
- Postgraduate studies in Finance, Business Administration, Data/Business Analytics, or Strategic Procurement would be an advantage.
- 7-10 years’ relevant experience in cost management, financial planning & analysis, procurement analytics, commercial finance, or operations/strategic finance within a complex organisation (financial services preferred).
- Proven track record in identifying and delivering cost-optimisation initiatives, including building business cases, tracking savings, and challenging spend assumptions.
- Experience working cross-functionally with Finance, Procurement, IT, HR and Operations at a senior level.
- Demonstrated experience using data and dashboards to drive decisions (e.g. spend analytics, category analysis, consumption/usage analysis).