Sr Financial Analyst in Columbia, South Carolina at Shakespeare Company LLC

Position Overview

The Senior Financial Analyst supports financial planning, budget consolidation, reporting, forecasting, and analysis in a manufacturing environment. This role partners with finance, operations, sales, and supply chain to explain business performance, identify cost and margin opportunities, and provide clear financial insight to support better decisions.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)

• Develop and maintain financial models, budgets, forecasts, and business performance reporting.

• Prepare variance analysis, financial bridges, and operating reviews that explain performance versus budget, prior forecast, and prior year, with clear actions, owners, timing, and expected financial impact.

• Partner with department heads and business unit leaders to review performance, challenge assumptions, identify risks and opportunities, and define required actions.

• Support business cases, capital expenditure proposals, ROI analysis, margin improvement, cost efficiency, and working capital initiatives.

Customer & Business Analytics

• Analyze customer, SKU, product line, and business unit profitability to support commercial strategy, pricing decisions, and margin improvement.

• Identify margin leakage through analysis of product mix, customer trends, programs, rebates, freight recovery, cost to serve, surcharge activity, and price realization.

• Partner with commercial leaders to support pricing models, surcharge analysis, price increase tracking, and customer margin improvement initiatives.

• Create dashboards and KPI reports that track operating and financial performance and improve visibility into business drivers, risks, and required actions.

Budget Consolidation and Forecast Management

• Lead the annual budget consolidation process across business units, departments, and functional leaders, including the budget calendar, templates, planning assumptions, submission tracking, consolidation, and validation of inputs.

• Review budget submissions for completeness, accuracy, consistency with approved assumptions, and alignment with operating targets.

• Prepare consolidated budget reporting, variance bridges, and executive summaries for senior leadership, ownership, lenders, and board review.

• Support monthly forecast updates by consolidating business unit inputs and explaining changes versus budget, prior forecast, and prior year.

Additional Duties

• Prepare financial schedules, management reports, forecast packages, and supporting analysis for executive, board, investor, lender, audit, and tax reporting.

• Support ERP, Power BI, and financial reporting improvements by strengthening data integrity, cost center reporting, product profitability reporting, dashboard discipline, and reporting accuracy.

• Partner with finance, IT, operations, supply chain, customer service, and commercial teams to improve visibility into business drivers, risks, and required actions.

• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or related field required.

• 7 to 10 years of progressive experience in financial management, analysis, and reporting within a heavy manufacturing environment.

• Manufacturing experience required; extrusion, plastics, packaging, consumer goods, or industrial manufacturing experience preferred.

• Demonstrated expertise in cost accounting, financial modeling, and manufacturing analytics.

• Experience with ERP systems such as Epicor, SAP, Oracle, or similar, with advanced proficiency in Excel and reporting tools such as Power BI or Tableau.

• Experience supporting business unit P&L reviews, forecast bridges, customer profitability analysis, working capital analysis, and executive reporting preferred.

Certifications (Preferred)

• CMA or CPA preferred; MBA or relevant advanced finance training helpful.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong analytical and problem solving skills with exceptional attention to detail.

• Proven ability to interpret complex data and communicate financial insights to nonfinancial audiences.

• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, and communication skills.

• Proactive, collaborative, and able to work independently while influencing leaders without direct reporting authority.

• Strong business acumen with a continuous improvement mindset.

• Ability to work in the details while also summarizing issues clearly for executive leadership.

• Comfortable challenging assumptions, escalating risks, and helping leaders convert analysis into actions and measurable results.

• Strong judgment, discretion, and ability to handle confidential business and financial information.