Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Finance organization provides world-class decision support to drive profitable growth and exceptional shareholder value through our commitment to operational excellence, people development, and innovation. We provide accurate and timely financial information to meet the company’s regulatory and fiduciary responsibilities with unwavering integrity.
HPE’s Royalty Finance team is managed within the Global Operations Finance organization, but spans the entire company, including Aruba, in terms of its scope and impact. This function has significant interactions with product managers, software partners and senior finance leadership in both Global Ops and business unit finance teams. This team manages royalty-related spend of approx. $320M / year related to 95+ software and other vendors.
In addition to its strong competency in royalty expense management, the HPE trade royalty organization works with internal business partners to ensure compliance with existing royalty agreements and to establish new royalty agreements. This team is also responsible for the short-term and long-term planning of royalty expenses for Compute, High-Performance Compute / Mission Critical Systems, Storage, and other business units.
KEY DELIVERABLES :
- Partnering with product managers and clearly setting up AFM compliant processes for royalty agreements that define various drivers (i.e: fixed $ or % of revenue-based agreements).
- Forecasting royalty expenses accurately based on revenue forecasts and other key drivers.
- Booking accruals for royalties during month-end close that are harmonized with deal-specific revenue recognition.
- Setting up amortization schedules for pre-paid royalty amounts for selected software and executing amortizations accurately.
- Forecasting royalty payables for balance sheet purposes.
- Reviewing flash vs actuals variances and providing narrative commentary for both P&L and balance sheet royalty accounts.
- Validating royalty payments and aligning with vendors and the HPE Global Strategic Sourcing organization regarding owed amounts.
- Raising web check requests and ensuring timely and accurate payments to vendors
- Maintaining engagement with business units to ensure that contract terms are being properly executed.
- Collaboratively working with peers and keeping team objectives in mind.
- Exploring possibilities to enhance current processes and driving transformation.
- Engaging with business unit product management teams to understand the strategic context for the royalty agreements that we are executing and / or contemplating.
RESPONSIBILITIES :
This role is highly visible and will require close work with the functional Finance leader of trade royalties and business unit product managers. Responsibilities will include, among other things:
- Provision of complex financial analyses, requiring an in-depth understanding of business and operational drivers to determine the best method for achieving objectives.
- Development of various ad hoc royalty reports for HPE and individual business units.
- Narrative reporting that explains flash vs actuals royalty expenses.
- Development and refinement of standalone forecasting models related to royalty expenses—including the identification of key drivers.
- Leads and advises on complex business initiatives, typically playing a strong leadership role to drive consensus, action, and closure across multiple areas within the finance function and across geographies and other business / functional organizations.
- Drives system, model and process improvement initiatives that impact the long-term free cash flow planning function globally.
- Ability to influence senior business and functional leaders within a broad scope, interacting with individuals at the vice president (VP) and senior vice president (SVP) level to explain and secure timely payment approvals.
- Exceptionally strong written and verbal communication skills are a must, as this role will work with various levels of management, both in finance and the business—to clearly articulate analytical findings and planning cycle outputs and to drive operational actions.
- Skills required include advanced Excel and PowerPoint knowledge, with the aptitude to extract information from the existing business systems (SC Cube, Planet, S4/BPC, EDW, Anaplan).
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