Sr Director Global Ad Revenue Operations

Full Time Job
Our Team
Discovery’s Global Business Services (GBS) organization operates out of our Silver Spring, Maryland location. GBS is known for its innovative thinking, best practice implementation and customer service. We seek to unlock financial value for the company through igniting curiosity in all of our team members, encouraging collaboration and constantly transforming.

The Role
The Sr. Director GBS Ad Revenue Operations (order to cash) is an integral leader within Discovery’s Global Business Services Operation. The position manages all aspects of the end to end order to cash life cycle for advertising revenue across Discovery’s 223 countries and territories including; contract management, credit, customer set up, billing, collections, cash application, compliance and the month end close processes. S/he will plan, organize, and manage the activities of a department of approximately 50 global employees. S/he will direct efforts to improve all relevant processes and effectively partner with internal and external customers. S/he will define and implement global best practices and technical solutions, while driving working capital improvement and maintaining Discovery’s tight control environment.

Candidates for this position are strongly encouraged to have global experience in the media industry. They will possess the skill set required to manage a multi-national team across multiple time zones, have extensive experience with contract management, billings and collections, as well as successfully implemented governance and forecasting processes for large multinational media firms.

Candidates must be able to manage internal and external customers, meet tight deadlines and demonstrate the implementation of process improvements on a global scale.

Responsibilities

1. Functional expert in linear and digital advertising across the global market place
2. Understand key market drivers including those related to regulatory requirements, accounting implications and enabling technology
3. Manage billing, compliance and month end close, while providing input for management and external reporting
4. Formulate, recommend and implement changes to organizational structure, processes, policies and procedures to meet operational needs and/or improve accuracy and efficiency
5. Understand and effectively utilize staff on value-add activities as they arise
6. Review and approve non-standard and material journal entries for accuracy, completeness and adherence to company policies and US GAAP
7. Consistently operate in full compliance with company accounting and financial policies
8. Work with Accounting Policy to analyze complex revenue transactions
9. Effectively communicate significant and unusual transactions and events
10. Contribute to DSO reduction goals through minimizing time-to-invoice, improving invoicing accuracy, tightening discrepancy resolution, providing accurate and timely cash application, effectively partnering with the sales and finance teams, and all other applicable means
11. Identify and correct operational issues which lead to late customer payments
12. Develop and implement an international customer compliance function; Work with executives in Sales and Legal to review customer agings, compliance issues, expired agreements, and other matters for proper revenue recognition, bad debt reserves and resolution strategy
13. Develop strong working relationships with FP&A to understand key forecast assumptions and develop working capital models to increase reliability and transparency
14. Provide detailed explanations of forecast to actual variances each month, and develop plans to correct and pivot as needed
15. Ensure financial statements are reliable and without significant adjustment
16. Develop, implement and monitor US GAAP compliant policies and procedures which maintain segregation of duties, fraud prevention and financial risk mitigation
17. Continuously strengthen the control environment
18. Partner with internal and external audit teams
19. Work with auditors to understand testing approach and provide timely and comprehensive support
20. Work effectively with the IT department to drive enhancements to all AR systems
21. Define test scripts and manage UAT and communication with IT
22. Lead the integration strategy of acquired entities
23. Participate on large and complex cross-departmental projects
24. Benchmark key aspects of the full order-to-cash life cycle within revenue operations and drive operational performance to industry best practices
25. Prepare and present month end close results, including variance analysis and performance against key statistics
26. Implement strategic and flexible processes to support the emerging digital business across multiple platforms including on-line, players and other mobile applications
27. Recruit, develop and retain high performing staff; Manage out under-performing staff

Requirements

* Bachelor’s degree and eight years of related experience
* Six years of staff management of large, professionally and culturally diverse staff
* Experience with high volume and complex non-standard order to cash processes within a large ERP system (SAP preferred) and revenue feeder systems
* Familiarity with local regulatory and statutory requirements in Europe and Latin America a plus
* Advanced data analytical capabilities
* Ability to understand complex accounting transactions and implement controlled processes to identify and manage non-standard and complex revenue recognition transactions
* Experience with the integration of large and complex international entities
* Significant systems and system implementation experience
* Strong work ethic and demonstrated commitment to quality and excellence
* Strong project management skills and ability to manage and prioritize numerous projects
* High integrity, team player, extremely detail and results-oriented
* Strong interpersonal, communication, and organizational skills; Ability to work under tight timelines
* Strong leader, capable of providing excellent customer service to a diverse group of demanding internal and external customers
* Proven ability to build confidence and trust
* Exemplary written and oral communication skills

* Must have the legal right to work in the US

Silver Spring, Maryland, MD, SS, Washington, DC