DESCRIPTION OF ROLE

Kimberly-Clark is a leading global health and hygiene company employing more than 55,000 people worldwide and posting sales of $16.7 billion in 2006. Our global brands including Andrex®, Kleenex® and Huggies® are sold in more than 150 countries. We currently have an exciting opportunity to join our team in Brighton.

An exciting career opportunity has arisen to join our European Shared Service Centre in Brighton as a Credit Control Supervisor. Reporting to the Credit Control Manager, your main responsibilities will be to manage, support and develop a current team of 7 Credit Controllers, all of whom are accountable for Credit Control activities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland. You will be directing the day-to-day activities of your team members in the management of credit, past due invoices and cash collection, ensuring that all these credit control activities are carried out in a proactive, efficient and timely manner. You will be constructive in finding ways of improving processes as well as solving more complex cases/queries. Your main focus will also be on managing, developing and motivating this team. Your day-to-day tasks will be varied, however you will be mainly prioritising your team's work, communicating with the outsourcing partner and the business in the Northern European countries as well as acting as an escalator for the most complex customer queries/issues. You will be personally responsible for managing complex customer relationships, ensuring they are dealt with effectively. The ideal candidate will show they are proactive, flexible, good at co-ordinating and leading a team as well as solving problems. There will be travel involved in this role; together with a member from the Customer Management Team you will be required to travel when required to visit customers. These customer visits will be beneficial in solving queries/problems as well as improving the relationship with the customers.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Review the situation on past due invoices, deductions and queries.
• Ensure proactive discipline is enforced within the team to have clean accounts
• Act proactively to enforce payment to terms from customers
• Keep on top of deductions
• Act as a focal escalation point between the outsourcing partner and Internal clients
• Manage and develop credit controllers to enforce payment to terms from customers
• Review credit controllers results against objectives
• Support team priorities and initiatives, ensuring workloads are effectively managed
• Lead country internal client receivable reviews
• Ensure regular end customer visits, particularly in case of complex case resolution
• Ensure procedures and controls are followed
• Manage payment plans when customers run into difficulty
• Prevent bad debt resulting from insolvency or fraudulent customer behaviours
• Prepare and review bad debt provision on a quarterly basis
• Manage and continually evaluate risk for the accounts assigned
• Evaluate and comment on country economics and risk status of trading
• Take part in county forums to gather insights into common issues
• Build and maintain good working relationship with internal and external customers
• Be the first point of contact for Customer Management teams
• Be involved in month-end coordination and reporting
• Deputize for team manager when required
• Identify opportunities to improve payment terms, frequency and method of payment

CANDIDATE PROFILE

QUALIFICATIONS

The successful candidate will ideally be educated to 'A' level standard or equivalent and have good communication skills and telephone manner.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

• People management experience is essential
• Knowledge of credit management and receivables/payables is essential
• Previous experience of working in an international environment is beneficial
• Ability to handle multiple projects at a given time
• Excellent verbal and communication skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Strong Word and Excel skills
• Knowledge of SAP desirable

LANGUAGES

Fluent English and German or Dutch essential, good working knowledge of one of the following languages desirable: French, Swiss German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish.

ELIGIBILITY TO WORK IN THE UK:

To be considered for this position, you will need to be permanently eligible to work in the European Union