Work Location Type:Hybrid

As a leading industrial distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom, We Keep The World Working by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. With 2023 sales of $16.5 billion, we're dedicated to providing value for customers, fostering an engaging culture for team members and driving strong financial results.

Our welcoming workplace enables you to learn, grow and make a difference by keeping businesses running and their people safe. As a 2024 Glassdoor Best Place to Work and a Great Place to Work-Certified company, we're looking for passionate people to join our team as we continue leading the industry over our next 100 years.

With an aggressive long-term growth strategy, Grainger is counting on the Finance organization to become a protagonist in the generation of faster business insight. Grainger Finance is undergoing a continuous improvement journey to build a nimble and world-class Finance model that effectively leverages digital technology and lean and agile end-to-end processes.

The Director, Process Optimization plays a key leadership position within the VP Continuous Improvement Office and is accountable to identify, coordinate, implement and drive execution of improvements to end to end financial processes to enable a world class Finance organization. Minimize manual processes, eliminate duplication of efforts and complex hand-offs between employees, increase financial capabilities through clear standardized, streamlined processes and deliver exceptional financial services. Establish process control with supporting documentation and training resources and make process improvements to increase productivity, reduce costs, reduce errors, and increase overall effectiveness. Provide effective process documentation, training, and tools to support Finance team. Implement metrics to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiencies of processes. Manage project management for Continuous Improvement initiatives to deliver programs on time and on benefit using collaborative approaches that generate buy-in among stakeholders and shared vision for success.

You will report to the VP of Internal Audit and Finance Continuous Improvement.This role is based out of our Lake Forest IL offices, in a hybrid environment.

You Will:

• Keep the customer top of mind and think creatively when creating value for customers
• Strategic thinker who questions status quo and leads process improvement, innovation and re-engineering in Finance. Design, develop, and deliver efficient financial business processes.
• Identify, organize, evaluate, plan and implement Finance process improvements and process re-engineering opportunities in collaboration with Finance leaders and subject matter experts, while meeting project timelines and achieving efficiency and cost-saving targets.
• Communicate with key Finance stakeholders and ensure appropriate level of change management via relationship with change consultant.
• Provide effective documentation to support the processes and training. Implement metrics to demonstrate effectiveness of processes.
• Manages the Finance Continuous Improvement plan in partnership with Finance Leaders and drive execution of plan for successful implementations of outcomes.
• Analyze data, use data visualization tools, workwith finance leaders on data transformation.
• Builds, leads and inspires a high-performing team of 10+ team members with a focus on developing and implementing solid succession planning.
• You Have:

• Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field such as Finance, or relevant experience required.

• 8+ years of continuous improvement and transformation experience or consultant equivalent (i.e., Big 4) required.

• Leads and fosters the continuous improvement roadmap and drive operational improvement and ensures engagement of the entire Finance team through strong communication and clear direction.

• Ability to think creatively, disrupt long-standing views or processes, deal with ambiguity (building from a clean sheet of paper) and quickly adapt and grow.

• Excellent communication, strong influencing skills and relationships across finance business functions; confidence to challenge the finance business leaders or approach with difficult messages and defend position

• Experience using Power BI, Tableauor other data visualization tools

• Establishes measures of progress and results with projects, including reducing operating costs as a percentage to sales and the ability to build buy-in across the organization for improvements.

• Experience working in global business matrixed environment with sound understanding of global process and transactional flows & analytics (data collection, sub-systems, ledger).

• Demonstrated leadership of a large team required; charismatic leadership presence with a strong ability to develop high-performing teams.

• Experience and desire to roll-up sleeves; pivoting between leading the charge or leading leaders to deliver results, where appropriate.

• Analytic skills & clear thinking: able to clearly link financial results to operational performance drivers, generate alternatives and drive positive change.

• Strong financial and analytical acumen and business insights with ability to draw fast conclusions on opportunities and an obsession to act even with imperfect information.

• With benefits starting day one, Grainger is committed to your safety, health and wellbeing. Our programs provide choice to meet our team members' individual needs. Check out some of the rewards available to you at Grainger.

• Benefits starting on day one, including medical, dental vision and life insurance

• 6% 401(k) company contribution each pay period with no personal contribution required

• Employee discounts, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, student loan refinancing, free access to financial counseling, education and more.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible environment that includes both providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the application and hiring process as well as throughout the course of one's employment. With this in mind, should you need a reasonable accommodation during the application and selection process, please advise us so that we can provide appropriate assistance.

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