Manager, Finance, UK at WPP Media in London, United Kingdom

Commercial Associate – Finance & Commercial

About WPP Media

WPP Media, part of WPP, is WPP’s global media collective. In a world where media is everywhere and in everything, we bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create limitless opportunities for growth. For more information, visit wppmedia.com

At WPP Media, we believe in the power of our culture and our people. It’s what elevates us to deliver exceptional experiences for both our clients and each other. In this role it will be critical to embrace WPP & WPP Media’s shared core values:

• Be Extraordinary by Leading Collectively to Inspire transformational Creativity.
• Create an Open environment by Balancing People and Client Experiences by Cultivating Trust.
• Lead Optimistically by Championing Growth and Development to Mobilize the Enterprise.

Role Summary and Impact

The Commercial Associate will provide support across WPP Media UK. As part of a strong proactive Commercial Team, you will be expected to deliver consistent commercial analysis and support to the wider business, targeting margin growth and driving incremental revenue opportunities. Business Partnering is crucial to this role as you will work internally with the Commercial Team as well as externally with various stakeholders.

Within the Commercial Team, you will:

• Maintain and develop commercial trackers across a variety of topics.
• Maintain and develop department resource trackers.
• Support with Scope of Work renewals, exploring different commercial proposals to maximise client growth and profitability.
• Support with contract renewals and contract summaries working alongside the commercial lead and legal team.
• Understanding accepted terms and conditions of clients and communicate these to business associates.
• Ad-hoc commercial projects as and when they arise.
• Support ongoing requirement for Commercial training across the agency.
• Contribute towards commercial proposals for new business pitches.
• Play a key role in the formation of Quarterly Business Reviews.
• Develop PowerBI dashboards to present commercial data to various stakeholders.
• Develop commercial agents using WPP Open Media Assistant.

Outside of the Commercial Team, you will work with:

• Client Leads – providing timesheet reconciliations and ensuring accounts are run smoothly.
• Finance Operations – assisting with the client onboarding process and ensuring the correct contractual commission rates are applied on the system.
• Compliance Team – providing supporting documentation for audits where required.
• Commercial Finance – supporting with revenue forecasting.
• Department Leads – scoping commission-based resource ensuring teams are fit for purpose for each account.
• Resource Management – ensuring staff plans are up to date in the agency’s resource management system.

Skills and Experience

Core skills:

• Practice area knowledge – demonstrates sound grasp of how agencies make money and ability to understand key commercial measures and explain them clearly to others.
• Problem-solving – applies focused questioning and systematic research to understand the problem and wider impact. Ability to translate business problems into solutions.
• Stakeholder relationships – cultivates, nurtures, and grows relationships with clients, stakeholders, decision makers internally, externally, and virtually.
• Effective communication – able to lead dialogues between finance and non-finance professionals, communicating with clarity and precision, presenting complex information in a concise format that is audience appropriate.
• Commercial acumen – understanding and awareness of commercial and business needs; operational / commercial experience, must be able to add-value, support / enable / facilitate change.
• Product and client knowledge – ability to quickly learn our product suite and proprietary media offering and be able to explain each product offering and their benefits to clients.
• Operational Excellence – identifies opportunities to improve performance and evolve excellence benchmarks that drive flawless transactions, services, and products.
• Persuasion and Influence – possesses a variety of skills to create discussion, reach an agreement and create outcomes, affecting the action, behaviours, and opinions of others.
• Multitasking and Prioritisation – adapts to rapidly changing events and environments whilst accurately judging priorities and keeping track of details. Balances several projects and tasks simultaneously with minimal error and without losing track of important details or deliverables.
• Advanced Excel Skills – Good working knowledge of Microsoft Excel for analysing commercial data, including the use of formulas, pivot tables, and basic dashboard creation. Exposure to Power Query for data transformation, Power BI for reporting and visualisation, and VBA for basic automation. Ability to work with datasets to support reporting and provide insights to aid commercial decision-making.

Life at WPP Media & Benefits

Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising. We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

Please note this is a UK based role and requires individuals to have the right to work in this location

Please read our Privacy Notice (https://www.wppmedia.com/pages/privacy-policy) for more information on how we process the information you provide.

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