Manager, Finance Transformation

Cohen & Co•Cleveland, OH

About The Position

At Cohen and Co's Finance Transformation practice, we work with clients whose FP&A functions are constrained by more than their tooling — planning cycles that consume weeks of manual effort, forecasts disconnected from operational drivers, and a reporting layer built on spreadsheets no one fully trusts. We diagnose the whole picture, then build the answer. As a Manager on our Enterprise Performance Management team, you will lead full-lifecycle EPM engagements end to end — owning the strategy, the solution design, the data and GL architecture, and the FP&A process work that determines whether a platform actually delivers. You will work hands-on with Workday Adaptive Planning, Oracle EPM Cloud, and Pigment, and you will build and develop the practitioners around you. This is a role for someone who moves comfortably between the finance conversation and the technical one, and who understands that delivery quality, scope discipline, and engagement margin are the same conversation.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, Business, Economics, or a related field.
5+ years of combined experience across consulting, corporate FP&A, or EPM implementation, including at least 3 years delivering EPM projects.
Demonstrated ownership of at least two full-lifecycle EPM implementations from design through go-live.
Experience managing engagement teams and client relationships independently, including budget and scope accountability.
Hands-on configuration and build experience in at least one of Workday Adaptive Planning, Oracle EPM Cloud (EPBCS/PBCS), or Pigment, with working familiarity across the others.
Strong command of GL structures, chart of accounts design, dimensionality, and hierarchy management.
Practical data integration experience — mapping, transformation, load design, and reconciliation — with comfort working in ERP data structures.
Solid financial modeling skills and fluency in the three-statement model, driver-based forecasting, and allocations.
Working knowledge of US GAAP as it affects management reporting and the planning model.
Advanced Excel; SQL proficiency sufficient to interrogate and validate source data.
Ability to explain a technical design decision to a CFO in business terms and defend it under scrutiny.
Clear written communication, particularly in deliverables headed to executive audiences.
Comfort with ambiguity and with clients whose requirements are still forming.
Authorization to work in the U.S. without current or future visa sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Professional certification: CPA, CMA, CFA, or an MBA.
Platform certification in Workday Adaptive Planning, Oracle EPM Cloud, or Pigment.
Experience with adjacent EPM capabilities: financial consolidation and close (FCCS, OneStream, Workday Financial Consolidation), account reconciliation, profitability and cost management, or close automation.
Prior implementation or migration experience with legacy platforms — Hyperion Planning, Essbase, TM1/Planning Analytics, or Anaplan.
Familiarity with the modern data stack — Snowflake, Databricks, dbt, Fivetran — and with BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
Experience applying AI or advanced analytics to forecasting, anomaly detection, or variance explanation.
In-house FP&A experience — having lived through a planning cycle as the customer of the system, not just its builder.
Depth in one or more industries the firm serves: [INDUSTRY 1], [INDUSTRY 2], [INDUSTRY 3].
Experience supporting private equity portfolio companies, carve-outs, or post-merger finance integration.
Background in a professional services, Big Four, or national accounting firm environment.
Project management credential (PMP, Agile/Scrum) or formal change management certification (Prosci).

Responsibilities

EPM Platform Delivery Lead full-lifecycle EPM implementations: current-state assessment, platform selection support, design, build, test, deploy, and hypercare.
Own solution design — model architecture, dimensionality, calculation logic, allocation methodology, security and access model, and workflow and approval structure — and defend those decisions with client finance leadership.
Configure and build hands-on in at least one of Workday Adaptive Planning, Oracle EPM Cloud (EPBCS/PBCS), or Pigment, with sufficient fluency across the others to guide the team and advise on platform fit.
Design and deliver connected planning beyond the P&L: workforce, capital, revenue, expense, cash flow, and balance sheet planning, plus scenario and driver-based models.
Direct testing efforts — unit, system, and user acceptance — with full traceability from requirement to test case to sign-off.
Lead platform selection and vendor evaluation when clients are pre-decision: requirements definition, scoring model, demo scripting, TCO comparison, and an investment-committee-ready recommendation.
Manage migrations off legacy systems — Hyperion Planning, Essbase, TM1/Planning Analytics, or incumbent spreadsheet estates — including parallel-run design and cutover planning.
Establish post-go-live ownership models: administration structure, release management, and the internal capability clients need to sustain the system independently.
Lead chart of accounts design and rationalization: segment structure, natural account design, cost center and profit center schemes, and the trade-off between granularity and usability.
Own GL mapping from source ERP to the planning model across account, entity, cost center, product, project, and custom dimensions — including mapping rules, exception handling, and audit-ready documentation.
Design dimension hierarchies with alternate rollups for management, statutory, and segment reporting, and govern how those hierarchies evolve over time.
Define integration architecture across source systems (Workday Financials, NetSuite, SAP, Oracle Fusion, Dynamics, Sage Intacct), data warehouse or lakehouse layers, middleware, and load and reconciliation controls at each hop.
Incorporate non-GL operational data — HRIS headcount and compensation, CRM pipeline, billing and usage, supply chain volumes — and resolve grain and timing mismatches between sources.
Establish data quality and reconciliation controls: actuals-to-GL tie-outs, mapping completeness checks, orphan and unmapped-member handling, and exception reporting that surfaces breaks before month-end.
Navigate structural complexity: multi-currency translation, intercompany eliminations, restatements and historical remapping, acquisitions and divestitures, and allocation methodologies.
Set data governance: ownership of master data, the change process for adding accounts or cost centers, and how the planning model stays synchronized with the ERP.
Assess FP&A maturity across process, data, technology, people, and governance — and build a roadmap from current state to target state.
Redesign core planning processes: the annual budget, rolling forecast, long-range plan, monthly close and reporting cycle, and variance analysis.
Move clients from account-level budgeting to driver-based planning, identifying the operational drivers that move financial results and building the models that connect them.
Design the target FP&A operating model: corporate versus business-unit roles, centers of excellence, business partnering coverage, and where activity should sit.
Rebuild the management reporting layer — KPI definitions, management P&L structure, executive and board packages, and self-service reporting for business partners.
Measure cycle time compression and the shift in analyst effort from data assembly toward analysis, with before-and-after benchmarks that hold up to scrutiny.
Design and execute change management: stakeholder mapping, communications, training, super-user networks, and the adoption measures that tell you whether it took.
Establish governance that sustains the transformation: planning calendar, submission and review protocols, forecast accuracy tracking, and model change control.
Serve as the day-to-day relationship owner for client finance leadership — typically the FP&A Director, VP Finance, Controller, or CFO depending on the account.
Communicate technical design decisions in business terms; translate between the finance conversation and the build with clarity at both ends.
Manage scope actively: document changes, price them, and have the conversation before the work is done rather than after.
Own engagement delivery end to end: workplan, staffing, milestones, dependencies, and the critical path.
Manage engagement economics — budget, forecast to complete, utilization, realization, and margin — and surface issues early.
Identify delivery risk and own the mitigation plan; escalate with a proposed path forward.
Lead proposal development: scoping, solution approach, estimating, staffing model, and pricing for new and expanded engagements.
Run discovery and assessment conversations that convert into full implementations; identify adjacent needs within existing accounts.
Maintain working relationships with platform partners (Workday, Oracle, Pigment) and support co-selling and joint pursuits.
Apply the firm's quality, risk, independence, and confidentiality standards on every engagement, including how client data is handled, stored, and disposed of.
Lead and develop engagement teams of Consultants and Senior Consultants — assigning work that stretches them, reviewing output, and giving direct, usable feedback.
Serve as a career coach or performance manager for a small group of practitioners.
Contribute to practice infrastructure: methodology, accelerators, reusable model templates, delivery playbooks, and internal training.
Represent the practice externally through points of view, webinars, conference participation, and client-facing thought leadership.