Value Creation Business Partner (Spend Better)

Mars • Chicago, IL

12d • $153,600 - $211,200 • Onsite

About The Position

The Business Partner, Value Creation is a member of the Integration Management Office (IMO) Value Creation team and reports to the Value Creation Lead. The role is the primary value-creation partner to assigned functions, regions, and integration workstreams, helping teams identify, quantify, track, and realize synergy commitments.

The position partners with the global Spend Better program, a critical pillar of the global Synergy program focused on sustainable cost savings and productivity across the end-to-end value chain. Spend Better emphasizes Directs—including Direct Materials, Packaging, Recipe & Formulation, and Design-to-Value—alongside manufacturing productivity, network optimization, logistics efficiency, travel and overhead optimization, and other structural cost-reduction initiatives.

This commercially oriented Finance Business Partner operates across Finance, Procurement, R&D, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Marketing, and other functions. The role works with senior global stakeholders and Finance Business Partners across regions and functions to identify opportunities, challenge assumptions, translate operational opportunities into financial value, and ensure savings are delivered and sustained.

Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive Finance experience.
• Demonstrated experience across the Directs ecosystem, including direct materials procurement finance, raw and packaging materials, R&D or formulation optimization, Design-to-Value, and Bill of Materials cost architecture.
• Substantial experience in Consumer Packaged Goods, Food & Beverage, or FMCG manufacturing environments where recipe, packaging, and factory conversion are central to cost structures.
• Experience translating operational productivity opportunities into validated, sustainable financial savings.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing cost drivers and ability to distinguish structural savings from volume, mix, inflation, FX, and other financial effects.
• Strong grasp of recipe costing, ingredient functionality trade-offs, packaging specifications, yield and scrap dynamics, and conversion economics.
• High proficiency in complex business cases, discounted cash flows, switchover investment paybacks, and synergy stage-gate tracking.
• Deep understanding of COGS, standard costing variance including purchase price and usage variance, P&L flow-through, and inventory valuation.
• Ability to analyze large datasets across ERP systems and bills of materials, identify financial drivers, and inform business decisions.
• Strong commercial and technical judgment, with the ability to understand operational levers behind financial results.
• Confidence probing assumptions made by procurement buyers and technical developers.
• Ability to operate in dynamic, fast-paced integration environments and balance strategic vision with detailed operational execution.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to mobilize cross-functional global partners without direct authority.
• Exceptional storytelling and synthesis skills, including the ability to explain technical and financial complexity to senior executives.

Nice To Haves

• Significant Finance experience in cost transformation, productivity, value creation, or performance improvement.
• Experience operating in large, complex, multinational organizations.
• Familiarity with teardowns, Design-to-Value principles, clean-sheet pricing, and supplier margin analysis.

Responsibilities

• Act as the primary Finance Business Partner to the global Spend Better program.
• Translate synergy ambition into a prioritized portfolio of commercial and technical or operational initiatives.
• Drive urgency, accountability, transparency, and consistency in identifying, quantifying, and tracking value creation.
• Partner with Supply Chain, Manufacturing, R&D, Procurement, Marketing, and other functions to identify cost-reduction and productivity opportunities.
• Assess opportunities based on cost drivers, baseline economics, implementation requirements, risks, value, feasibility, speed, and sustainability.
• Translate operational initiatives into measurable financial outcomes and champion Design-to-Value and total cost of ownership frameworks.
• Stress-test business cases to distinguish true economic savings from timing, volume, mix, or accounting effects.
• Define and embed methodologies for establishing baselines, calculating savings, and measuring financial impact.
• Distinguish identified, validated, implemented, and realized savings; ensure initiatives are reflected appropriately in forecasts and actual results.
• Reconcile initiative-level savings to P&L and other financial measures with regional and functional Finance teams.
• Identify gaps between operational savings claims and financial outcomes, prevent double counting, and ensure clear benefit ownership.
• Develop a fact-based view of Spend Better performance across regions, functions, and initiatives.
• Build dashboards and management routines to show delivery versus ambition, risks, opportunities, and required interventions.
• Provide analysis and insights to senior leadership and governance forums, including SteerCo discussions.
• Surface emerging risks and work with initiative owners on recovery plans.
• Build relationships with global senior stakeholders and Finance Business Partners, influence without direct authority, and drive alignment across a matrixed organization.
• Share best practices and replicate successful value-creation initiatives across markets and categories.

Benefits

• Industry-competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.
• Medical and dental benefits.
• Participation in a 401(k) plan.
• Paid time off benefits.
• Learning and development support from day one, including access to Mars University.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed