Ralph Lauren Inventory Accounting Manager

Company Description
Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE:RL) is a global leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products in five categories: apparel, accessories, home, fragrances, and hospitality. For more than 50 years, Ralph Lauren's reputation and distinctive image have been consistently developed across an expanding number of products, brands and international markets. The Company's brand names, which include Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren Collection, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Polo Ralph Lauren, Double RL, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren Children, Chaps, among others, constitute one of the world's most widely recognized families of consumer brands. At Ralph Lauren, we unite and inspire the communities within our company as well as those in which we serve by amplifying voices and perspectives to create a culture of belonging, ensuring inclusion, and fairness for all. We foster a culture of inclusion through: Talent, Education & Communication, Employee Groups and Celebration.

Position Overview
Ralph Lauren seeks an experienced Inventory Accounting Manager to join our North America Financial Operations organization working within team responsible for maintaining integrity, efficient flow and accurate reporting for all inventory and closely related ledgers across our Wholesale, Retail and DTC channels. This position will report into the Director (Lead) of Inventory Accounting & Control. The successful candidate will have 5-6+ years progressive responsibility within an accounting or financial operations team with a focus on inventory valuation (costing/ variance analysis/ reserves, etc.) inventory lifecycle/ flow transactions, reporting and systems. There is a strong preference for experience within an inventory driven retail or consumer goods organization and previous people management experience.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Manage, coach and develop a team of two (one senior accountant and one senior analyst) while demonstrating RL corporate values
• Support continuous improvement initiatives within inventory accounting processes, including standardization and efficiency improvements
• Act as escalation point for day-to-day inventory accounting issues
• Review gross inventory/ in-transit balances monthly across wholesale and retail systems and escalate any discrepancies
• Develop and maintain an inventory flash to easily report to Director of Inventory Accounting & Control
• Establish in-depth understanding of cost component analysis to support margin visibility
• Review various Vertical Sales elimination entries prepared by team and provide guidance/ feedback and troubleshooting
• Review PPV variance analysis, including identification of root causes and key drivers and consider how inventory valuation might be impacted
• Review Wholesale/ Retail PPV forecasts and present/ support to leadership as needed
• Own Net Realizable Value (NRV) analysis/ calculation as part of inventory valuation and reserve processes. o Partner with Merchandising, Supply Chain, and FP&A to obtain a well-developed understanding of our inventory position (and things that may have impacted it across the quarter in question) to ensure valuation risks are appropriately reflected in reserve o Assist in identifying slow-moving, obsolete, or excess inventory exposures across channels o Prepare/ present inventory reserve calculations quarterly to leadership o Ensure consistency and accuracy of NRV methodologies across brands and product categories.
• Complete assigned month-end financial closing tasks and provide requested data for periodic forecasts
• Communicate clearly with internal stakeholders across Supply Chain, FP&A, Procurement, Logistics, etc
• Demonstrate strong ownership, attention to detail, and a solutions-oriented mindset
• Responsible for timely and supported responses to internal and external audit requests and SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) compliance controls
• Complete ad hoc analysis as assigned

Experience, Skills & Knowledge

• Business centric BS degree, Accounting, Finance, or another closely related data-based business application
• 5-6+ years progressive responsibility in accounting or financial operations team with understanding of inventory integrity, flows, transactional systems and reporting within a retail or consumer goods environment
• Work comfortably with large data sets utilizing query, reporting and summarization features within Excel / BI tools/ SAP
• Partner with team members to complete thought-provoking assignments with a cross-functional approach
• Offer guidance and oversight for senior level team members
• Contributes to root cause analysis, including self-critical observations, to provide constructive feedback and opportunities for improvement
• Build effective relationships and engage in healthy conflict to resolve challenge areas across levels and stakeholders in the organization to influence change
• Demonstrates understanding of and have experience with inventory / accounting systems like: SAP (preferred), Oracle JDE, Microsoft AX and Island Pacific
• Communicate concisely with integrity to summarize a detailed processes or challenges