About the Opportunity

Summary

You are passionate about delivering on-time, at-cost, and low-risk payment operations. You revel in consistently exceeding customers’ expectations. You want a lead role in managing enterprise-level day-to-day accounts payable activities and thrive when executing activities within Invoice-to-payment workflows. You are a well-versed disbursement tactician with a continuous improvement, operational efficiency, and effectiveness mindset who delivers data-driven outcomes. You’re a proven leader, often without authority, and act with a sense of urgency and organizational agility when problem-solving and project managing. You desire a supporting role in transforming and automating business processes, deploying a reimagined, data-driven performance management system within enterprise disbursement, and ultimately, delighting our customers.

You have intellectual curiosity, build strong coalitions, possess strong financial acumen, and continuously demonstrate high degrees of ownership, integrity, and attention to detail. You are an independent self-starter who thrives in connecting people and ideas to data and outcomes and has a strong entrepreneurial drive. You excel at communication, are comfortable with a critically important role in a highly visible organization, and are always accountable for results.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5 years of related experience or BA / BS and 2 years of relevant experience or relevant MBA / MS
• Demonstrated leadership and expertise within the Invoice to Payment and T&E workflows, e.g., invoice acceptance and payment, two- and three-way invoice matching, commercial and grantee payment terms, preferred payment mechanisms, compliance, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively utilize disbursement data and trusted advisor relationships to identify opportunities, build cross-functional problem-solving coalitions, continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of assigned activities, and ultimately deliver better outcomes via published performance management framework (e.g., business management system, service level agreements, key performance indicators)
• Familiarity with government and state / local payment/disbursement regulations, commercial payment best practices, and techniques/value levers to enhance returns on working capital.
• Proven experience in leading payment/disbursement operations activities in a high profile, high transactional volume, high financial risk environment
• Globally minded, self-motivated, flexible, and creative leader, able to prioritize, multi-task, and work horizontally and vertically across a decentralized organization to drive results
• Strong leadership presence and ability to build customer-focused “trusted advisor” relationships by delivering sound technical analysis, customer empathy, and data-driven decision-making
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills with the ability to lead, interact with, influence, resolve conflict, and drive decisions/accountability among individuals from a variety of cultures and disciplines
• Demonstrated flexibility and willingness to respond to changes in the external environment while ensuring the organization can effectively and efficiently navigate transitions.
• Familiarity with foreign currency transactions and ACH / Bank Wire regulations
• Demonstrated expertise in Microsoft business programs (e.g., Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• Demonstrated experience utilizing data warehouse, data analytics, and reporting tools (e.g., Cognos, SQL, R, Python, Tableau, Power BI)
• Ability to develop and present educational programs and/or workshops

Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for assigned day-to-day payment operations activities, including, but not limited to:
  • Manage timing of vendor payments consistent with vendor agreements and company policy and budget
  • Process all non-Payroll requests for payment
  • Coordinate purchase order and invoice payment issues with business partners and identify any potential training gaps.
  • Communicate and enforce P2P policy
  • Support onboarding, maintenance, and offboarding activities for vendor partners in B2B business portals and the Amex BIP program.
  • Research, address, and troubleshoot issues with supplier onboarding
  • Support the year-end and payment accrual process
  • Serve as a communication bridge between the P2P team and its customers, both internal and external
  • Assist with training non-P2P employees in the use and understanding of the University’s financial procurement and payables systems.
  • Participate in internal and external audits as necessary
  • Develop and maintain “trusted advisor” relationships with business partners and key customers
  • Communicate results and/or recommendations to Deans, Directors, Departments, and key financial administrators.
  • Refer potential significant problems to Internal Audit for further review
  • Gather data, compile information, analyze data, and process reports

• Review issues and provide the necessary data and analysis, as needed, during the committee review process to assist in implementing successful business strategies that will help reduce costs, maintain financial integrity, support process automation, and enhance the customer service experience

• Support the development, implementation, and maintenance of processes, policies, guidelines, Standard Operating Procedures, and Business Operating Principles

Position Type

Finance

Additional Information

Northeastern University considers factors such as candidate work experience, education and skills when extending an offer.  

Northeastern University is an equal opportunity employer, seeking to recruit and support a broadly diverse community of faculty and staff.  Northeastern values and celebrates diversity in all its forms and strives to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds cohesion. 

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or any other  characteristic protected by applicable law.

To learn more about Northeastern University’s commitment and support of diversity and inclusion, please see .