The Team: Morningstar's Global Finance Transformation Program (GFTP) is looking for a Project Manager. The GFTP team was created to establish a formal project management framework and governance structure to ensure coordination between the significant and complex projects of the Finance organization. This includes teams aligned with Accounting, Financial Reporting, Financial Planning and Analysis, Procurement, Tax, and Internal Audit functions. We assist with project management activities, facilitate project prioritization, coordinate project resources and communicate project status to senior management. Morningstar's Finance organization is a leadership function focused on value creation for our internal and external stakeholders. We accomplish this through our focus on core stewardship activities; building business partnerships; and developing great people in our team.
The Job: The Project Manager will be responsible for executing our project management framework and coordinating with various subject matter experts and other stakeholders through all stages of a project life cycle (Define, Analyze, Build, Launch, and Operate). In this role, you will work closely with the project stakeholders to properly plan each project ensuring scope, resources, success metrics, budget and timeline are thought through during our Define Phase. You will work closely with functional and technical resources to gather detailed requirements and develop a build and test plan during the Analyze Phase. During Build, you will manage/oversee preparation of our testing strategy in alignment with the build plan and also manage any required data conversions. In the Launch and Operate phases, you will assist in preparing for our cutover: ensuring all functions, systems, business processes and resources are aligned to support a successful go live; hyper-support period and transition to business as usual plans. Project Closure includes a final project report. We expect our GFTP Project Managers to account for change management requirements such as training and communication plans as well as facilitate impact assessments on our internal controls required for Sarbanes Oxley compliance. The majority of projects will involve technical system implementations or enhancements.
This position reports to the Global Finance Transformation Program Director and is located in our Chicago office, but other locations may be considered if there is alignment/overlap with our portfolio of projects. Some travel may be required. You will interact regularly with members of our global finance teams as well as other Functions in Morningstar such as Corporate Systems, Sales Operations and Product teams. Project activity will impact a variety of finance systems (from transaction processing to financial consolidation). This position can be located in Chicago, Mumbai or London.
Responsibilities:

• Coordinate with Finance team stakeholders to understand the requirements of each project, develop a project plan, and monitor progress against milestones across multiple workstreams
• Engage in early stage discussions to help define projects for prioritization and to facilitate deeper project planning activities
• Maintain and disseminate tools, templates and tracking mechanisms to effectively manage the planning, organization and execution of project activities
• Develop a working knowledge of the financial systems and related business processes to facilitate project planning and execution
• Understand and manage key components and deliverables within a project plan (e.g. process mapping and gap assessment; elements of a system implementation such as customer/supplier data conversions, testing, etc.)
• Escalate issues to leadership team and facilitate a timely resolution
• Develop and maintain processes to drive global standardization and adoption of best practices for project activities
• Facilitate project retrospectives outlining key lessons learned, parking lot items and the action plan to handle them.

Requirements:

• 5-7 years of relevant work experience
• Strong project management and organizational skills
• Ability to create and maintain project plans as well as prioritize issues based on their relative risk
• Understanding of finance and accounting process flows and internal control concepts
• Ability to ask probing questions to facilitate decision making
• Familiarity with financial systems landscape (ERP, Consolidation tools, etc...)
• Ability to anticipate areas of difficulty/potential unknown risks and contribute towards creative solutions
• Keen interpersonal skills to motivate and coordinate resources and handle conflicts as they arise
• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to convey technical information in non-technical terms to other functional groups, global Finance team members, and various management levels
• The ability to understand and leverage different project management frameworks and concepts (such as LEAN or Agile).
• Intermediate to advanced Excel skills. Ability to understand and utilize productivity tools (such as MS Teams, JIRA, Wiki, SharePoint, Smartsheet)
• Undergraduate degree in Finance/Accounting preferred.
• PMP or PMP track preferred

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