Financial Planning and Analysis Lead

Ziegler CAT has an opening for a Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Lead responsible for delivering financial planning, analysis, and decision support across the dealership by translating operational performance into actionable insights. This role owns forecasting, budgeting, and performance management across equipment sales, rental, parts, and service, while serving as a strategic business partner to leadership. This position would work on-premise at our Bloomington, MN corporate office.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the annual budgeting process, rolling forecasts, and long-range financial planning across designated business line/s
• Develop forecasts across key business lines, including new and used equipment sales, rental fleet, parts, and service
• Build and maintain financial models incorporating volume, margin, utilization, backlog, and market-driven scenarios
• Partner with leadership to evaluate capital investments, including inventory, fleet, facilities, and tooling
• Analyze profitability by branch, product line, customer segment, and job
• Support pricing, discounting, and margin optimization across the business
• Monitor and evaluate key operational drivers such as equipment turns, utilization, backlog, absorption, technician efficiency, and parts inventory performance
• Conduct ROI and breakeven analyses to support strategic initiatives and growth opportunities
• Own and deliver the monthly management reporting package for leadership
• Develop and maintain dashboards and KPIs aligned to dealer economics
• Analyze and clearly communicate financial performance versus plan, prior year, and forecast
• Identify risks and opportunities and recommend corrective actions
• Partner with sales leadership on pipeline development, orders, and backlog forecasting
• Support rental and fleet strategy, including pricing, utilization, and lifecycle management
• Collaborate with service leadership to improve labor productivity and absorption
• Provide analysis on customer, contract, and job-level profitability
• Serve as a finance business partner to branch managers and functional leaders across sales, rental, parts, service, and operations
• Translate financial data into clear operational insights
• Influence business decisions through data-driven recommendations
• Support and coach other FP&A Analysts capabilities in analytics, reporting, and planning
• Leverage ERP and dealer management systems (e.g., D365) for financial analysis and reporting
• Build and maintain financial models and forecasting tools
• Improve data quality, consistency, and reporting efficiency
• Support automation and continuous improvement initiatives

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, or a related field
• 5-7 years of FP&A or finance experience, preferably within a dealership, distribution, or industrial environment
• demonstrated ability to lead through influence
• Strong financial modeling, analytical, and problem-solving skills
• Advanced Excel skills; experience with Power BI or similar tools preferred
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey complex insights clearly
• Ability to balance detailed analysis with strategic, big-picture thinking
• Proven ability to partner with operational leaders and influence decision-making

Travel:

• Less than 10%