Pentalift Equipment Corporation is seeking a senior finance and business operations leader to support the continued growth, structure, and professionalization of the company. This is a newly created role intended for a business-minded finance professional who can combine strong financial management, commercial judgment, ERP/data capability, and practical leadership in a manufacturing environment.
This is not a traditional production management or sales management role. Instead, the successful candidate will work closely with senior leadership and department managers to improve financial visibility, business processes, reporting, ERP/data quality, pricing discipline, administrative structure, and overall organizational execution. The ideal candidate will have a strong finance or accounting foundation, sound business judgment, and the initiative to identify gaps, take ownership of improvements, and help close those gaps without waiting to be assigned every task. This person should be comfortable working in a privately owned manufacturing business where practical problem-solving, follow-through, and cross-functional leadership are highly valued.
Key Responsibilities:
Finance, Reporting & Business Performance
- Oversee financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, cash flow planning, and management reporting.
- Strengthen cost tracking, margin analysis, internal controls, and financial discipline.
- Provide financial insight to support pricing, capital investment, product strategy, customer decisions, and growth planning.
- Improve reporting around profitability, sales performance, backlog, inventory, working capital, and operational execution.
- Support senior leadership with practical analysis, scenario planning, and decision-making.
ERP, Data & Business Systems
- Provide leadership on ERP/MRP data quality, reporting, and process consistency.
- Work with department leaders to improve how information flows from quote to order entry, purchasing, production, shipment, invoicing, and service.
- Develop dashboards, KPIs, and business reports that improve visibility and accountability.
- Identify process gaps, reporting weaknesses, manual workarounds, and system-use issues, then help drive practical improvements.
- Partner with internal and external IT resources to support reporting tools, system improvements, and business process enhancements.
Commercial, Pricing & Margin Support
- Support Sales and senior leadership with pricing analysis, discount controls, margin thresholds, and profitability review.
- Assist with sales forecasting, backlog reporting, pipeline visibility, and capacity-related business planning.
- Help ensure sales commitments are aligned with margin expectations, production capacity, and delivery performance.
- Provide commercial analysis on customers, product lines, market opportunities, and business development initiatives.
- Help create better visibility into which products, customers, and opportunities are most profitable.
Administration, HR & Organizational Support
- Provide leadership to administrative functions including office workflows, documentation, and process improvement.
- Oversee or support HR activities including recruitment, onboarding, performance management, policy compliance, and employee administration.
- Help create stronger internal structure, clearer reporting, and improved accountability across administrative and business support functions.
- Work collaboratively with department managers to improve execution without replacing their functional leadership responsibilities.
Strategic & Cross-Functional Leadership
- Act as a key business partner to ownership and senior leadership.
- Support long-term planning, growth initiatives, acquisition/integration analysis, and business improvement projects.
- Bring financial, systems, and commercial discipline to strategic discussions.
- Help develop a more data-driven management culture across the business.
- Identify business gaps or inefficiencies and take initiative to help resolve them rather than simply passing responsibility to others.
- Contribute to continuous improvement in a practical, hands-on, manufacturing-focused environment.
Qualifications:
- 7–10+ years of progressive experience in finance, accounting, business operations, administration, or related leadership roles.
- Strong accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and business analysis skills.
- Experience in a manufacturing, industrial, distribution, or equipment-related business is strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of ERP/MRP systems; experience with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Business Central, or similar systems would be an asset.
- Ability to analyze margins, pricing, costs, inventory, backlog, and operational performance.
- Comfortable working across departments and influencing outcomes without needing direct authority over every function.
- Strong business judgment and ability to connect financial information to practical business decisions.
- Experience with dashboards, KPIs, reporting tools, data integrity, or business process improvement would be valuable.
- Hands-on, proactive, improvement-oriented mindset suited to a privately owned manufacturing company.
- Excellent communication, leadership, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
The ideal candidate is likely someone who may have held one or more of the following roles:
- Director of Finance
- Finance Manager in a manufacturing business
- Business Operations Manager with strong finance experience
- Senior finance leader with ERP/data/process improvement experience
- Controller-level candidate who is looking for broader business involvement
- CPA or senior accounting professional with strong commercial and operational instincts
- ERP/business systems-oriented finance leader
The salary range for this position is 100-150k when considering experience and qualifications.
AI may be used to assist in recruiting for this role. This role is for a current open position within the organization.
