About the Centre

Liquid Bulk Logistics

The Liquid Bulk Logistics department organizes tanker deliveries of industrial gases to customers with on-site storage tanks.

The department includes three teams:

• The Liquid Bulk Customer Service team is our customers’ first point of contact to process orders, manage inventory levels, resolve complaints, and liaise between the customer and other teams within Air Products.
• Liquid Bulk Schedulers plan deliveries based on customer demand and available resources, using specifically designed tools for a defined geography and product line mix.
• The Admin and Data Support team ensures correct data is available to the Logistics team to successfully service our customers while also providing reporting and administrative support.

The Liquid Bulk team provides the opportunity to work in a fast paced, highly dynamic, international environment. It is both challenging and rewarding where team members interact with people from different cultures, backgrounds, and industries.

Meet Ada Julia Poborska, Liquid Bulk Scheduler

 

Customer Support Services

Ensuring we’re getting paid in full and on time for goods and services is vital for our company’s financial health. Customer Support Services help to significantly reduce accounts receivable with the following activities:

• customer, pricing and contract master data creation and maintenance
• manual billing activities
• sales support
• collections of customer receivables
• customer credit analysis

Credit
Our Credit Analysts are responsible for setting up appropriate credit levels for prospective and new customers. The team periodically reviews credit levels for existing customers and updates payment terms if necessary.

Customer Master Data
Our Customer Master Data Analysts create and maintain our SAP customer accounts. There are multiple data fields in a customer record and each field plays an important role to ensure our processes work properly – from order taking, making deliveries, to invoicing. The Customer Master Data team plays a key role to safeguard our data standards so that ultimately we can provide excellent service to our customers.

Billing
Billing Analysts ensure that our customers are invoiced correctly for the products and services they’ve received from us. Our SAP system automates the majority of this process but there are exceptions which the Billing Analysts are responsible for. The team also ensures that our network of agents receive their individual agent commissions, calculated correctly for the products and services they provide to customers. Many of the global and regional SOX, VAT laws and other compliance-related issue resolutions and periodic checks are owned by the Billing department, as is the management of external providers of services related to physical and electronic invoice delivery to the customers.

Collections
Collections Associates focus on activities which shorten the time cash is oustanding, ultimately contributing to the company’s financial health. These activities include proactive collection of past due receivables, analysing customer payment trends and responding to degrading payment behavoiurs.

Meet Maria Christiansen, Collections Coordinator

Business Process Support
The Business Process Support team works with our customer-facing commercial teams to ensure customer accounts and contracts are set up and updated correctly. Responsibilities also include training and coaching the commercial teams to simplify processes as well as providing a variety of sales-related data and error monitoring reports and follow up correction activities.

 

Accounting

Our Accounting group is is a culturally rich place to work with colleagues from many different countries and social backgrounds. Our main customers are the Business and Business Analytical teams.

The team is made up of the following divisions :

• Legal
• Tax
• VAT
• Asset
• Banking
• Intercompany
• Materials Cost Accounting
• Project Accounting

These teams are generally classified into two areas, legal- or process-based accounting. The legal teams require specific knowledge of a country’s generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) whereas the teams responsible for process-based accounting require more specific knowledge of an accounting concept.

EU Accounting is also home to the Finance Centre of Excellence which is a support team of technical experts for SAP and other IT systems used by Accounting.

Other areas, such as Business Performance Analysis, Internal Audit, Investor Relations and Treasury are based outside of the European Service Centre. Whilst movement to other regions in the legal teams is not frequent (unless of course you know, for instance, Chinese GAAP), by joining the process-based accounting group in the European Service Centre you give yourself the opportunity to progress and work in other countries or regions and functions of Finance.

Meet Matt Pearce, Business Analyst 

Karel Franchoo, Manufacturing Cost Accountant

 

Supplier Services

The Requisition to Pay department is responsible for tracking all of the steps involved in the ‘procure to pay’ process, ie from the moment the vendor is selected right up to payment. The teams looking after these processes are:

• Purchase Order Processing
  The team generates and transmits purchase orders for goods and services, confirms purchase orders with vendors, and manages vendor inquiries.
  
  
• Accounts Payable
  Responsibilities of Accounts Payable include receiving, sorting, scanning and answering all invoice-related queries from suppliers and Air Products employees. The team also resolves outstanding issues, reconciles vendor accounts, processes payment and clears bank accounts.
  
  Meet Laetitia Baret, Accounts Payable Team Lead
  
  
• Vendor Master Data, Travel and Expenses, Procurement Card
  The Vendor Master team ensures that all vendor data is correctly entered and maintained in SAP.
  
  The Travel and Expenses (T&E) team is responsible for credit cards administration and ensuring T&E-related expenses are submitted and approved correctly.
  
  The Procurement Card team administers procurement cards and ensures low value purchases are submitted and approved correctly.

 

HR Services

The HR Services Department manages payroll, the International Mobility Program, employee master data and business support. In order to provide a high level of professional service to an ever increasing geographic area, we have created a unique and dynamic work environment. We are an international team with fluent and native speakers from across Europe. Being part of this knowledgeable, motivated and open-minded team gives you the opportunity to grow professionally and personally.

Many of our responsibilities intersect within the department; however, there are three distinct teams:

Payroll team
Our Payroll Specialists process salary information, input pay or personnel changes and answer any payroll-related queries. In this position you need to have essential experience of social security, taxation, statutory payments and payroll-related legislation. You also need to be able to manage the end-to-end process, including stock option programmes of the assigned payroll country.

Meet Cathy Smith, Payroll Specialist

International Mobility Program (IMP) team
Within the IMP team, we have two different roles working closely together, the IMP and the tax compliance administrator. They maintain assignee records to comply with tax, social security and employment legislation. The roles also involve providing advice and guidance to assignees, comprehensive administrative support as well as implementing and arranging a full range of assignment services to help ensure our international assignments are successful. In this team you need to have business, accounting or human resources management knowledge as well as a several years of relevant work experience.

SAP employee master data team
The SAP employee master data team maintains employee records in our SAP system and provides system support to managers, HR colleagues, and employees. Support responsibilities include training, problem resolution, and providing expert advice on the correct procedures to be followed. They are also the point of contact for IT-related issues and configuration changes required in the SAP HR system as a result of legal changes (new configuration), salary table changes (for employees under the collective labour agreement) and fixing/enhancements in mapping tables.