Freelance Business Controller: West Flanders

Interim Business Controller – Transport & Logistics

You can get further details about the nature of this opening, and what is expected from applicants, by reading the below.

• Freelance assignment
• 3–6 months
• Full-time
• West Flanders, Belgium
• Hybrid working
• ASAP start
• Dutch-speaking preferred

The Opportunity

Our client is undergoing a significant transformation of its transport operation, moving from a traditional transport model towards a more structured, profitable and asset-efficient business model.

As part of this transition, the organisation is reviewing its customer portfolio, fleet structure, pricing model and investment strategy, while simultaneously developing its financial plan for the coming year.

We are looking for an experienced Business Controller who can bring clear, objective financial insight to the operation and provide management with the information needed to make commercially sound decisions around customers, fleet, pricing and investment.

This is a hands-on operational controlling role rather than a traditional accounting or reporting position.

Key Responsibilities

1. Business Planning & Forecasting

• Develop and maintain the financial plan for the upcoming financial year.
• Build rolling forecasts and monitor performance against budget and expectations.
• Assess the financial performance and profitability of individual contracts and business cases.
• Identify deviations early and provide clear analysis and recommendations to management.
• Support the financial side of the organisation's wider transformation programme.

2. Pricing & Commercial Controlling

• Maintain and develop cost-price models for transport operations.
• Analyse the full cost structure of vehicles and drivers, including depreciation/lease, labour, energy, tolls, insurance and other operating costs.
• Review quotations, rates and commercial proposals against established cost and margin requirements.
• Calculate tariff increases, surcharges and other pricing adjustments.
• Monitor profitability by customer, contract and traffic flow.
• Ensure commercial decisions are supported by accurate financial analysis.

3. Fleet & Asset Controlling

• Analyse vehicle utilisation and productivity.
• Identify opportunities to reduce or optimise the existing fleet.
• Develop a data-driven fleet reduction and replacement plan.
• Assess the financial impact of new vehicle investments and alternative technologies.
• Support investment cases through TCO and profitability calculations.

Reporting & Analysis

Daily

• Produce a concise operational dashboard covering utilisation, productivity and financial performance.
• Compare planned, operational and invoiced activity.
• Highlight deviations using clear traffic-light reporting.
• Provide management with actionable information rather than simply raw data.

Weekly

• Review key operational costs, including subcontractor, fuel and toll-related expenditure.
• Monitor fleet performance and utilisation.
• Follow up on operational cost drivers and exceptions.
• Track progress against fleet and transformation objectives.
• Monitor invoicing accuracy, outstanding items and potential revenue leakage.

Monthly

• Update the financial plan and rolling forecast.
• Analyse actual performance versus budget/forecast.
• Prepare management-level financial reporting.
• Monitor invoicing quality, credit notes, errors and data quality.
• Provide the financial input required for ongoing transformation planning.

Profile

Essential Experience

• 8+ years of experience in Business Controlling, ideally within transport, logistics, manufacturing or another asset-intensive operational environment.
• Strong experience with cost-price calculations, profitability analysis and margin management.
• Good understanding of transport cost structures and the drivers behind vehicle profitability.
• Highly hands-on with data and able to independently extract, analyse and structure information from different systems.
• Strong Excel and/or Power BI skills, with the ability to build practical dashboards and management reports.
• Comfortable working with incomplete, fragmented or imperfect data.
• Experience working within a change, restructuring, turnaround or transformation environment.
• Able to challenge existing assumptions and communicate difficult financial messages objectively.
• Strong business partnering skills with operational and management stakeholders.
• Dutch-speaking.
• Available within approximately 2 weeks.
• Able to work 4–5 days per week, particularly during the initial phase of the assignment.

Desirable

• Experience working with Transport Management Systems.
• Experience supporting a TMS implementation or migration.
• Knowledge of fleet electrification or alternative-fuel vehicle business cases.
• Experience with TCO calculations, investment cases or IRR analysis. xlxgzvr
• Previous experience in a comparable transformation, restructuring or cost-optimisation assignment.