Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men’s professional soccer league, sanctioned by U.S. Soccer, that represents the sport’s highest level in both the United States and Canada. Major League Soccer was founded in 1993 as part of the United States’ successful bid to host the 1994 FIFA World Cup. There are currently 20 teams competing in the League, with plans to increase this to 24 by the 2018 season.

The challenge:

MLS had implemented Oracle Hyperion Planning and Essbase as their core Financial Planning & Analysis toolsets. The VP of IT and MLS’ HR team initiated a search for a Financial Systems Specialist who would have a mandate to administer and optimise the Hyperion applications, as well as to take a key design and deployment role on a greenfield MS Dynamics GP implementation project. The client was keen to find a Financial Systems Manager with a balanced blend of Financial Reporting and Transactional Accounting process expertise, combined with a deep technical subject matter knowledge of Oracle Hyperion Planning and ideally Dynamics GP functionality, as they would be required to partner with Finance to devise and future proof the organization’s financial applications strategy.

The solution:

Following an unsuccessful three month search via their incumbent recruitment suppliers, MLS’ HR team reached out to SystemsAccountants, a global specialist in the field of financial systems recruitment; and one of North America’s only recruitment companies, to focus exclusively on Ledger, ERP and Analytics staffing.

The outcome:

In addition to leveraging our known network of financial systems professionals, our team of 360-degree recruiters generated a long list of options via various in-house databases, and social media tools. A shortlist of relevant candidates was presented to the client and via a carefully managed selection process, the client offered and on-boarded a Financial Systems professional who closely aligned with their exacting needs.