Reckitt’s Formula for
Smarter Marketing Spend:
Turn Budget Chaos
Into Strategic Growth

Webinar recap with guest speaker:
Pablo Gonzalez,
Finance Manager, US Marketing Governance at Reckitt

Managing the Business of Marketing at Reckitt

In the fast-paced world of enterprise marketing, few things keep finance managers up at night quite like the prospect of managing a $600 million budget. That’s exactly the world Pablo Gonzalez navigates daily as the Finance Manager for US Marketing Governance at Reckitt, a $16 billion consumer products powerhouse known for brands like Lysol, Mucinex, Finish, and Durex.

Recently, Pablo joined Jim Williams, Chief Marketing Officer at Uptempo, for an insightful webinar exploring the often complex relationship between marketing and finance at large enterprises. Their conversation revealed how the right systems can transform financial management from a headache-inducing process into a strategic advantage.

The Challenge: Managing Marketing Money at Scale

When you oversee 4,000 campaigns across a massive marketing organization with 100+ budget holders, traditional approaches simply break down. Pablo described a familiar scenario for many enterprise marketers: a fragmented, disjointed process where the lack of visibility creates significant headaches for everyone involved.

The challenges Pablo identified were multi-layered:

  • Process fragmentation: Without a centralized application, teams create workarounds and individual spreadsheets, leading to inconsistency.
  • Trust issues: Marketers lacking confidence in budget figures, often unable to see actual spend versus commitments.
  • Missing audit trails: Difficulty tracking the history of campaign approvals and expenditures.
  • Reconciliation nightmares: Manual processes causing mistakes and wasted time.
  • Lack of real-time visibility: Marketers unable to see available funds when needed.

“You don’t have that ability to trust information that you have,” Pablo explained. “Marketers don’t know their budgets… they launch a campaign and they have all the right information, but they don’t know how much actualized.” 

Real-World Impact

The transformation has been remarkable. Pablo shared a recent example where their insights reports identified unused budget in real-time, allowing them to reinvest over $1.5 million in Mucinex campaigns in December—during cold and flu season when it delivered maximum impact.

Beyond specific campaign wins, the system has strengthened the relationship between marketing and finance. “The fact that we provide confidence… it is really significantly important, especially when management needs to understand and trust that,” Pablo emphasized.

Building Better Marketing-Finance Relationships

When asked about advice for organizations looking to improve their marketing budget management, Pablo highlighted the importance of communication between departments.

“In many cases in my experience, there’s a gap between marketers and finance,” he observed. “I think it’s good to have communications in place, see what the needs are from the business from a finance perspective as well, and speak the same language.”

Pablo’s recommendations for improved collaboration were refreshingly straightforward:

  1. Map out end-to-end processes to identify pain points. 
  2. Look for solutions that provide centralized control and visibility. 
  3. Focus on explaining the “why” behind financial controls. 
  4. Find common ground—remember that both teams ultimately want the same thing: business success. 

The Bottom Line

Managing marketing finances at a global enterprise doesn’t have to be a constant struggle. With the right systems and processes in place, even a team of five can effectively govern hundreds of millions in spending while providing the visibility marketers need to make smart decisions.

Pablo’s journey at Reckitt demonstrates that when marketing and finance teams align around shared tools and transparent processes, everyone wins—the marketing team gains confidence, finance gains control, and the business ultimately makes better use of its resources.

To learn more about Reckitt’s marketing budget transformation and see a demonstration of how Uptempo helps enterprises manage their marketing spend, watch the full webinar recording.