Head of Finance Transformation

A global business, headquartered in Lancashire for a Head of Finance Transformation to lead a new team that will bring both standardisation and better, more efficient ways of working across Finance and the wider company. This is a relatively new team and role, which will have significant impact across Finance and the wider business.

A global business, headquartered in Lancashire for a Head of Finance Transformation to lead a new team that will bring both standardisation and better, more efficient ways of working across Finance and the wider company.

This is a relatively new team and role, which will have significant impact across Finance and the wider business. The role holder will manage a team of 10+ and work alongside existing BAU team members in management accounts and the shared services transactional team to understand how historic data and current processes and controls could be improved and then execute the change on behalf of the BAU team, before handing the solution back to them.

For the Head of Finance Transformation will be a supportive partner; creating strong relationships across the business at different levels within the organisation will be critical as will the ability to drive change, striking a balance between ensuring the change is driven forwards at pace but also ensuring that those affected stay engaged in the process and are not ‘left behind’.

Key Accountabilities:

• Quickly create strong relationships with members of the BAU team at a senior level to gain their trust and be a credible partner in helping them improve ways of working.

• Think ahead and plan the team’s activities, communicating with BAU teams to gain their buy-in.

• To be able to see the ‘big picture’ as a whole to ensure that the work positively impact key improvement areas for the business. To be able to prioritise work accordingly.

• To be able to effectively recruit and retain expert SME’s who can take a hands-on approach to making change. To understand what makes individuals in the team ‘tick’ and be able to motivate the team as a whole.

• To consider risks to Finance activities related to the improvement work being undertaken, taking mitigating actions and, where possible, to anticipate problems before they arise.

• To be able to understand enough detail to have meaningful conversations with the team about their work and make quick decisions, but not getting so caught up in the detail as to lose perspective and fail to drive forward the wider change.

• Working hand-in-hand with the BAU teams, design solutions to correct any historic data issues, introduce or improve finance processes and add or upgrade controls around those processes.

• To be able to design ways to concisely report back findings in a way that is clear and factual, setting out options with rationale for recommended solutions.

• Drive standardisation to ensure that as far as possible all changes are implemented globally in a standardised way.

• If required, coach and build the capability within the BAU teams so that they can perform the new processes and controls themselves and impart a set of skills to allow people to investigate and remedy problems for themselves.

• Ensure the team monitors changes to any data, processes and controls that have been fixed to ensure that problems do not reoccur.

• To have a focus on operational impacts at all times and ensure that changes made add value to the business.

• Where appropriate, work on future acquisitions and support in ensuring they adopt standard processes as defined by Finance.

KPI & Metrics

• Feedback from stakeholders at all levels

• Improved cycle times eg month end, supplier processing and payments etc

• Any reoccurrence of bad data or problems in a fixed area

• Time taken to implement changes

Person Specification:

• Qualified accountant (or equivalent)

• Experienced manager with proven ability to create and retain high-performing teams

• Experienced SME with management accounting and/or transactional services

• Track record of independently improving bad data, processes and controls

• Experience of operating in a relatively large, complex business

• IT literate – Excel, PPT. Understanding of processes related to ERP systems

• Have an inventive and pro-active mind-set to independently identify and resolve data, process and controls related issues.