Finance Business Partner

Our client is a growing retailer with circa 400M turnover and operations across the UK and Ireland. With a strong brand and a great work environment that has helped them attract top talent, they are at an exciting stage of their journey, setting up a new Commercial Finance team of Business Partners to support the most Senior Operational and Business Unit Heads across the business!

This role would suit a recently qualified, well rounded, commercial accountant who is a self-starter and enjoys a high-profile role with lots of responsibility and exposure, with the autonomy to truly drive change across a Business Unit. You will challenge Senior stakeholders, ask the difficult questions, and ensure Finance has a voice in all strategic and operational decisions.

Finance Business Partner – Profile

The ideal candidate will have strong analytical/commercial experience built up over a number of roles, that facilitates confidently and proactively partnering Senior Management and Leadership Team stakeholders, from both finance and the operational areas of the business with a variety of finance activities to improve the performance of the division, using influencing skills to improve decision making and strategy.

Finance Business Partner – General Accountabilities

Each business partner will have sole responsibility for providing effective financial and commercial support to the Managing Director/Head ofs in a Business Unit/Division, on day to day operations and strategic planning; the responsibilities below are an idea of what you should expect in a Finance Business Partner role.

Budgeting – Will either manage the end to end Budgeting process for their area of responsibility or support team manager in the control of process, ensuring full stakeholder engagement, appropriate challenge and quality of output.

Business Planning – Manage the relationship with key stakeholders to deliver realistic long term financial plans for respective area of business.

Decision/Project Support – Provides Senior stakeholders with financial support across a variety of more complicated ongoing business projects. Suggest alternative solutions/ways of looking at it, to add value to the process. Have the confidence to challenge where necessary and add a broader perspective than just financial.

Forecasting – Will manage the process for providing an updated re-forecast on a monthly basis for their area of responsibility, ensuring realism and stakeholder buy-in, being prepared to challenge stakeholders where necessary.

Financial Modelling – Has the analytical skills/commercial acumen to build financial models, for the purposes of supporting key processes, scenario testing financial dynamics or to support a specific business initiative. These models to be used for the decision making process and thus need to be accurate and have credibility.

Investment Appraisal – Without supervision, can support senior stakeholders, with the production of complicated investment appraisals to ensure commercial viability of projects, ensuring all financial implications of projects are taken account of. Has the confidence to challenge the assumptions to determine the right outcome for the business and is likely to play a larger part in the project team than just a financial one.

Management Reporting –Will support line manager with the creation of appropriate performance reporting infrastructure, creating process and determining key areas of focus. Will look to adapt reporting and add to it as circumstances and areas of focus change.

Process Development – Is experienced enough to proactively drive change to large processes to make them more efficient for finance and non finance stakeholders.

Stakeholder Management – Supports Senior Manager level stakeholders (who are likely to be leadership team) who are generally non-financial customers, with their financial and commercial needs across a variety of areas, developing strong relationships to aid credibility of the individual and finance function. Has the confidence to operate at this level without ongoing supervision.

Strategic Support – Support key senior stakeholders with the development of their respective strategies feeding in a financial/commercial perspective as well as using more general business common sense. 

Qualifications

Graduate / strong academics

Will be CIMA/ACCA /ACA qualified and up to 5 years PQE

Experience required

Ideally you would have performed an FP&A or commercial role within a Retail or commercial environment. Having strong experience of reporting, budgeting, forecasting and analytics.

Must have a good track record of working with, and influencing Senior stakeholders eg partnering Managing Directors or Head of Marketing/Sales/IT/Logistics etc.

Alternatively you may be post qualified in a big 4 Corporate Finance/Transaction Services team, looking for a first move into industry.