Planning, Budgeting and Reporting Manager
- Recruiter
- Eversheds
- Location
- London (Central), London (Greater)
- Salary
- competitive
- Posted
- 22 Oct 2014
- Closes
- 30 Oct 2014
- Ref
- 1427547
- Vacancy Type
- Business Services, Finance
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
- Practice Areas
- Banking/Finance
- Experience Level
- Mid Level
About Eversheds
You will be joining a team providing world class financial services to our business. You'll be someone who wants to be the best at what they do; who can handle pressure and enjoys making decisions that will have a real impact on our business. Our firm is all about teamwork and you would be a crucial part of that team - you'll find the work stimulating, the atmosphere dynamic and the results highly satisfying.
Reporting to the Senior Finance Manager Planning, Budgeting & Reporting, the Reporting, Budgeting & Planning Manager is a key member of the Finance team.
The role will be based in London working closely with the Senior Manager to operate an efficient set of processes to deliver month end, reporting, forecasting and budgeting. This role assists and sets the timeline and process for the commercial accountants. This role is focussed on providing one version of the truth on all financials.
Key responsibilities:
Strategic decision support – firmwide:
• Driving at pace the firm wide day to day business performance agenda, challenging activity levels, utilisation, cash collection, billing with strong and continual focus and challenge across the firm on all the key drivers of performance
• Ongoing and high profile commercial and financial challenge and insight across all areas of the firm – including business strategy and various initiatives such as restructuring, international expansion, potential mergers, competitors etc identifying key financial implications, risks & opportunities
• Maintains one version of the truth, providing context and understanding of inter relationships and inter dependencies across financial agenda
• Drafts Finance Director communication to finance and the business, ensuring “on message” and focused, creating awareness, context and calls to action
• Firmwide link to international team, with regular discussion and challenge on performance, driving action and ensuring clarity on firm wide requirement.
• Owns delivery of finance timetable
• Finance lead working with HR on bonuses, bonus pots, annual pay rises and affordability across the firm.
Business performance – firmwide:
• Budget – drive the annual budget process, aligning budgets with overall business strategy, setting the budget timeline, setting high level budget targets, deriving appropriate economic and commercial assumptions and acting as the key firm wide coordination point for the annual budget process
• Monthly forecast – maintaining and consolidating monthly firm wide forecasts, identifying and managing risks and opportunities, driving delivery of targets
• Monthly performance – providing commercial insight, understanding and challenge of the key drivers of performance.
Management information - firmwide:
• Deliver the monthly finance report, providing comprehensive commercial insight into monthly and year to date financials. Maintains and challenges quality of all inputs into the report
• Provision of detailed monthly management information for firm wide practice groups, the international firm and business services, including monthly performance packs and exception reports
• Preparation of monthly performance reports on actual, forecasts and budgets for the Senior Management Team, Board and Executives
• Co-ordinate and deliver Firm wide reports and ad hoc requests from the Finance Director, Board, Senior Management Team, Executive and other forums as and when required
• Key stakeholder for Cognos budget and forecast model supporting systems team
• Maintains quality across all management information production, driving continuous improvements in overall management information quality across finance.
Skills and experience:
• Qualified accountant with strong all-round finance technical skills
• Good all round experience of working in a finance function of a fast moving and dynamic commercial organisation desirable
• Strong preference for professional services background
• Solid experience of working in a commercial business partnering function supporting business stakeholders
• Proven stakeholder management experience, demonstrating ability to work efficiently and effectively under pressure
• Proven management skills in leading a team and an ability to grow and develop others
• Intelligent, energetic, resilient and passionate, you will be able to quickly hit the ground running and make a significant difference to the team and business which you support
• You will need to be customer focused, flexible, results driven and used to operating in a period of change and renowned for your accuracy and insight
• Willingness to roll sleeves up and undertake a range of activities at critical times of the month
• You will exhibit huge drive, passion, energy, enthusiasm and commitment
• You will be highly effective as part of a wider team, and a real team player
• You will be able to inspire your team and the wider Eversheds Finance team with your passion and your first class leadership skills.
Key competencies:
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Strong understanding of legal industry environment (commercial awareness)
• Ability to communicate effectively at all levels
• Ability to lead and implement change
• Politically astute
• Strong interpersonal skills with an ability to engage with senior stakeholders and build relationships
• Excellent attention to detail and delivery of high quality work
• A self-starter with a proactive approach to work, planning workload and client requirements whilst creating a nimble working environment which is responsive to changing requirements and needs
• Agility of mind and flexibility of approach, is able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and deal with situations in a mature and practical way
• Ability to drive change and influence at pace.
We're a modern, progressive law firm. We think differently and we've built a culture where individual skills and personalities can shine through. At Eversheds, we believe that innovation comes from a culture of genuine equality and diversity and we are happy to discuss any reasonable adjustments individuals may require in the recruitment process, or once in post.
Eversheds endeavours to recruit and fill vacancies directly. However, when we do need to engage with agencies, Eversheds operates within a preferred supplier list.