Head of Finance

The Company

Axon Moore are partnering with a fast paced high growth exciting PE backed business in the search for an experienced, commercially astute, ambitious, Head of Finance who has a strong track record and wants to step into a business that will challenge, enhance, refine and build on these skills.
This is an excellent opportunity for a high calibre Head of Finance to help lead the company through a significant growth phase. This will involve the integration of acquisitions, system and process harmonisation, building finance capability to match the growth ambitions and, importantly, ensuring that one of the largest parts of the Group continues to deliver.

Salary – £80,000 - £90,000 + bonus + benefits
Location – South Manchester

The Role

Reporting into the Divisional Finance Director the Head of Finance will be responsible for owning the day to day finance responsibilities including; production and management of accounts, including month and year end close; monthly Board reporting for the wider Group; overseeing the company’s accounting processes; and supporting the annual audit process. Across all these areas there are significant opportunities to develop, improve and add value to the business and the candidate must have a passion to drive change and make a difference as well as delivering significant business objectives.

Responsibilities:

• Building benefits case and cost tracker associated with integration projects and reporting progress against plans / targets
• Developing and driving efficiencies in the month end process and the newly integrated businesses
• Ensure team structure, roles and processes are in place to deliver reporting for recently integrated businesses
• Ensure reporting of results meets various stakeholder needs including integrated businesses
• Presentation of monthly results and integrated businesses to CFO including completing accurate and insightful commentary for inclusion in Board and Investor reports
• Manage broader finance team to ensure all income, expenditure and capex is correctly accounted for, monitored and any variances to budget and prior year are analysed and understood
• Production of monthly Board packs for internal management, PE investors and banks
• Review of monthly reconciliation of balance sheet and control accounts to sign off – challenge and question key assumptions
• Ownership of the overall budget process including timetable and deliverables
• Ownership and development of the revenue model and the development of the model to include integrated businesses and growth plans, working closely with the commercial finance team
• Lead in the development and refinement of the forecast model, specifically in relation to the revenue modelling, in conjunction with the Group FP&A team
• Ensure models developed to enable integration of future acquisitions
• Building and developing models as required for ad hoc forecasting across P&L and Cash Flow
• Liaising with Commercial Finance Team and Finance Manager to ensure the forecast assumptions stand up to scrutiny and provide commentary on key assumptions / changes
• Regularly track performance versus budget and prior year, including monthly meetings with budget owners from around the business to track performance / spend against budget
• Challenge budget holders regarding spend and proactively identify opportunities and risks associated with the cost base
• Manage local finance team to support the Group Financial Controller with the annual audit process, ensuring information / requests are provided in line with the Audit timetable
• Finance lead to support the integration and migration of acquisitions onto the Group finance system
• Responsible for process mapping /gap fit analysis as part of transfer from legacy system, managing any resulting change to system / process / resource
• Leveraging the functionality of the new finance system, including automation of standard reporting and processes to drive efficiency
• Key member of the Operations Board
• Functional leader, must lead by example across the business in terms of representing the company values in a wide range of forums internally and externally
• Management and development of team including Finance Manager and 4 Assistant Accountants
• Providing leadership in the business setting for effective finance management

Person specification:

• ACA/CIMA/ACCA qualification
• Natural leader with excellent interpersonal skills and an ability to engage non-Finance colleagues and drive change
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to cut through the ‘noise’ to find a way forward
• Decision maker with confidence to make a call
• Negotiate and balance many competing priorities
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written
• Solutions focused and continuous improvement mindset
• Ability and desire to work in a fast-paced and ever-evolving environment
• Experience of working in or with PE backed businesses is preferable, but not essential
• Experience a cross functional team to deliver a business outcome as part of a specific project
• Track record of supporting the delivery of significant change / investment projects
• Experience of playing a significant role in the integration of acquisitions
• Experience leading in a systems implementation or ERP migration
• Track record of leading the multi-year budgeting or forecasting process over a number of forecasting cycles including P&L, B/S and Cash Flow
• Evidence of setting up and developing budget models / monthly reporting schedules or consolidation models

For immediate consideration or more information on the role, please contact Aaron Conneran at Axon Moore on 07503 621 256