Finance Projects Lead

About Us:

We are looking for a Finance Projects Lead to join our high performing internal Finance Business Partnering team supporting the Consulting Business at PwC.

Our Business Partnering teams work hand-in-hand with our employees across the business, informing our leaders on the key decisions that drive the business forward, and shape their engagements. We entrust our Business Partnering teams to be proactive and honest, to build relationships and influence, to understand, challenge, and hold a mirror to the business, and to translate the numbers into a business story.

About the Role:

The Finance Projects Lead is a specialist role within the Finance Business Partnering Team, working closely with the wider Finance team to deliver solutions. With a focus on providing insight, solving problems, streamlining processes and implementing smarter ways of working, this is a collaborative, diverse and engaging role, and vital to ensuring that we deliver high quality services to our stakeholders.

Our Finance teams are an integral part of each business unit, working closely with business leaders to help drive business performance, identify and drive financial improvements, prepare plans and budgets, and report on the performance of the business - commercially, and functionally. PwC takes a people-first approach to Finance, and empowers its Business Partnering teams to be collaborative and value-adding.

Key Responsibilities:

The individual in this role can expect to be exposed to a variety of critical Finance functions carried out by the wider team. It is important to have good knowledge and understanding of these functions in order to deliver effective solutions. Key responsibilities include:

Team Development:

• Collaborate with the Finance Leader to ensure Senior Associate and Associate team learning and development is identified and actioned
  
• Mentor team members across Business Partnering
  

Business Strategy and Planning:

• Use business insights and detailed analysis to provide the business unit and Finance Leads with support and guidance on Profit & Loss (P&L) management
  
• Own and lead a defined part of the business structure including being the first point of contact for the leadership team for the component parts of that business
  
• Provide ad hoc support to the Finance Leader, responsible for sourcing information and providing quality analysis of information
  
• Provide depth of insight to the relevant Leadership team enabling key strategic decision making
  
• Ownership of revenue and cost forecasting
  
• Provide the business area with additional insight to the key MI in existence and support the development of new MI by understanding the business needs
  
• Demonstrate an understanding of the business issues and applying market, industry and firm knowledge
  
• Offer commercial insight for performance improvement and complex engagements
  

Budgeting and Forecasting:

• Collaborate with the Strategy & Planning Lead and business Finance Leaders in preparing budgets, plans and forecasts
  
• Deliver forward looking and insight driven reporting for the business, and provide forward-looking commentary to help the business plan, prepare and manage future performance
  
• Provide an in-depth knowledge of the markets which the business operates in, using this to build insight for helping the business determine investments, and growth opportunities
  

Performance Management and Commercial Oriented Solutions:

• Provide and communicates interpretation of the monthly financial results and commentary to the Finance Leader and Business Area leadership
  
• Responsible for monitoring areas of financial performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) held in the financial scorecard, escalating issues where management action is required, with supporting analysis
  
• Work closely with the wider business support team to develop relationships and understand the strategic imperatives of the Cluster interpretation and communication of financial performance
  

Financial Control and Compliance:

• Provide Partners with relevant accounting advice from the bid stage to through the life of engagements
  
• Provide the business area with relevant Financial Control expertise to ensure revenue recognition and accounting standards are achieved throughout
  
• Provide local financial risk knowledge to the Financial Control centre of excellence and support the central team with complex queries that require local business insight
  
• Work in close partnership with the Financial Control centre of excellence to encourage a culture of strong financial discipline and adoption of One Firm financial policies and procedures within the business unit
  
• Support the year end Audit process with the Finance Leader and Financial Control Centre of Excellence
  

Complex Engagement Support:

• Provide ongoing commercial advice to complex engagements
  
• Undertake revenue recognition, forecasting, performance variance activities as required by engagements
  
• Provide tax, immigration, or inter-territory advice as required supported by specialist finance teams
  
• Drive and challenge engagement performance
  
• Proactively highlight risks and opportunities to financial performance and develop actions to mitigate, correct or exploit as appropriate with senior decision makers
  
• Ensure alignment of top down targets to operational plans
  
• Actively influence idea generation with respect to commercials, leveraging specialist team for production
  
• Work with engagement leaders to understand lessons learnt and take corrective actions as necessary
  
• Monitor and challenge complex engagements on control effectiveness
  
• Ensure that financials are created or validated by appropriate areas of finance
  

About You:

If you are a proactive and strategic financial professional seeking an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact, we invite you to apply for this role. The ideal candidate will have:

• Relevant finance qualification such as CA, ACA, CIMA or ACCA
  
• Commercially minded individual with a deep business understanding
  
• Able to demonstrate application of accounting standards, including IFRS 15
  
• A focus on continuous improvement with an ability to drive smarter ways of working
  
• Highly organised with a propensity for project management
  
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills with good attention to detail
  
• Action orientated and a self-starter, focused on continuous improvement and developing their team
  
• A strong relationship builder who builds trust in their key stakeholders
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
  
• Intermediate to advanced excel
  
• Technology enabled mindset and able to identify and drive change through technology adoption
  
• Experience using data transformation tools (e.g Alteryx) and data visualisation tools (e.g Tableau or Power BI)
  

If you're ready for an exciting challenge and want to contribute to the success of our Finance team, apply now!