Head of Financial Shared Services

Key Responsibilities

Ensure service delivery and stakeholder alignment:

• Maintain regular contact with local and divisional finance teams to ensure alignment on performance and to identify improvements
• Review KPIs and monitor other measures of performance such as feedback, to assess service delivery and customer experience
• Actively maintain regular forums with division, entity and regional controllers
• Ensure the team remains strategically aligned to the divisional and group objectives
• Build relationships with Group and cross-divisional teams, including John Crane, to help identify where common solutions or knowledge sharing could help Detection and other Smiths divisions
• Quickly solving problems which other team members are not able to, and building capability within the team to resolve issues directly
• Strong communication and understanding with local and regional finance teams to allow concerns to be escalated to this role and then time required from the local teams to be significantly reduced, with solutions overseen within the Shared Services Centre. This should free-up time in local and regional finance teams to allow them to focus on business partnering.
• Where there are changes in priorities, objectives or strategic direction, identify and implement the changes required in the team to meet revised needs

Team management:

• All aspects of people management including career development, learning and development, reward, recruitment and retention, working with HR as appropriate
• Supporting AP Team Leader in management of Accounts Payable team
• Lead and motivate the team to deliver the most for the business and to develop professionally

Operating effectiveness, process improvement and quality assurance:

• Review and revise operating policies and procedures for the team to ensure effective operation, ongoing compliance with divisional and group policies and control frameworks as well as the requirements of local teams
• Translate wider objectives for the business into activities for the team to perform
• Maintain and develop the internal control environment and quality assurance processes within the team
• Identify common causes or solutions where issues are identified and implement solutions such as training and process change to improve effectiveness and experience of team members and improve the quality and volume of delivery
• Oversight of larger process changes and projects such as implementation of new systems to improve automation in procure to pay processes

Qualification & Requirements

• Professional Financial Qualification, MBA (Finance) or recognized post graduate accounting qualification
• Minimum of 8+ years of relevant experience in Finance for an international group, including substantial experience of managing procure-to-pay and record-to-report activities.
• Ability to make decisions about processes in full knowledge of the impact on people, processes and controls.
• Project management skills
• Strong financial control and risk management mindset
• Comfortable leading discussions at all levels of the organization, from junior to senior exec level
• Knowledge of SAP preferred
• Ability to think clearly, be organized and enable a team to execute effectively
• Experience of managing conflicting priorities and ability to decide and clearly communicate how to proceed in the face of uncertainty
• Team leadership skills including enabling managers to lead their parts of the team and identify and deliver on key priorities
• Assignments are defined in terms of activities and objectives. Work is reviewed upon completion for adequacy in meeting objectives.
• Processes assigned to the shared services centre include critical payments and accounting activities. Ensuring these are carried out accurately and on time safeguards the company’s resources and ensures that key financial information is available for decision making on a timely basis

Benefits

No information available.