Transformation Lead - Associate Director - Acuity Analytics

About Us

Ascent has recently been acquired by Acuity Analytics. This is both a significant milestone for us and a tremendous opportunity for you.

Acuity Analytics is a business with a strong global reputation, an impressive client base, and ambitious growth plans. We deliver deep insights and domain-led digital transformation to high-growth and heavily regulated organisations. To our customers, we bring a partnership that provides the talent, technology, and capability to enhance performance and operational efficiency.

Role overview

Seeking an experienced Transformation Lead to shape and drive complex, enterprise-wide change within a financial services environment.

The successful candidate will combine strong organisational-change expertise with commercial and quantitative analysis and, maintain the ability to communicate complex issues to a variety of stakeholders (Including Executives), clearly and succinctly.

The role will work across senior leadership, operational teams and programme-delivery functions to translate strategic priorities into practical transformation initiatives. This will include developing transformation plans and business cases, defining target operating models, identifying value opportunities, supporting implementation and ensuring that intended commercial and organisational outcomes are realised and, at times, hands-on delivery of key initiatives.

The successful candidate may come from a strategy or transformation consultancy, an in-house transformation function, or a senior operational role within a private equity-backed or similarly results-oriented business.

Key responsibilities

Transformation strategy and planning

• Translate business strategy and value-creation priorities into clearly defined transformation initiatives.
• Diagnose organisational and operational challenges using qualitative insight and quantitative analysis.
• Define transformation roadmaps, target outcomes, delivery priorities and measurable success criteria.
• Develop target operating models covering organisation, processes, capabilities, governance, technology and ways of working.

Commercial and financial analysis

• Build robust business cases, including financial baselines, cost-benefit analysis, investment requirements and implementation scenarios.
• Identify and quantify opportunities for revenue growth, cost reduction, productivity improvement and operational efficiency.
• Analyse financial, operational and customer data to identify performance issues and value levers.
• Establish clear benefit measures and work with Finance and business owners to track delivery and value realisation.
• Challenge assumptions constructively and ensure proposals are commercially credible.

Organisational change

• Assess the organisational impact of proposed changes and define appropriate change interventions.
• Support organisation design, role clarity, capability development and new ways of working.
• Develop stakeholder, engagement and adoption strategies for complex change.
• Work with leaders to build ownership, address resistance and embed sustainable behavioural change.

Programme and delivery leadership

• Convert strategic objectives into structured, deliverable programmes of change.
• Work closely with programme leads, project managers and subject-matter experts to maintain alignment between strategy, delivery and outcomes.
• Provide oversight and constructive challenge across plans, milestones, dependencies, risks and decisions.
• Support programme governance, executive steering groups and decision-making forums and monitor progress and accurately assess performance.
• Identify delivery risks early and intervene where progress, outcomes or benefits are at risk.

Executive engagement and communication

• Build trusted relationships with executive leaders, functional heads and other senior stakeholders.
• Produce concise, compelling and visually strong PowerPoint materials for executive committees, boards and investors.
• Synthesise complex analysis into clear messages, choices and recommendations.
• Facilitate senior workshops and decision-making sessions.
• Communicate confidently across strategic, commercial and operational topics.
• Influence across organisational boundaries, including where direct authority is limited.

Experience and background

Essential

• Significant experience driving transformation programmes, organisational change or business improvement in financial services or another professional services business
• A strong understanding of financial-services operating environments, commercial drivers and regulatory considerations.
• Demonstrable experience shaping and delivering complex, cross-functional transformation.
• Strong organisational-change capability, including organisation design, operating-model change, stakeholder engagement and adoption.
• Commercially astute with experience developing business cases and identifying, quantifying and tracking value.
• Highly numerate and comfortable working with complex financial and operational data.
• Advanced PowerPoint skills, with the ability to develop and executive board-quality presentations.
• Strong Excel and analytical-modelling capability.
• Good understanding of programme and project delivery, including governance, planning, dependencies, risk management and benefits realisation.
• Experience working with multiple programmes or portfolios of change.
• Credibility and confidence when engaging senior executives and challenging established thinking.

• A track record of moving effectively between strategic problem-solving and practical implementation.

Relevant career backgrounds may include

• Strategy, operations, organisation or transformation consulting.
• An in-house strategy, transformation, change or value-creation function.
• A senior operational or business-improvement role within a private equity-backed organisation.
• A commercially focused leadership role involving significant organisational and operational change.

Desirable

• Experience within a private equity-owned, investor-led or similarly performance-focused environment.
• Exposure to rapid value-creation programmes.
• Experience presenting to boards, investors or executive committees.
• Knowledge of financial-services
• Relevant professional qualifications in change, programme delivery, finance or business management.

Skills and attributes

• Clear and compelling communicator, who builds and establishes relationship effectively.
• Collaborative, low-ego and effective across functional boundaries.
• Comfortable challenging assumptions and holding others to account.
• Resilient and able to maintain momentum in fast-paced environments.
• Focused on measurable outcomes and sustainable value.
• Pragmatic, delivery-oriented and comfortable with ambiguity.
• Able to simplify complexity without losing important detail.
• Structured and hypothesis-led problem solver.
• Strong commercial judgement and financial acumen.
• Highly analytical, numerate and detail-conscious.
• Excellent PowerPoint storytelling and visual communication skills.

Measures of success

Success in the role will be demonstrated through:

• Delivery of measurable financial and operational benefits.
• Effective mobilisation and oversight of complex change initiatives.
• Clear alignment between strategic priorities and transformation activity.
• Successful adoption and embedding of organisational change.
• Early identification and resolution of delivery risks and dependencies.

Why Join Us

At Acuity Analytics, you'll have the opportunity to work across complex enterprise Azure environments while helping shape and improve our Managed Services capability.

You'll solve challenging technical problems, influence standards and automation, mentor other engineers, and work closely with customers and technical teams.

People are at the Heart of our Business. By investing in people, we achieve exceptional results for our clients and create new opportunities for our teams to thrive.

Check out this page for more details.

For more details about Acuity Analytics please see here: Read here.

If you have any questions contact our Talent Acquisition team on ta.admin@acuityanalytics.

For more details about Acuity Analytics please see here: Read here.