Senior Finance Business Partner - Study Group

Contract Type: Full Time, Fixed Term 6 months

Location: Brighton, Brighton Head Office - Remote

Join us as a Business Partner and Commercial Lead, partnering with Executive Committee stakeholders to influence decision-making and drive business performance. You'll deliver deep commercial insight, lead the standardisation of business case development and evaluation, strengthen cost management, and champion Commercial Finance across key business projects and change programmes.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Business Partnering and Relationship Management

• Be proactive in producing forward looking insight and analysis and ensure a joined-up approach to Business Partnering by taking a holistic view across the business.
• Identify key areas of opportunities and risks across the business, communicating these to the business areas and devising actions plans to support and follow these plans through
• Lead efforts to strengthen financial controls over student acquisition costs, including discounts, commissions, and related expense drivers
• Use data and improve use of Power BI as golden source to support better insight for analysis
• Ensure the delivery and quality of analysis, reports, benchmarking, KPI identification and measurement, and historical trends to the business to enable proactive decision making.
• Representing the interests and requirements of commercial finance in organisation-wide projects, change initiatives, core process and systems evaluation and implementation.
• Ensure awareness of and incorporate industry benchmarking, competitor analysis, market trends, macro factors impacting business performance.
• Champion a growth and cost efficiency mindset across wider business as two key principles to move the business forward
• Co-ordinate with Business Partner team and wider Finance colleagues to ensure a standardised approach to preparation and evaluation of business cases, that provide financial evaluation and assess financial implications, across the portfolio and establish a mechanism of internal cross-portfolio benchmarking.
• Oversight (and ownership, where appropriate) of capital investment business case preparation and evaluation, ensuring a standardised model across the organisation.
• Establish a mechanism for post-implementation project evaluation.
• Challenge the business on commercial decisions including, but not limited to: Gate Meetings, Forecasting Cycles, Commercial Committees
• Have and maintain clear working files / directory across the team which are clean and easy to use (e.g.: for business cases / scenarios)
• Foster and drive improved team capability, financial models, and processes to deliver enhanced and standardised commercial analysis across the business.
• Provide commercial expertise in the preparation (and delivery) of reporting and operational presentations to Study Group Senior Leadership Team and Executive Committee.
• Continuous improvement - identify and feed in improvements to the planning process in striving towards best practise.
• Working closely with FP&A team to ensure clear lines of accountability working in collaborative approach
• Collaborate with HR and other key partners to align on data and insights, strategies and expectations, working closely to solve problems and ensure compliance.
• Ensure CFO and Director of Commercial Finance are kept up to date through maintaining the project activity planner and tracker
• Taking ownership of the monthly P&L results analysis to highlight improvement areas and to manage the vehicles which non finance stakeholders are engaged on their performance (monthly meetings etc)

• Deputising for Head of FBP and Director of Commercial Finance where appropriate, involving providing project-based Finance support to members of the Executive Committee and other key stakeholders.
• Leadership and development across the wider Commercial Finance team through providing thought leadership, coordination and mentoring.
• Demonstrate influence and authority through the co-ordination of team wide activities where required to deliver successful outcomes consistently and efficiently.
• Acting as a champion for process improvement and helping to set the bar high for driving value into the business

Essential

• Be a qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent such as ISCA, CPA)
• An experienced Finance Business Partner, with a commercial outlook, who has worked with senior stakeholders in a complex, preferably global, matrix organisation.
• Record of accomplishment of collating and analysing both financial and non-financial data and sharing resulting information and insight to support business decision making.
• Strong proven leadership skills, whether through formal management, deputising responsibilities, or informal mentoring

• Experience of working with analytical tools such as Adaptive, PowerBI
• Previous experience of working in a business model which has business facing roles supported by Finance Centres of Excellence/Shared Services teams.
• Project based work experience would be beneficial

ABOUT US

Study Group is a leading international education provider that is dedicated and passionate about helping students around the world, creating a brighter future and reaching their full potential. We are a trusted international educator to students and more than 50 university partners globally. We deliver high-quality international education solutions that drive success for our partners and students. We are able to provide students with the resources and guidance they need to succeed. Our global network of offices and university partnerships ensure that students receive the best educational services available.

ORGANISATION COMPLIANCE

For successful applicants the following checks will be conducted- Criminal Background Check (country specific), x2 References, ID and Right to Work checks as well as Education Verification. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer and we strive to create a diverse and inclusive workplace. We are committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals, regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, or any other factor. We believe that the best person for the job should be selected based on skills and experience alone. Your information will be kept confidential and stored securely. Please see our Privacy Policy.

We adopt a rolling recruitment process meaning that we review applications as they are submitted. To avoid disappointment, please ensure that you apply ASAP.