Ref - Interim CIMA Head of Finance / Commercial Finance – Ref 10807

Interim Head of Finance / Commercial Finance

Are you recruiting for a Head of Finance / Commercial Finance? Immediately available CIMA qualified (10 years+ post-qualified) Interim Commercial Finance Leader who excels at delivering business intelligence to maximise growth through financial modelling and analysis by adding value, protecting cashflow and enhancing profitability. Proficient at analysing commercial performance data to produce clear insights for decision-making and presenting to Board level. Extremely meticulous and comfortable working in pressured, fast-paced and dynamic environments. Adept at working for large organisations implementing significant change and improvements. Experience in a variety of roles, organisational structures and industries, resulting in exposure to an array of financial operating models and systems. Demonstrates a highly adaptable and hands on approach, willingly taking on tasks of any size and consistently doing whatever is required to achieve successful outcomes. Highly confident stakeholder collaborator with a warm and friendly approach to “tell the story”, making information relevant and tailored to all audiences, building strong trust and raising standards for cross-functional development.
  • Stabilised the Commercial Finance team after a volatile and brutal restructure (around 30% of total workforce made redundant) to support ambitious new strategy
  • Post restructure, constructed a disaster recovery strategy, moved into several roles throughout the contract term, and was extended 3 times (from a 3 month
    project to a year) to enable continued operations and improvements in data, reporting and future financial activities
  • Direct ownership of the entire company P&L (~£700m in revenue) covering complete end to end activities; collaborating with Supply Chain and Transactional
    Finance teams, plus worked closely with other non-finance departments (e.g. People and Legal teams) to manage high-value spends across the business
  • Prepared and implemented best practice for FP&A; to improve and shorten month end processes, build new more accurate reporting schedules and reduce timelines for all financial activities; before handing over to Finance Analysts to manage
  • Post restructure, moved into several roles throughout the contract term, and asked to partner with CSO and CIO to create a brand new department by
    transferring reporting and full financial timetables across whilst managing key Board level stakeholders and aligning the strategic growth plans of the business
  • Sole ownership of the Product and Operations division (~£60m in revenue) covering complete end to end activities
  • Managed team of 2 permanent finance reports, partnered with 4 other Heads of Finance and collaborated with the entire Production and Ops sector which included 10 Directors and 2 Board members

 

 

Key Achievements

  • Accelerated profitability by ~16% YOY by re-building the finance budgeting and forecasting processes from scratch to enable visibility of future options,
    higher challenge of costs and accountability across the business
  • Integrated AI-driven processes into construction and reconciliation of finance spreadsheets (using Claude) to enable faster completion; saving days of time
  • Strengthened the FP&A team to introduce Finance Business Partnering to enable higher challenge and improved cross-functional planning
  • Acted as a trusted advisor to senior leaders to culturally improve decision making and financial decisions whilst achieving budget deadlines for reporting
  • Delivered a Finance department that was optimised and ready for growth post contract, assisting with interviews, training and succession planning.
  • Critically analysed all P&L cost lines and uncovered major loopholes in budgeting, reporting actuals and month end closure activities
  • Elevated Commercial Finance to become a function who is trusted, reliable and well-regarded amongst all stakeholders; whilst appropriately delegating tasks
    to other Finance colleagues to free up crucial Finance Analysts who could assist with process improvements
  • Led key workstreams for the new ERP system rollout, managing cross-functional stakeholders, mapping process impacts, and driving adoption through targeted
    change interventions, training oversight, and clear internal communications; whilst undertaking ERP testing and feedback to the teams throughout
  • Acted as a crucial stakeholder to the Board to culturally improve decision making and financial decisions whilst achieving budget deadlines for reporting
  • Resulted in moving from an 18-day close time period to a 5-day time period, removed unnecessary processes and streamlined monthly reporting
  • Built an entire database from scratch to enable the 10-month end pack’s financial data to be in the correct format in 1 hour vs. 3 days with 0 errors – ready for
    analysis and commentary by FBPs using complex formula and dynamic dropdowns
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