Group Finance Director – Contract

Winchester, Hampshire
Lorien

Finance Interim recruitment brief

Group Finance Director

• Experienced interim GFD required to provide backfill, enabling Acting CFO position from Mar-25
• GFD cover period TBC (c6-12 months (Apr-25 to Sep-25)
• Direct report of Acting CFO; member of the Leadership Group and member of the Finance & Procurement Leadership Team
• 6 direct reports: 4 Heads of Finance, 1 Finance Systems Manager, 1 Personal Assistant
• Leadership of c40FTE across the following teams:
  • Financial Transaction Services team, covering: Billing; Credit Control; Cashiers and Accounts Payable/Purchasing Solutions
  • Report to Control team, covering: Management Accounts; Financial Compliance & Control (external financial reporting, technical accounting, balance sheet control, Regulatory accounting, external audit management)
  • Reporting, Enablement and Continuous Improvement (CI), covering: Finance reporting system & dashboard development; project accounting & business partnering to project delivery teams; capex reporting, forecasting & governance and leadership of cross-finance CI community. Also manages property payables team
  • Finance Systems team: managing Oracle ERP finance modules and interfaces (2 FTE)
• Group FinanceH2FY25 priorities:
  • Finance Transaction Services:
    • Onboarding of new water customer contracts (transacting, accounting, reporting, working capital management), tactical solutions progressing to enduring scaled up solutions
    • Drive transaction processing efficiency through system improvements and automation
    • Develop and implement “Finance Essentials” programme of finance education across the business (in collaboration with People & Culture Learning & Development team)
    • Support year end Working Capital management to deliver year end cash target
    • Absorb Accounts Payable team into existing Order 2 Cash team
  • Report 2 Control:
    • Efficient production of audited Regulated Accounts and support for Adjudicator clearance process
    • Deliver efficient and effective audits
    • Build compliance team experience and confidence
    • Implement Caseware software to support statutory account production for YE Jun-25
  • Reporting,enablement & CI:
    • Implement new ways of working to support “Tech24” reorganisation and move to agile product based cross-functional team working, Finance demand “front door”/interface with Digital Enablement team
    • Reporting platform development including migration from QlikSense to cloud based QlikSAAS platform for finance dashboards and reporting
    • Drive continued data quality improvements (both finance data and business data driving transactions/accounting)
    • Rebalance central projects team capabilities to fit with requirements of new “ways of working”/Enablement support and Digital Enterprise interface
  • Finance Systems:
    • Stable delivery of finance systems for month end processes and financial planning cycles, including configuration for FY26
    • Continued focus on improving Finance system performance and stability, supporting development of Digital Finance/IT roadmap
  • Tax and Pension
    • FY24 Corporation Tax and VAT return completion
    • R&D expenditure credit claim
    • Legal entity restructuring (25 UK and 2 overseas entity strike-off/liquidation by Jun-25)
    • UK transfer pricing and inter-co balance rationalisation
    • Tax and legal entity structuring support for any commercial international expansion required
    • Programme manage defined benefit pension plan agenda, instructing and guiding external advisors (escrow unwind/PCST implementation/agenda buy-in completion/enhanced redundancy alternative provision/buy-out/wind up

Please apply to the advert for more information.

Carbon60, Lorien & SRG – The Impellam Group STEM Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.