Finance Business Partner - Chennai - Williams @ Williams Lea

Role purpose:

The Group Finance Business Partner is an integral role within the team dedicated to providing support to our functional leaders. This role will actively assist the stakeholders and provide insightful analysis to manage performance and support informed decision making across several key functions.

This role will require business partnering with the Functional leaders and their direct reports, adding value and influencing the decision-making process. The successful candidate will need to be able to influence stakeholders to ensure correct processes are followed. Building up a strong rapport with the functions and their team is crucial to success in the role as is gaining their trust. Proactive research into the commercial drivers will be required to ensure successful articulation of analysis to support the business.

The Finance Business Partner will need to work closely with the functions to build optimal cost models that provide value and are understandable by the functional teams and finance colleagues.

The candidate will use their technical, problem solving and interpersonal skills to ensure that cost efficiencies are being implemented in their area of responsibility as well as generating annual budgets and periodic forecasts on behalf of the functional leaders.

Delivery of business critical historic and forward-looking management information, to aid inward and outward understanding of performance drivers and trends, will be vital to provide confidence to the business and to highlight opportunities for improvement.

Responsibilities:

• You will support the Director of FP&A to deliver the month end overheads results within the timeline requested; helping to ensure accuracy in reporting and identifying key risks and opportunities for the year ahead;
• You will be involved in the budgeting and forecasting process throughout the year; liaising with your key stakeholders to ensure accuracy; challenging them where necessary; and collating the information into the budget/forecast packs in a timely manner;
• You will be requested to take ownership for small Business Projects as the need arises, creating business cases and ensuring budget is achievable. You will be required to track this monthly, and report on these to the Director FP&A; explaining reasons for variances and providing an updated outlook for the remainder of the year;
• You will be required to liaise with multiple Functional leaders and their associates in order to inform them of any Finance updates; to discuss projects and key cost saving initiatives; and to help present the month end results in a clear and succinct manner to non-finance individuals;
• You will assist in building and maintaining key financial processes within the Group as we navigate new reporting software and improve the processes currently in place

Person specification:

• You will ideally be a part accounting qualified individual with an enthusiastic and inquisitive nature;
• You will be highly organised and able to prioritise workload to meet tight deadlines in a dynamic and ever-changing environment;
• You will have strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to build effective working relationships at all levels across the business functions and influence senior management/directors and wider stakeholders;
• Highly numerate with strong analytical, data modelling and problem-solving capabilities enabled by advanced Excel skills
• You should have excellent verbal and written communication skills appropriate for engaging a diverse range of audiences and stakeholders;
• Proven ability to work independently and as part of a team and the strength of character to challenge the business and influence decision making
• Appetite to engage in projects or additional responsibilities as an opportunity for career progression