Finance Business Partner

About the role

The Finance Business Partner acts as the strategic finance partner to leadership, turning financial, commercial and operational data into forward-looking insight and disciplined action. The role supports line-of-service strategy, profitable growth, cash conversion, engagement economics and operational excellence across countries, business units and cross-border engagements.

Key responsibilities

• Provide financial input into line-of-service strategy, annual plans, budgets and forecasts at LoS, business-unit, country and cost-centre level, and maintain a strategy and KPI tracker.
• Prepare weekly, monthly and quarterly management insights on revenue, production, utilisation, realisation, engagement margin, CSS cost, direct costs, controllable margin and net income, translating movements into business implications and recommended actions.
• Analyse pipeline, secured work, win targets and win/loss trends, support opportunity pricing and engagement budgeting, and provide scenario analysis on revenue conversion, capacity, cost and margin.
• Act as principal adviser on project and contract setup, project budgets, billing, WIP valuation, provisions, adjustments and NIC management, and monitor engagements against commercial milestones.
• Drive timely job-code opening for local and cross-border engagements, including Internal Firm Agreements and inter-territory billing, and promote consistent accounting and reporting treatment across countries.
• Oversight of billings, collections, debtors, WIP, ageing, provisions and write-offs, using dashboards and exception reporting to focus leadership attention on material balances.
• Partner with leaders to improve the engagement-to-cash cycle, support business reviews and network requests, and present concise financial narratives to leadership.
• Build working relationships with leadership, country Finance teams, Finance COEs, Shared Services and other IFS functions, and coordinate regional allocations and cost-centre structures.
• Apply finance policies and controls, escalate complex transactions, and identify opportunities to simplify, standardise and automate finance processes.
• Provide practical guidance and periodic training on processes, reports and commercial disciplines, and oversee project-support activities in the assigned portfolio.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics or a related discipline.
• Relevant professional qualification such as CPA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent is required.
• At least 4 years of financial management or business-partnering experience; professional-services experience is highly desirable.
• Demonstrated experience in budgeting, forecasting, management reporting, profitability analysis and working capital management.
• Experience supporting senior stakeholders across multiple business units or countries and coordinating cross-functional actions.

Required skills

• Working knowledge of engagement economics, revenue, WIP, debtors, provisions, utilisation and margin in a project-based environment.
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint capability.
• Desirable: experience with Oracle, EPM, dashboards or comparable finance and BI tools.
• Practical awareness of controls and the commercial, tax, legal and regulatory considerations affecting contracts and cross-border work.