JOB DESCRIPTION
Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Controller, Grade 7
Name:
Job Title:
FP&A Controller G7
Department:
Finance
Responsible to:
Finance Director
Staff Supervised:
Finance pool; responsibility shared with Financial Controller
and two Finance Clerks.
Purpose:
To act as a link between Finance and the business areas;
preparing value added management information (MI) and advice to facilitate improved
performance. The FP&A Controller is also responsible for forecasting and maintaining the
planning and budgeting cycles and for production of the annual accounts.
Main Activities:
Role responsibilities include but are not limited to:
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Providing financial and analytical input and advice to the review and development of
strategy.
Managing and coordinating team resources with the Financial Controller; specific
responsibility for managing the Sales/Debtors clerk to ensure efficient and effective
invoicing and proactive analysis of contract milestones.
Supporting the preparation of the annual budget in conjunction with business area
feedback and trustee targets.
Maintaining a robust, flexible and accurate driver-based quarterly forecast to ensure
the business is running in line with the budget and medium term plan, suggesting
actions if it is not.
Working with the business teams to collate business performance metrics and
present them in a user-friendly format for management, including detailed margin
analysis, commercial decision support, charitable accounting expertise, and new
product support.
Producing monthly management information reports, including monthly Board
reports, to support the monitoring and management of actual NFER performance.
Supporting and attending SMT reviews (at key points).
Supporting tendering processes.
Supporting business projects, client reporting, M&A (Merger/acquisition/sale) activity
and change management across the NFER Group.
Developing continuous improvements to support NFER including:
 Identifying key decision points where FP&A can reduce unnecessary, nonvalue-added work, and establish protocols for the wider Finance Team to
collaborate with business partners.
 Developing smarter trade-offs between timeliness and accuracy by setting
guidelines about what types of decisions or projects require perfection versus
those that require only directional analysis
 Tailoring the FP&A competency model by clearly defining analytic skills and
behaviours that are unique to the NFER and lead to insight generation.
 Help identify innovative ways to present and use financial and management
information to transform the way in which the organisation monitors and
manages its performance
Person Specification
1. Part / qualified accountant with charitable accounting expertise.
2. Advanced Excel and Agresso database skills and financial modelling experience.
3. Line management experience with the ability to lead a small team to achieve
department and business finance demands; the capacity to provide training and
coaching to staff as required.
4. Critical ability to exercise sound and thoughtful judgement with respect to research
and analytics in the following areas to support the Head of Finance:
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v)
January 2014
Synthesis of diverse data, integrating into the analysis both qualitative and
quantitative data, as well as external viewpoints.
Inferring trends; distinguishing patterns that are relevant from those that are
not; identifying risks and opportunities based on data analysis.
Generating insight; isolating actionable and noteworthy implications.
Identifying business assumptions; surfacing key biases and assumptions that
affect the results of data analysis; identifying and sizing the impact of
environmental factors that may not be reflected in the data.
Clarifying decision trade-offs for internal customers.