Finance Systems Analyst in Manchester

Working within the systems area of the finance support department. You will be part of a team providing technical support to all of the global and UK-based finance support IT systems. The team’s main focus is the firm’s practice management system (PMS), related fee earner tools and reporting systems for which it operates a helpdesk supporting a mixture of back office operational users through to fee earners on a worldwide basis, offering advice, support and solutions to queries.

Key responsibilities and deliverables

• Provide support to a variety of user issues via email, visit or phone call, providing solutions and escalating where required in order to provide an effective and intelligent helpdesk facility, delivering high service levels at all times.
• Administer the call logging and change control system and ensure that knowledge is documented and spread amongst the team.
• Keeping users up to date with progress on their calls and change requests.
• Provide ad-hoc business and technical help to users on the usage of the finance systems.
• Act as intermediary between the finance support and IT technical support, providing technical and process advice with regards to all of the global and London based finance support IT systems.
• Liaise directly with the PMS third party suppliers documenting and implementing fixes as appropriate.
• Provide immediate solutions to systems issues arising, liaising with other support teams to ensure their prompt resolution and adding value back into current KB articles and processes.
• Aid in the implementation of new upgrades, functionality and system wide changes, from a finance support perspective.
• Work closely with the development teams and third party providers, feeding back issues and defects discovered through testing and coordinating their resolution.
• Contributing to, and participating in, the build and release management process with development teams.
• Monitoring the reporting systems.
• Providing immediate solutions to user issues and escalating complex queries to the rest of the team.
• Generating non-standard General Ledger and Sub-Ledger reports to users upon request.
• Aiding in the design, testing and rollout of new reports, systems and interfaces.
• Involvement in other related projects that the wider team are undertaking.
• Provide analytical support to users.

Key requirements

• Essential Financial skills including:

• Experience of financial systems administration within a professional services environment, preferably Elite 3e.
• Understanding of the finance function processes and revenue recording systems.
• Proven ability to comprehend financial terminology and communicate with accounting colleagues on system configuration and GL master data.
• Previous experience of management information systems.
• Ability to investigate and explain the causality of figures reported.

• Extremely Computer literate.
• Advanced level Excel (pivot tables, vlookups, complex formulae).
• Intimate knowledge of practice management systems from a systems point of view.
• Proven ability to comprehend, compose and execute complex SQL queries, preferably within Elite 3E database.
• Be able to communicate with internal IT and external suppliers on technical related issues.

• Self-motivated with the ability, and resilience, to drive projects to their completion.
• Ability to operate autonomously throughout the project life cycle through to delivery.
• Enthusiastic and focused.
• Ability to prioritise and work to tight deadlines.
• Ability to multi-task and manage multiple projects.
• Confident, able to lead meetings and projects.
• Excellent communication skills (written and verbal) with confidence and ability to deal with partners, senior lawyers and staff at all levels.
• The ability to simplify explanations and inspire confidence.
• Proven organisational skills and attention to detail.
• A flexible attitude to tasks and to clients.
• Strong numerical skills.
• Experience of working in a legal or professional services firm.
• Positive can-do attitude.
• Team player – reliable, flexible and willing to help.
• Strong analytical capability able to rapidly understand the root cause of issues in order to resolve.

• Project management skills, including good listening skills, empathy and a structured, open-minded approach to solving problems and running projects.
• Knowledge of servers and database structures.
• Knowledge of SQL and the ability to combine results with other sources.
• Previous use of an OLAP analysis tool along the lines of Power BI.
• Accounting training or qualification is advantageous.

Inclusion

Freshfields is an equal opportunities employer and all applications received by the firm will be considered by the firm on the basis of their merit alone and we welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals regardless of background. All offers of employment will be conditional on the candidate having/securing the right to work in the UK and providing the firm with evidence of that right (as required by the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006) prior to employment commencing.