Financial Lead (Shared Services)
Permanent
Leading UK Retail and Shared Service company
Location: Manchester City Centre (Hybrid, minimum 2 days per week in the office)
A leading UK retail and services brand is seeking an experienced Financial Lead / Head of Accounting Services to lead its Sales to Cash function within a large-scale Shared Services environment. This is a senior leadership opportunity to drive operational excellence, optimise working capital performance, and lead the strategic development of end-to-end accounting, billing, collections and cash management processes.
The Opportunity
As Head of Accounting Services, you will be responsible for the overall leadership and performance of the Sales to Cash operation, ensuring effective management of working capital, trade debtors, cash flow and associated controls. You will provide strategic direction across billing, collections, cash application, reporting and reconciliation activities whilst driving continuous improvement initiatives across ERP and supporting systems.
This role offers the opportunity to influence senior stakeholders across the business, lead large operational teams, and play a key role in delivering transformation and process optimisation within a complex, high-volume environment.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide strategic leadership and oversight of the end-to-end Sales to Cash process.
- Drive improvements in working capital performance, cash flow management and trade debtor outcomes.
- Lead the optimisation of processes, controls and ways of working across ERP platforms and associated interfacing systems.
- Ensure effective management of a significant billing and collections operation, overseeing approximately £1bn of billing activity and associated financial processes.
- Maintain robust control over sub-ledger activities and balance sheet reconciliations in partnership with Record to Report teams.
- Manage performance against SLAs, KPIs, quality standards, governance requirements and budget expectations.
- Partner with senior business leaders on working capital, cash flow and commercial finance matters.
- Lead, develop and motivate a large and diverse team, fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration and accountability.
- Support broader organisational transformation and shared services objectives as a member of the leadership team.
Requirements
We are looking for a commercially focused finance leader with strong technical expertise and a proven track record of leading large-scale accounting operations.
Essential Experience
- ACA, CIMA or CCAB qualified.
- Significant leadership experience within Shared Services, Global Business Services or a comparable finance operations environment.
- Strong expertise across end-to-end commercial accounting, Sales to Cash, credit control, collections and working capital management processes.
- Experience of SAP ERP environments and working with outsourced or third-party service providers.
- Demonstrated success delivering process improvement, transformation and operational excellence initiatives.
- Strong analytical capability and risk management experience.
- Proven ability to build relationships, influence stakeholders and challenge constructively at senior levels.
- Exceptional people leadership skills with experience managing and developing large teams.
This is an excellent opportunity for a senior finance leader to drive operational excellence, transformation and working capital optimisation within a high-profile, customer-focused business, while leading a large function through its next phase of growth and development.
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