Finance Analyst - Qualified

Company Overview:

Our client is a leading provider of Environmental Advisory services to businesses. Their mission is to make the planet safer and cleaner, and their service enables customers to improve the quality of their cleaning whilst reducing their environmental impact. Their operations encompass 12 European countries in addition to Brazil and Turkey. They employ over 2,100 people across 90 branches and generate approximately £350m in revenue from their 50,000 strong customer base. With a large market still to go for and their sustainability message resonating strongly with customers, they have ambitious plans to grow the business by over 50% over the next 5 years.

Working at our client you will gain fantastic experience of the business drivers and organisation of a long-standing PE backed recurring-revenue business, combined with the entrepreneurial mindset needed to deliver growth ambitions.

Role Overview:

We are looking for an ambitious and commercially minded analyst to join the Group FP&A team. This critical role will be responsible for analysing sales and commercial data across the Group to provide insight on the Group’s go-to-market performance and progress against strategy. The role involves tracking key metrics, identifying trends and providing actionable insights to improve sales and retention.

Main Responsibilities of the Commercial FP&A Analyst Role:

• Sales Performance Analysis: Create and maintain reports to track performance of sales against budgets and targets, providing trend and variance analysis as appropriate. Analyse sales and pre-sales metrics to review sales effectiveness by market and team, providing actionable insight to the Commercial function on areas such as effectiveness of sales team cohorts, mix, company sectors, and return on investments.
• Sales Budgeting and Forecasting: Work with the commercial function to develop annual budgets based on the Group’s strategic drivers, and share with the in-market teams. Develop tools to forecast sales on an ongoing basis, to highlight start of month/quarter risks and opportunities and share with the commercial function with actionable insights.
• Retention Tracking: Track performance of the Company’s contract retention, identifying trends and linking to the Group’s target sectors. Link retention back to sales performance to ensure that the quality of the Group’s customer base is improving over time.
• Pricing: Provide input to the Commercial team on pricing analysis, benchmarking markets and product lines and sectors and linking back into the sales function targets.
• Reporting & Dashboards: Work with the Group’s data team to develop and maintain dashboards to provide real-time visibility into sales performance. Present regular reports to senior management, outlining performance, risks, and opportunities. Work with Commercial leadership on Board and Stakeholder reporting to demonstrate progress against the Company’s strategy.
• Data Integrity & Management: Ensure the accuracy and integrity of sales data by working closely with the commercial teams by driving adoption of CRM and reconciling back to the contract database as appropriate. Work with the data team to ensure that the right data governance practices with the markets are in place to drive consistent use of CRM, with the sales team structures up to date, and enable consistent and accurate sales reporting to be delivered.

Key Skills and Competencies:

• Analytical and Data-driven: We are a data and insights-driven organisation, and base decisions and priorities for improvements on proven tests and results. Being able to translate data into analysis into insights into actions is key for success in this role.
• Curiosity: You must be curious to search for connections that turn into insights to support the commercial leadership team. You must be keen to ask the question 'why' in order to find underlying trends and causes.
• Collaboration and Teamwork: We work closely across our markets, so the ability to collaborate and engage successfully with the markets is key.
• Communication: You have the ability to structure thoughts and presentations in a way that resonates with local audiences, and to drive adoption of your ideas towards outcomes.
• Willingness to Learn: We believe strongly that personal growth and development drives employee engagement, and therefore our performance as a team; a willingness to learn and adapt is a key enabler of your success.
• Technical Proficiency: Advanced Excel skills required, able to quickly pick up Microsoft CRM. Power BI experience a plus, but the ability to build visualisations and dashboards in collaboration with the Data team is required. Training will be available in this area, but an aptitude to drive use of technology to provide standard reports in the role is essential.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Experience of driving business insight through analysis.
• Working with large data sets, and synthesising data down to essentials.
• Finance qualification is essential (ACA/ACCA/CIMA).
• Experience of reporting to senior management, and presenting data or reports in a way that addresses business needs.
• Demonstrable curiosity about the business world, what drives business success, and how you have contributed to that success in your prior roles.