HEAD OF FINANCE BUSINESS PARTNERING & STRATEGIC PLANNING

Edinburgh

£57,825 - £63,285 per annum

SRUC is unique in Scotland and one of the largest organisations of its kind in Europe. Our ambitious and exciting vision is to work at local, national and international levels, leading innovation and sustainable development in agriculture and rural sectors.

We are currently seeking an experienced Finance Business Partnering & Strategic Planning manager. The main objective of this role is to ensure that SRUC retains a strong financial position driving and maintaining financial stability supporting the organisations strategic aims.

This role will lead and be accountable for the delivery of a customer-focussed business partnering service, which will include:

• Responsibility for the leadership, management and motivation of the business partnering team, ensuring a high level of service delivery across SRUC campuses and estates including senior stakeholders to:
  • Support, analyse and challenge them on their performance.
  • Align operational activities to the strategic intent of the organisation.
  • Optimise their business performance, providing insightful management information including reporting on historic financial performance and being responsible for all financial planning and forecasting including budgeting.
  • Influencing internal stakeholders to optimise their business performance, providing insightful management information including reporting on historic financial performance 
• Rigorous evaluation of ad-hoc project proposals and business cases to enable effective options appraisal and decision making.
• The strategic planning element of the role will provide:
  • A newly developed framework for longer-term strategic planning that enables the SRUC Executive to assess issues relating to strategic and operational planning and performance.
  • Utilisation of reliable and robust tools to plan, measure and monitor institutional performance including insightful analysis and options appraisal.
  • Systems that connect operational performance to strategic data analytics, enabling visibility and early warning where business critical variables are moving.

The Scope of the post includes:

• Interpreting, explaining and driving performance within the business. Leading changes in financial delivery across the organisation - operationally and also culturally.
• To build strong, effective relationships with all stakeholders, ensuring that their needs are understood and managed and ensuring effectiveness, credibility and full confidence in the service delivered.
• Liaison with senior internal stakeholders, providing financial reporting but ensuring but team are matrixed effectively into all areas of the organisation to provide best value.
• Develop robust, effective, collaborative relationships with all senior managers and their teams, guiding, informing and challenging them in their thinking, inspiring them to act on the data provided.
• Responsible for all elements of internal financial reporting and budgeting. Critical period in the lead up to the new financial year in preparing robust budgets. Ensuring that financial measures tie to strategy and business KPIs.
• Leading a team of 4 finance professionals to deliver effective business partnering across the organisation.
• Assisting the Finance Director in the preparation of reports for the F&E and A&R committees plus the SACC and main Board papers.
• Be mindful of a continuous improvement agenda, with ongoing appraisal and re-evaluation of financial reporting systems and change management to new ways of reporting and working.
• Coaching and developing an effective business partnering team, commuting the activities from back-end processing to front-end influencing over time.

Further details on the requirements of this role can be found in the Job Particulars document which you must read before applying for this role. This is downloadable when you click the APPLY button.

Closing Date: 15 November 2020

SRUC: Leading the way in Agricultural and Rural Research, Education and Consultancy

SRUC is committed to valuing Diversity, advancing Equality and respecting Human Rights throughout the organisation and encouraging applications from disabled people using the "Disability Confident Employer" symbol. SRUC is a member of the Athena SWAN charter.

SRUC. A Charitable company limited by guarantee, SC003712. Registered in Scotland No SC103046