Commercial Business Partner

**Commercial Business Partner**

Robert Walters is proud to be partnered with one of the UK's first employment support service providers in their search for a Commercial Business Partner at their Liverpool location.

The Commercial Business Partner role will contribute to the provision and continuous improvement of accurate, timely and well-presented financial management information to the Board of Directors and Operations Management.

The Commercial Business Partner will support the Commercial Finance Lead & Head of Commercial Accounting in partnering Operational Leads, supporting in driving focus to identified areas for performance improvements or sharing of high performance best practice.This will often also involve responding to ad-hoc commercial analysis required by our customers and other stakeholders.

**Key Responsibilities**

**Commercial Bidding & Financial Modelling**
- The Commercial Business Partner supports the Commercial Finance Lead & Head of Commercial Accounting and operates in a fast-paced environment. Leading on financial bid submission, including the preparation of financial models to support new contracttendering, partnering with the Business Development team and other company functions to ensure potential opportunities are robustly analysed._
- Commercial Finance representative, on financial bid submissions
- Planning of required activities adapting to the scale of the bid and the timeframe within external deadlines
- Confidently communicating with other key bid stakeholders
- Obtaining information required to inform a commercial financial model in a timely manner
- Build and develop Excel financial models to support bidding for new contracts including full cash flow forecasts. Models will need to be easily adaptable, capable of allowing sensitivity analysis to enable strategic pricing and performance decisions tobe made.
- Models must be user friendly with detailed instructions and documentation. They must be structured and concise but sufficiently detailed to allow for a high level of scrutiny of business opportunities
- Models must be able to perform profitability analysis based on project outputs, be fully secure and linked where necessary to source data from other workbooks.
- Liaise with the Senior Management, Board Directors and the Business Development team to collate information for the design of business models.
- Ensure the accurate and robust completion of customer bid submission spreadsheets to an exemplary standard
- Lead on the presentation of Bid Financial Models to the Board of Directors and other bid leads
- Train other Finance staff in the use of such financial models as appropriate

The Business requires the full commitment and cooperation of its employees to strictly adhere to the company policies and procedures, which include health and safety, diversity and safeguarding policies*.

*Diversity: it is the responsibility of all employees to maintain a work environment where everyone feels valued and respected, irrespective of their race, gender, ethnicity, marital/civil partnership status, age, disability, religion, belief or sexual orientation.

Health and Safety: it is the responsibility of all employees to take reasonable care for the health and safety of themselves and of other persons who may be affected by their acts or omissions whilst at work.

Safeguarding: it is the responsibility of all employees to make the working environment safe and secure for all, including children and vulnerable adults accessing our services.

**Essential Criteria**
- Qualified accountant
- Management accounting experience in a private sector, preferably public services, contracting environment. Involving experience of financial reporting, KPI preparation and communication and management reporting.
- Demonstrable experience of working in a fast paced, changing finance environment
- Proven ability to convey financial information to non financial managers in a coherent, confident manner. Relevant experience might come from monthly management accounts review meetings, budget or forecast negotiations or commercial negotiations
- Proven analytical and reporting skills
- Proven commercial acumen
- Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel
- Proactive, self-motivated and agile attitude
- Excellent organisational and time management skills and attention to detail
- A team player with good interpersonal, relationship building, networking and communication skills.
- Ability to confidently influence and support colleagues towards achieving business objectives
- Ability to deal with and manage through conflicting priorities and a number of tasks running concurrently
- The ability to grasp complex processes quickly
- Committed to external deadlines during bidding activity and ability to adjust to the intensity accordingly

**Desirable Criteria**
- Business partnering or commercial accounting experience in a private sector and/or contracting environment or in a fast moving, high volume, multi-site environment, with specific focus on business planning, commercial decision support, budgeting and forecasting
- Experience and proven ability in presentation to Senior Stakeholders including Board level
- Contract financial modelling / service or product costing experience preferably in a business services environment
- Power BI knowledge and ability to set up reports using Power BI desktop
- Good accounting systems knowledge, gained through in-depth exposure to systems such as Oracle, SAP, CODA