Interim Swiss Head of Commercial Finance

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The Role Location: London Hybrid (3 days per week) Type: Full Time Contract type: 12 month fixed term contract

The opportunity has arisen to for a high calibre interim professional to step into the vacancy of BU Head of Commercial Finance (BU HCF) of a market leading, highly performing business within a private equity owned group that has extremely high aspirations for continued growth and progression through a combination of organic and inorganic expansion. Within this overall framework, the individual works with a number of departments including Operations, Commercial and Marketing to assist in ensuring that the business performs in line with expectations, from a financial perspective, an operational perspective, and from a consumer appreciation perspective. Reporting to the BU FD, the interim BU HCF is a key member of the senior team. They are responsible for accurate and timely reporting of the Group’s trading performance, overseeing robust systems and processes for commercial finance analysis and ensuring the provision of insightful information for key decision makers in the business.

Responsibilities

• The BU HCF is responsible for leading the commercial finance team and overseeing all BAU commercial finance activities across the business, including the following activities:
• Membership analysis: a specific focus on business partnering with marketing, commercial and operations to forecast membership joiners, leavers and churn to a high degree of accuracy. Monitoring performance against these forecasts with a series of daily, weekly and monthly reports for use by the key decision makers in the business.
• Pricing analysis and decisions: Alongside membership analysis, the HCF oversees revenue forecasts and analysis, attends monthly pricing meetings and provides robust, data led input into pricing decisions on a gym by gym basis to ensure the balance of volume vs ARPM is achieved and revenue targets are met.
• Forward Planning & Budgeting: building on the revenue forecast, the commercial finance team pulls in cost and balance sheet lines from the management accounts team to complete and own the delivery of the aggregated BU budget and forecast (2 x reforecasts per annum), including P&L, BS, cashflow, submission schedules for Group and presentation materials for the Board.
• Business Reporting & Performance Monitoring: delivery of FP&A reporting and ways of working to assess and optimise performance, working to deliver performance reports on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis as a key ‘routine’ responsibility. Examples include P&L performance and ROCE on a cohort basis, tracking of new site membership vs feasibility numbers, marketing CPA and returns to assess promotional effectiveness. These reports need to be accurate and provide meaningful insights and variance analysis into the absolute, relative and trend line performance of the business. These have been designed not just to ‘record’ narrow financial parameters as outputs, but are set up to enable managers to understand their key performance areas and take better performance related decisions.
• Investment proposals: within this fast paced and growing business there are a number of strategic investment initiatives in play at any one time and the BU HCF supports the BU FD as needed in ensuring the preparation of well-considered investment proposals, for approval at the Group’s Capex Committee. Subsequently, as investments are made, rigorous tracking of the results of such investments is critical to ensuring assessment of results versus expectations, rapid learning of what is working and what is not, and visibility of true return on capital and IRR.
• Leadership of the commercial finance team: with a team of 10-12 colleagues, ranging from part to fully qualified, a key responsibility of the BU HCF is to manage the performance and development of their team, foster a positive working environment by promoting the Group’s core values and ensure the team’s contribution to the business is of the highest standard.

The Person

We are looking for an outstanding interim finance professional – self-starting, able to hit the ground running and highly collaborative. The successful candidate must be able to quickly create strong relationships and settle the team at a time of change, understand how to lead, develop and retain a highly capable commercial finance function. The interim BU HCF will not be a statesman, concerned with status, delegation or empire building. This is a sleeves rolled up, energetic and hard working individual who is prepared to lean in to get the job done. A “finisher” who is excited by the opportunity to make a difference, contributing to (and learning from) a dynamic and experienced team. They will be highly capable and keen to excel alongside this fast paced and dynamic business.

In terms of background and experience, the successful candidate is likely to demonstrate the majority of the following:

• Holds a degree and is professionally qualified ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualified
• An experienced interim professional, been a Head of Commercial Finance (or similar) previously, or very close to this role and demonstrably ready to take the next step
• An individual with the experience to “know what good looks like”
• Proven commercial acumen and experience of driving performance through data driven decision making
• Experience in multi-site retail, leisure or other business with a substantial property portfolio.
• Ideally, experience of a membership and/or subscription-based business environment
• Good reputation for integrity and impact

In terms of the performance and personal competencies required for the position, we would highlight the following:

• Driven, determined, self-starting and self-motivated, with a strong work ethic
• High personal and professional standards, taking great pride in their work and always keen to exceed expectations
• A “safe pair of hands” who is conscientious and prepared to “lean in” when required to get the job done
• Highly numerate with a high level of competence in financial analysis, overseeing modelling and financial management
• Highly intelligent, with a good base of learning and experience on which to make judgements, as well as fact-based decision making
• A natural eye and appetite for detail but always able to see the bigger picture and potential as well.
• A pragmatic approach to distinguishing between where detail is necessary (indeed essential) and where detail hides or confuses the picture
• Appropriate technical accounting skills and capacity to guide the team in consideration and application of all the general principles of accounting practice
• Highly commercial individual who can sort things out and deliver progress and impact in a highly pragmatic manner
• Capable in terms of providing and understanding financial aspects of business performance, and able to work with other colleagues to prepare good business cases for decision-making and investments
• Able to focus and prioritise what is important. An organised and methodical “finisher” that does not get distracted or lose sight of the big picture objective or the core tasks at hand
• Able to operate in a fast-paced environment and comfortable with a degree of ambiguity, uncertainty and able to manage and support others through periods of change
• The ability to persevere in the face of challenges and exhibit a steadfast resolve and relentless commitment to higher standards, which commands respect from followers
• Have an open, honest style and a proven ability to influence colleagues at all levels with real integrity and professionalism
• Demonstrate the characteristics of a natural team player and genuinely puts the team and colleague’s interest on a par with or ahead of their own.

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