About Spencer Ogden

SO is a global recruitment business operating in the sustainable energy, infrastructure and natural resources sectors. We specialise in contract recruitment in technical roles in engineering and construction and project management. We also do permanent recruitment in the same sectors. Spencer Ogden is private equity backed. The business has 11 offices across six countries in APAC, Europe and The United States and generates global revenues of £150m. Role Overview: The Director Transactional Finance & Shared Services will be responsible for all aspects of transaction processing in the business. The most complex area is 'pay and bill' i.e. the process of paying our contractors and invoicing our customers. Some contractors are payrolled by SO and some are paid via management companies. . Currently finance sits regionally and is in the process of being centralised. There are therefore local pay and bill and credit control teams. This is therefore a new centralised function that is being set up, with the opportunity to inject some expert knowledge and experience, to help drive business outcomes and provide better service to support our clients and contractors. Part of the role will be to shape and form the new team, and depending on when the individual joins, influence the finer details of the structure and hire key direct reports. The restructure is not a full offshoring as the eventual solution will be built around an existing team. There is a team supporting on the transformation. Once the new structure is operational, the focus of the role will be on driving accuracy and efficiency, ensuring the right KPIs are in place and then driving process improvement. Part of this will come from partnering with the business around upstream processes and part will come from working with IT around technology solutions for pockets of automation. In the future, there may be major systems change but this is not on the horizon in the short to medium term - we are optimizing what we have. Key responsibilities : Oversight of payroll and billing teams across all jurisdictions where we operate. Accountable for ensuring all contractors are paid correctly and on time and related payroll submissions filed. Accountable for timely and accurate customer invoicing Oversight of global credit control function Oversight of accounts payable, staff expenses and accounts receivable processes globally Continuous improvement of processes within finance to drive efficiency Identifying opportunities for automation to drive efficiency and working with IT and other functions to deliver these initiatives Partnering with sales stakeholders to optimise the crucial upstream processes to ensure clean data flow into finance Policies: Own policies within the organisation that govern these upstream processes and influence stakeholder behaviour. Be prepared to partner with other stakeholders to drive adherence to policies (e.g. commercial finance and HR around factoring compliance into incentive schemes; sales enablement around process and tools; L&D around consultant training) Escalation point for commercial judgements e.g. around customer credit limits, non-standard billing exceptions, contractors on site without purchase orders. Business owner of pay and bill system (Access pay and bill). Liaison with vendor and IT support around day to day releases and minor systems development. Devise and own 'operational finance KPI dashboard'. Brief CFO and other senior stakeholders on issues and translate issues to actions, with clear accountability. Key competencies & skills Experience of operating in a multi jurisdictional environment with teams in different locations Experience of a contract recruitment environment and pay and bill a significant benefit Shared services experience and evidence of continuous improvement essential Able to evidence driving change to optimise team structures to operate leanly and efficiently Experience of offshoring / outsourcing a benefit Methodical and process driven approach Able to design and document policies and also translate these into tangible actions so they become embedded in behaviours in the business Data driven and history of using data to refine processes to drive efficiency Customer focused mentality and able to disseminate this to a team so that over time, that team can move 'beyond processing' to deliver customer service. Proven people leader who is able to demonstrate upskilling of team and how this has led to better outcomes for the business. Clear and confident presenter. Able to modify style and approach for different stakeholders. Robert Walters Operations Limited is an employment business and employment agency and welcomes applications from all candidates

TPBN1_UKTJ