Finance Business Manager

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Job Title

Finance Business Manager

Department

Finance

Office Location

London

Reports To

Senior Finance Business Manager

Working Hours

35 hours per week, 9:30am to 5:30pm but additional hours may be required. We are happy to consider agile and flexible working patterns are piloting a hybrid working approach, please contact a member of the recruitment team to discuss further.

Firm Description

Hogan Lovells is one of the leading global law firms. Our distinctive market position is founded on our exceptional breadth of our practice, on deep industry knowledge, and on our ’one team’ global approach. Formed through the combination of two top international law firms, Hogan Lovells has over 40 offices in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With a presence in the world’s major financial and commercial markets, we are well placed to provide excellent business-oriented advice to our clients locally and internationally. Our people are the key to our success, which is why we seek to recruit and retain the most talented individuals in all regions of our global practice.

In the UK Hogan Lovells has offices in Birmingham and London. The Birmingham office opened in 2015 and has a number of practice areas including Corporate/Commercial, Disputes, Finance and Real Estate, as well as our Legal Delivery Centre and business services departments. The office has recently trebled in size and moved into a new fitted out space in the Colmore Building.

Department Description

The Hogan Lovells Finance Function, which reports to the Global CFO, comprises around 350 staff, around 65 of whom are in London. The Function has four key areas of responsibility:

• Transaction processing
• Reporting
• Control
• Decision Support

Role Overview

This is a high profile business partnering role and an excellent opportunity for someone with an ability to drive change in a collaborative way, so not purely a finance technician but someone with a consulting approach and good strategic skills as well as operational/implementation ability.

Strategic planning within the practice group and improvement of key processes to make them as efficient and streamlined as possible are also key areas of focus for this role.

The role is very hands on and requires extensive interaction with stakeholders across the global business, including partners and business support teams. Excellent people management skills are essential to be successful in this role.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• First line support to the practice group, ensuring that the strategy, plans and structures are in place and aligned to the firm’s strategic goals
• Support the annual budgeting and forecasting activities within the practice group
• Provide in depth analytical support on financial performance at practice group and team level
• Be the business advisor to the practice group to help the group effectively manage their financial performance.
• Provide training for groups of partners and lawyers, recommending improvements in efficiencies and practices.
• Work with partners, heads of department and others to encourage best practice in relation to accounting and profitability, pricing and matter management.
• Be the finance representative, working closely and collaboratively with business services teams. Develop a best practice approach within the practice and improve the efficiency of processes.
• Identify business trends and make recommendations to improve business performance.
• Support the practice group in building business cases for required initiatives e.g. lateral hires.
• Work proactively with the practice group’s leadership team and partners to provide financial expertise and support, e.g. attendance/presentations at partner meetings.
• Monitor working capital balances, making recommendations to improve lock up and escalating issues as and when appropriate.
• Work with the Reporting and Analytics team on finance projects

Person Specification

The Candidate

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent)
• Previous experience in a business partnering role within legal or professional services essential
• Highly analytical and numerate with an attention to detail as well as the ability to see the bigger picture.
• Strong communications skills (verbal, written and presentational) and excellent soft skills to influence or challenge senior stakeholders
• Ability to build strong relationships with the practice group’s leadership team and business support managers and to operate within "virtual teams".
• The individual must be pro-active with a continuous improvement mentality to support development of self, colleagues and business processes and interactions.
• Emotionally resilient, with the strength of personality to ensure the perspective of ‘Finance’ is clearly communicated and the ability to remain calm and focussed under pressure.
• The position requires the candidate to have a hands-on approach but also have experience to delegate as required, and supervise the work of others.
• Strong MS reporting skills (including Excel and PowerPoint)

Agile Working Statement

Our goal is to embed flexibility across our business by giving everyone the opportunity to work in an agile way, whether as a regular pattern or on an ad hoc basis, and we will be happy to discuss this further.

Equal Opportunities Employment Statement

It is the policy of Hogan Lovells to provide equal opportunities for all employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion. Decisions in these areas will be made only by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of age, disability, ethnic origin, gender identity, religion, sex or sexual orientation.