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⚡ Source: ReedRef: 56904628

Finance Business Partner

Michael Page Finance·Birmingham, West Midlands·Posted 1 week ago
💰 £70-75k/year
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Job description

Original text imported from Reed

This is an exciting opportunity with a growing professional services firm to appoint a commercially focused Finance Business Partner with strong analytical skills. This is a true business facing role supporting fee earners and guiding decisions on pricing, tendering and new business.

Client Details

Leading professional services firm

Description

  • Meeting Partners to challenge client and practice performance using detailed analysis, providing constructive recommendations for improvement
  • Reviewing individual client profitability, understanding the drivers behind trends and working with relationship Partners to optimise discounts, staffing mix, and service offerings.
  • Collaborate with department heads to develop and manage budgets effectively.
  • Providing detailed financial analysis to support business decisions.
  • Prepare accurate financial forecasts and reports to aid strategic planning.
  • Prepare structured analysis of monthly variances against budget, prior year, and prior month, presenting clear and actionable insights.
  • Creation of ad hoc analytical reports and insight papers on Group and divisional performance.
  • Build robust financial models to assess profitability, scenario planning, and commercial risk
  • Ability to extract and manipulate large, complex datasets
  • Developing data models and dashboards using tools such as Tableau
  • Identify and deliver process improvements, including automation and implementation of new tools

Profile

  • Professional qualifications such as ACCA, CIMA, or ACA.
  • Strong finance business partner
  • Financial analysis, modelling, and working with large datasets
  • Advanced data manipulation skills - comfortable working with complex, and sometimes imperfect, datasets
  • Experience with Tableau or similar BI tools
  • Strong communication skills with the ability to influence and challenge senior stakeholders

Job Offer

  • £70,000 to £75,000 per annum
  • Excellent benefits package
  • Hybrid working - 2 days a week in the office


SpeedCV AI

Key skills

AI-extracted from the job advert

Must-have skills
ACCA qualificationCIMA qualificationACA qualificationFinancial analysisFinancial modellingData manipulationTableauBusiness partnering experience
Nice-to-have
Professional services experienceAdvanced ExcelProcess improvementAutomation tools
Soft skills
CommunicationStakeholder influenceAnalytical thinkingCommercial awarenessProblem solvingAttention to detailCollaboration
SpeedCV AI

Application advice

5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.

1

⭐ Highlight your professional qualification (ACCA/CIMA/ACA) prominently as this is explicitly required for the role

2

📊 Quantify your business partnering impact: 'Improved client profitability by 15% through pricing optimisation across 25 key accounts'

3

🔧 Emphasise Tableau expertise with specific examples of dashboards you've built for senior stakeholders

4

💼 Showcase commercial analysis experience, particularly around pricing, tendering and profitability in professional services

5

📈 Demonstrate variance analysis skills with concrete examples of monthly reporting and actionable insights you've provided

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Suggested CV bullets

3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.

How to tailor your CV

Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:

  • Built Tableau dashboards tracking client profitability across 150+ accounts, enabling Partners to identify 12% improvement opportunity in pricing strategy
  • Led monthly variance analysis for £25M revenue budget, presenting actionable insights to 8 department heads that reduced cost overruns by 18%
  • Developed financial models for scenario planning across 5 practice areas, supporting £3.2M new business tender decisions with 85% win rate

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Letter preview — tailored to Michael Page Finance

Dear Hiring Manager,

Your Finance Business Partner role combines the commercial analysis and stakeholder influence that drives my career motivation. With my ACCA qualification and extensive experience in financial modelling and Tableau dashboard creation, I am well-positioned to support your Partners in optimising client profitability and pricing strategies.

My background in finance business partnering has equipped me with the analytical rigour and commercial awareness needed to challenge senior stakeholders constructively. I have successfully built profitability models, managed complex budgeting processes, and delivered actionable insights through variance analysis that directly influenced business decisions.

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SpeedCV AI

Interview questions

10 questions generated from this advert.

Technical

  • How would you approach building a profitability model for different client segments in a professional services firm?
  • Describe your experience with Tableau - what types of dashboards have you created for senior stakeholders?
  • How do you handle large, complex datasets that may have data quality issues?
  • Walk me through your process for conducting monthly variance analysis against budget and prior year
  • What financial modelling techniques would you use for scenario planning in a professional services environment?

Behavioural

  • Tell me about a time when you had to challenge senior stakeholders on their commercial decisions
  • Describe a situation where you identified a significant process improvement opportunity
  • Give an example of when you had to influence partners or senior managers to change their pricing strategy
  • Tell me about a complex financial analysis project you led that drove business improvement
  • Describe a time when you had to present difficult financial findings to department heads
SpeedCV AINEW

STAR answer examples

Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.

1Question

Tell me about a time when you had to challenge senior stakeholders on their commercial decisions

When reviewing quarterly results, I identified that our top-performing partner was actually generating 15% lower margins due to excessive discounting on 3 major clients. The partner initially resisted my analysis, believing client retention was paramount. I prepared a detailed profitability model showing how reducing discounts by just 5% would increase annual profit by £180,000 whilst maintaining competitive positioning. I presented alternative pricing structures and competitor benchmarking data. After 2 weeks of discussions, the partner agreed to implement graduated pricing increases. Within 6 months, we achieved £165,000 additional profit whilst retaining all 3 clients, validating the commercial case for change.
2Question

Describe a situation where you identified a significant process improvement opportunity

Our monthly management reporting took 12 days to complete, with 4 different people manually consolidating data from 6 systems. I noticed Partners were making decisions based on outdated information, particularly around resource allocation. I proposed building an automated Tableau dashboard connecting directly to our core systems. Despite initial IT concerns about data security, I worked with the technical team to create secure data connections. The new dashboard reduced reporting time to 3 days and provided real-time visibility of utilisation rates across 25 fee earners. Partners could now make immediate staffing decisions, improving overall utilisation by 8% and generating £320,000 additional revenue annually.

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