Location: New York,NY, USA
Company Description
Elmwood Brand Consultancy is a global design consultancy with over 40 years of experience. We work locally in London, New York, Shanghai, and Singapore. Our clients include Unilever, Haleon, Kimberly-Clark, Heineken, Danone, and Mars. At Elmwood, we believe that tension is at the heart of powerful brands, and we harness its energy to transform design.
Role Description
This is a full-time hybrid role for a Finance Business Partner at Elmwood Brand Consultancy based in New York. The Finance Business Partner will be responsible for supporting the local Managing Director to deliver the financial and strategic goals of the organization.
Commercial Management
1. Ensuring no surprises and keeping agency and management equipped with relevant insights into business performance, reviewing financial and other KPI performance versus budget.
2. Preparation of first draft of annual budget including year on year analyses to assist appropriate decision making on allocation of budgets.
3. Prepare and present client and job profitability, time utilization and recoverability analyses.
4. In depth understanding of status of client jobs, proactively acting to ensure all jobs are controlled, closed when necessary and no unnecessary cost write offs are incurred.
5. Working with the Operations team, the preparation and actioning of job profitability analyses which involve regular liaison with Account Directors and Managers to understand variances from expectations, and the commercial and financial aspects of client relationships.
Finance
6. Managing and working with the central finance team to prepare and deliver month end management accounts including a reporting pack comprising P&L, Balance Sheet, Forecast, cashflow to tight Group deadlines.
7. Take oversight and liaise with finance team on Intercompany billing and reconciliation of intercompany balances.
8. Liaison with the auditors and management of the process in order to achieve a timely and efficient audit.
9. Assist central finance team with working capital management, to ensure sufficient cash flow through timely debtors settlement and billing accrued revenue promptly.
10. Ensuring that regulatory requirements of all statutory bodies are met where appropriate.
Commercial Management
11. Ensuring no surprises and keeping agency and management equipped with relevant insights into business performance, reviewing financial and other KPI performance versus budget.
12. Preparation of first draft of annual budget including year on year analyses to assist appropriate decision making on allocation of budgets.
13. Prepare and present client and job profitability, time utilization and recoverability analyses.
14. In depth understanding of status of client jobs, proactively acting to ensure all jobs are controlled, closed when necessary and no unnecessary cost write offs are incurred.
15. Working with the Operations team, the preparation and actioning of job profitability analyses which involve regular liaison with Account Directors and Managers to understand variances from expectations, and the commercial and financial aspects of client relationships.
Systems & Improvements
16. Assisting with implementation and integration projects in US.
17. Identifying systems and process improvements across business teams that will lead to greater efficiency. Managing the implementation and roll out.
18. Meeting regularly with the EW and MSQ CFOs to provide regular reporting and proactive commercial advice. Seeking out issues and putting a plan of action in place to resolve.
Qualifications