Finance Consultant Manager at BDO South Africa

Purpose for the role: 

As a Financial Management Consultant within our Finance Transformation division, you will report to the Lead of Finance Transformation Services (FTS).

Your focus will be on the management and delivery of client engagements, as well as sales and practice development. You will focus on working with our leading clients and their executive teams to design and define innovative business solutions to respond to transition from the current to the future business state. You will collaborate with partners across the firm and across geographies to ensure a holistic and cross-functional, transformative approach

As someone with strong financial and commercial acumen, you will be a pivotal team member expected to contribute toward the continual development of our data management processes.

Main duties and responsibilities :

Project Delivery and Management

• Lead project planning sessions to set project goals and objectives, determine timelines, define tasks, and outline resources necessary to successfully complete the project
• Monitor the progress of projects, including addressing issues that may arise and ensuring project deliverables are completed on time
• Use an appropriate tracking tool to coordinate different elements of the project
• Organise regular status and review meetings as necessary, including generating and distributing meeting minutes
• Gather resources, identify potential constraints based on activities and timeframes, and define solutions to manage any constraints
• Design a risk management plan to minimize foreseeable disruptions to the project
• Oversee all incoming and outgoing project documentation, including managing contracts
• Manage a portfolio and resources to ensure stakeholder engagement through project plans, schedules, project tracking, budget and resource allocation, Gantt charts, and workload analysis
• Report regularly to management and relevant stakeholders on the progress of the project, challenges, resolutions, and alterations
• Conduct project reviews, including creating detailed reports for Advisory Leadership and the FTS Lead, and identifying areas for future improvement

Quality Management

• Ensure that projects are delivered within the agreed timelines and in accordance with agreed quality standards
• Consider and recommend enhancements for project performance and processes and initiate remedial action where defects are evident

Business Case Development

• Provide input into the product vision and roadmap for FTS by aligning to FTS’s overall strategy, commercial business unit requirements and key opportunities

Product Development Oversight

• Participate in the conceptual solution design process to make recommendations to enhance solutions that solve complex business problems.

Stakeholder Management

• Act as a liaison between key stakeholders such internally and externally to ensure that business development and project management requirements are being met 

Budget Management

• Manage own client account/s within approved budget and profitability targets
• Guide and assist other staff on how to manage their client accounts with regards to approved budget

Requirements:

Education:

• A bachelor’s degree in a finance. A Master’s degree or accounting qualifications are not a hard requirement but will be looked upon favourably, namely:
• BCom Accounting Sciences degree, or
• BCom Hons CTA, or
• Qualified CA(SA)
• Financial acumen: Ability to review financial datasets and glean actionable insight and patterns.
• Accounting: History of understanding and applying knowledge of
• Company financial statements and accounting principles into commercial functions.
• Forecasting, planning, and budgeting: Comfortable with the forecasting process and demonstrable ability to comprehend the inter-relationships between income statements and balance sheet items.
• Communication skills: A proven track record of translating financial performance and goals into written strategies and gameplans for targeting new businesses.
• Judgment: Sufficient statistical nous to test null hypotheses, derive trends, and discard causational relationships.
• Gravitas: Owning decisions and having the confidence to decisively convey opinion to senior stakeholders.
• Ability to work on multiple projects to tight timescales.
• Communication skills: A proven track record of translating financial performance and goals into written strategies and gameplans for targeting new businesses.
• Judgment: Sufficient statistical nous to test null hypotheses, derive trends, and discard causational relationships.
• Gravitas: Owning decisions and having the confidence to decisively convey opinion to senior stakeholders.
• Ability to work on multiple projects to tight timescales.

Work Experience: 

• 1-2 years management experience

Experience required:

• Experience in a managerial capacity, either within the Finance organisation or as part of a Consultancy
• Exceptional communication skills (both written and verbal) with a focus on the ability to influence and drive change through complex organisations
• Strong troubleshooting/problem-solving skills
• Strong meeting facilitation/presentation skills
• Strong client relationship skills and team development skills
• A track record in implementing project plans, either as a consultant or within a finance function.
• Solid understanding of financial principles
• Experience in business development would be advantageous