FP&A Analyst

FP&A Analyst
3 days/week in our Holborn office
SALARY:  £60k - £65k

Times Higher Education is the data provider underpinning university excellence in every continent across the world. As the company behind the world’s most influential university ranking, and with almost five decades of experience as a source of analysis and insight on higher education, we have unparalleled expertise on the trends underpinning university performance globally. Our data and benchmarking tools are used by many of the world’s most prestigious universities to help them achieve their strategic goals and our events series act as the home of higher education thought leadership around the world.

Basic Scope & Primary Objectives

Sitting within the central Finance team and reporting directly to the existing FP&A Analyst, who is expected to be promoted to FP&A Manager later in the year, this role bridges the gap between financial discipline and strategic change management.

THE’s growth has increased the size and complexity of the business, driving the need to invest in FP&A to provide a greater level of commercial support, as well as support on FP&A projects, such as systems implementation and higher quality reporting. There is also a demand from the business for insights on revenue and costs to drive improved financial performance. The objective is to bring someone who can assist the FP&A team to implement best in class FP&A processes that can scale with the growth of the business.

The successful candidate will also assist the Transformation Board in leading the delivery and financial governance of critical, organisation-wide transformation initiatives. They will oversee the lifecycle of multiple cross-functional projects and manage operational delivery, while ensuring all transformation budgets are tightly tracked, optimised, and aligned with the institution’s long-term financial strategy. The chosen candidate will need to ensure that the finance and key business process aspects of Transformation Projects are understood and appropriately addressed by stakeholders across the group, as well as assessing whether proposed transformation projects are financially viable via cost-benefit analysis.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Governance, Forecasting & Budgeting:

• Assist FP&A team in group budgeting, forecasting and long-term planning processes. This involves working closely with Finance Business Partners and department heads to gather relevant inputs and assumptions.

• Partner with the FP&A team to analyse financial data and performance, identifying and tracking trends, risks and opportunities. Provide variance analysis, cashflow forecasting and regular project-level P&L updates on active initiatives.

• Establish strong cross-functional relationships with department leads to undertake cost-benefit analysis to justify new transformation funding requests, as well as ensuring accurate and high-quality inputs into any reporting and forecasting processes.

• Own the secured revenue and annual recurring revenue reporting for the group, as well as the group’s headcount planning and reporting.

• Own the financial tracking of the Transformation portfolio, to ensure expenses align with approved budgets.

• Assist the FP&A team in maintaining the finance, revenue and workforce planning in Vena (FP&A tool).

• Assist the FP&A team in guiding the commercial sales pipeline analysis with the BI team, so that business leaders are aware of and are monitoring pipeline conversion, health, quality and velocity on a regular basis.

• Continuously improve financial processes, reporting systems and analytical tools to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of financial planning and analysis activities.

Stakeholder Management & Business Partnering:

• Prepare and present concise performance dashboards and financial updates for the Head of FP&A, Chief Financial Officer and Transformation Board.

• Collaborate with department heads to monitor external vendor costs, milestones and contract deliverables against project budgets. You will also be required to review non-standard customer contracts (i.e. those that differ to the standardised T&C’s) to ensure that they are acceptable for the business in terms of obligations and the cashflow impact of the contractual terms.

Organisation-wide Project Delivery:

• Assist Transformation Board with the governance and execution of operational, structural and strategic change projects.

• Coordinate with project teams to provide financial modelling/budgeting inputs across departments (e.g. HR, IT, Sales, Marketing, Finance, etc.) and ensure that these are communicated across teams to ensure that project milestones are hit.

• Work with the Transformation Director to design clear stakeholder communication pathways to maintain transparency and buy-in throughout the transformation lifecycle.

Experience Required

• Previous experience in FP&A, Commercial Finance, Finance Business Partnering or a similar analytical finance role.

• Experience supporting budgeting, forecasting, financial modelling and variance analysis.

• Proven ability to analyse financial data and provide commercially focused insights and recommendations.

• Experience managing or supporting cross-functional projects or business transformation initiatives.

• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build relationships across finance and non-finance teams.

• Experience preparing financial reports and presenting insights to senior stakeholders.

• Experience using financial planning and reporting systems (e.g. Vena, Anaplan, Adaptive Planning or similar) and advanced Excel skills.

• Qualified ACA, ACCA or CIMA is desirable.

You do You
You do You. With colleagues located around the world, we know that our individuality and diversity of experiences are our greatest strengths. That’s why we want THE to be a place where you are welcome to be who you want to be at work; where you can share whatever part of your life or self-identity you want, without obligation or facing discrimination; and where all abilities and perspectives are recognised and accommodated.