UK multi-national FTSE 100 utility company – Improving financial controls for transformation through key role hiring

The Situation

When the client first contacted BIE they were embarking on a 3-5 year finance transformation programme. The objectives of the multi-million-pound programme were to:

• Evolve and enhance internal controls over finance reporting
• To rationalise/streamline and cleanse the data structure
• Evaluate systems with the view of optimising or replacing them

To support the success of the finance transformation programme and the implementation of their ambitious strategy, the client required several key interim roles to be filled.

The Solution

With the clients requiring these roles to be filled within a few-month period BIE ensured that the placements were made at the required pace. BIE collaborated with the programme’s Director of Finance Transformation, to ensure that we had a clear understanding of the responsibilities and requirements of these critical roles.

There were three key areas that BIE helped to support in this project. The client was looking to mobilise the system swiftly to assemble the necessary resources in a timely manner. The three roles BIE supported included:

• Head of Controls
• Rollout & Validation Manager
• Finance Business Analyst

For all these roles, BIE drew on their expansive network of specialised interim talent with experience in various areas of finance transformation implementation, implementing financial internal control frameworks programmes.

The Outcome

Utilising BIE’s vast network of interim specialists, diverse shortlists of talent with the required finance transformation experience were identified, to best suit the expectations for each role.

The successful placement of these roles contributed to the success of the programme as:

• Performance success of the controls programme was achieved, particularly in controls
• The controls hires brought significant experience and stakeholder management skills to navigate the experience of a maturing controls framework
• The talent placed also built a strong rapport with finance, creating confidence in the programme

Additionally, the successful candidate placements helped in achieving the programme objectives by:

• Developing a state-of-the-art controls system (Workiva), enabling the digitalisation of controls

• Helped to develop & establish a control centre of excellence for oversight and BAU activity.