Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis

Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis  

Finance  

This is permanent position on Crick Terms & Conditions of Employment.  

Context  

The Francis Crick Institute was formed in 2015 and became fully operational in 2017 at our state-of-the-art building in central London, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under a single roof in Europe.  The Crick is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King's College London. It is a registered charity whose purpose is to conduct biomedical research into all aspects of human health and disease. 

The Crick is a world-leading centre of biomedical research and innovation. We work with our university partners and other organisations across academia, medicine and industry to create a space where talented researchers make discoveries about how life works. We then translate those discoveries into health benefits that improve people's lives and keep the UK at the forefront of medical innovation. It promotes connections between researchers and disciplines and between academic institutions, healthcare organisations and businesses. Dedicated to research excellence, the Crick has the scale, vision and expertise to tackle the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease. It is world-class with a strong national role training scientists and developing ideas for public good.  

The position of Manager, Financial Planning and Analysis has responsibility for delivering high quality management information and analytics to support financial planning and strategy across the institute.  

Role Summary  

The Manager, Financial Planning and Analysis reports to the Group Finance Director and is a key role in a team of 7 leading on financial planning, management reporting, decision support and finance partnering for the Institute, across a spend base of c£200m p.a. The role has one direct report and will be responsible for delivering key financial management information and group analytics to support mid-term financial decision making.   The role will be responsible for ensuring that the Crick has the information it needs to demonstrate financial delivery against its strategy and make informed choices and will drive ‘one version of the truth’ from the Finance, Sourcing and Grants teams. This is a senior role in the finance team and the postholder will need to be both proactive and credible in building relationships, developing strategies and ensuring the integrity and robustness of information provided across the team to support a complex organisation.  

Key Responsibilities 

These include but are not limited to:  

• Supporting development of financial plans and models that influence and support decision-making, including significant involvement in the annual budget setting and quarterly forecasting processes 

• Driving data integrity across the team, including development of a clear and well understood data structure 

• Driving partnership with key stakeholders, which include both research and non-research colleagues as we seek to deliver insight 

• Delivering against and seeking to drive and shape a vision for the reporting roadmap across the team, to include development of dashboards and visualisation methods 

• Working with the Head of F,P&A to ensure that month and year–end processes are completed in an accurate and timely manner and consistently looking for improvement 

• Supporting the Head of F,P&A and Group FD on strategic projects as required 

Person specification  

The post holder must embody and demonstrate our core Crick values: Bold, Open, Collegial. The following qualities, experience and competencies are also essential or desirable: 

Essential: 

• A qualified accountant with a track record in management accounting or F,P&A in a complex organisation 

• Strong hands-on planning and analysis experience and interest in systems. 

• Proven people and business partnering skills, with strong EQ. 

• A team player, able to work flexibly with others and contribute effectively across a broad range of activities.  

• Ability to plan and prioritise work in line with a wider team. 

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, able to engage and inspire  

• Understanding of data organisation and definitions-how to build a framework for data and an environment to ensure data integrity 

• Strong desire to adopt technology as a partner in delivering goals 

• Clear resonance with Crick’s mission and a desire to support a world class team 

Desirable: 

• Experience working with Power BI or other data consolidation/presentation tools 

• Experience delivering reporting change within a finance environment 

• Experience of a research environment or a grant-funded organisation 

• Experience with Workday Financials and cloud-based financial planning tools, e.g. Adaptive Insights 

• An interest in life sciences.