Finance Director

Academia Technology Group is an award-winning IT services provider providing managed services, hardware and software to education and enterprise customers. With revenues in excess of £140m the business is seeking an experienced Finance Director to lead a finance team of 12 and help drive the next chapter of growth for the company.

The company is award winning, dynamic, has an entrepreneurial culture, fast-growing and would benefit from the commercial support provided by a detailed focussed, hands-on experienced Finance Director.

Role Overview

This role would suit an experienced hands-on FD who can demonstrate strong leadership, sound technical and systems knowledge, relevant industry experience and a team focused approach.

Key Requirements:

• Hold a formal accounting qualification - preference for ACA
• The ideal candidate will have relevant sector experience of working in high volume IT services business/reseller/MSP
• Have a very strong bias towards financial control, focus on detail, commercial decision making and hands-on philosophy
• Has strong work ethic, high personal output, ambitious, multi-tasks effectively, is organised, plans ahead, PC literate and familiar working with systems.
• Be meticulous with a pragmatic and fact-based approach to decision-making
• Demonstrates strong excel modelling skills
• Has the leadership skills to lead and build a high-performance finance team

Key responsibilities:

• Work with the Financial Controller to ensure we have a disciplined and efficient month end process to ensure we produce accurate and timely MI for the business.
• Ensure finance managers have clear understanding of their roles and are managed effectively and team plans ahead to maintain financial control and avoid surprises
• Manage the team to ensure high standards are met, the team has strong work ethic but environment is supportive, collaborative and there is pride in producing good output and quality of service
• Operating credibly at board level and contributing to strategy (particularly cashflow, pricing and risk management)
• Support for the MD and Sales Director and interaction with potential customers in the sales process as appropriate
• Business partnering with operations in their interactions with existing customers and managing debtor days and working capital to ensure business expands in a controlled way with appropriate risk management
• Lead system improvement projects to improve automation and efficiency
• Maintain financial business model to track short and long business performance and to assist with investor and covenant reporting
• Manage audit process to ensure smooth year end audit with minimal disruption

Why Academia?

Academia is a rapidly growing Technology company with a strong footprint in the educational and business space. We specialise in providing IT managed services, supplying software and IT hardware to both public and private sector customers.

Established in 2003, we employ over 240 dedicated professionals across multiple locations throughout the UK with a group annual turnover of over £140m. Our growing customer base covers most UK universities and colleges and a growing enterprise client base across many sectors. Business has goals to expand further both organically and through acquisition.