Global Finance Business Partner Senior Director

Locations: Lisbon | London

Who We Are

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we help clients with total transformation-inspiring complex change, enabling organizations to grow, building competitive advantage, and driving bottom-line impact.

To succeed, organizations must blend digital and human capabilities. Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives to spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting along with technology and design, corporate and digital ventures—and business purpose. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, generating results that allow our clients to thrive.

What You'll Do

As Finance Business Partner (FBP) you will be the strategic finance advisor to our HR & People Function, partnering closely with function leaders to provide financial insight and decision support. You will play a key part in enabling the organization to deliver strategic and operational priorities effectively by ensuring financial acumen and accountability at all levels of the function.

You will be part of the Global FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) team, providing insight supported by meaningful and accurate financial information to help guide and influence decision-making processes. The team partners with the global leadership of our business functions, senior finance management, and local, regional and global finance colleagues across the organization.

The HR & People Function is going through end-to-end transformation requiring close finance business partnership on multiple dimensions. The transformation agenda, among other elements, includes:

• Further digitalization of HR & People processes to unlock scalability and improve employee experience
• Further expansion of HR shared services

The work will require close collaboration with multiple fast-paced teams, including consulting teams, HR digital portfolio squads, and many others.

To be successful in this role, you will need to:

• Partner function leadership to achieve both business and financial goals of the function
• Provide financial oversight for function-related investments, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and value generation
• Deliver against mid-term and annual cost targets
• Build a deep understanding of the function’s operational context and tailor financial advice to its specific needs.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Strategic Finance Leadership:
  • Serve as a trusted finance advisor and thought partner to the Function’s senior leadership, contributing to strategic decisions with financial acumen.
  • Develop and present business cases for investments, transformations, and new initiatives.
  • Play activist role in key change initiatives of the function, ensuring financial accuracy and integration of the initiatives and their outcomes into operational financial processes.
  • Navigate through complexity: Find & propose solutions to challenges, outline choices that need to be made, facilitate decision-making, ensure functional priorities get translated into finance processes, and finance considerations get reflected in functional decision-making.
• Stakeholder Engagement:
  • Partner with functional leaders to understand their evolving needs, providing tailored financial insights and support.
  • Maintain close alignment with functional stakeholders on roles and responsibilities, ensuring clarity around priorities and boundaries.
  • Interface management:
  • Partner with key finance teams on matters related to the functional agenda. Including but not limited to: BI&A, Intercompany, Finance digital products portfolio (Finance systems), Global Accounting & Controlling, Global Tax, Finance Excellence, Enterprise Architecture, regional and local finance leaders.
  • Partner with HR on matters related to headcount and compensation management and planning.
  • Partner with procurement on relevant vendor selection & negotiation processes, sign off the outcomes of sizable negotiations.
• Financial Planning & Analysis:
  • Oversee the function’s financial planning cycles, including budgeting, accruals, forecasting, and variance analysis.
  • Reporting:
  • Equip functional stakeholders with regular financial reporting (leveraging BI&A and analyst capacity).
  • Partner with accounting on month and year close processes, control data accuracy and integrity from functional standpoint.
• Team Collaboration:
  • Collaborate with the broader Global FP&A team and Finance Business Partners to other functions to share best practices and drive continuous improvement.
  • Actively contribute to initiatives that enhance the organization’s overall financial maturity.
  • Team management:
  • Perform all managerial responsibilities (recruiting, development, career process) towards your direct reports.

YOU'RE GOOD AT

• Critical thinking and taking a consultative approach to problem solving, working closely with stakeholders to understand the problem we are trying to solve, providing deep analysis, and offering viable solutions – all of this in a fast-paced environment.
• Building trust and credibility to establish/maintain a “seat at the table” with senior management as a business partner.
• Communicating complex financial information in simple, clear, and actionable terms for diverse audiences.
• Navigating cross-functional teams and aligning diverse perspectives towards consensus.
• Using ownership of annual financial planning, cost trend analysis, business cases and portfolio management for investments to drive educated decision making.
• Managing projects in a highly dynamic environment across concurrent workstreams and competing priorities.
• Performing successfully in fast-paced, intellectually demanding, service-oriented environments, while interpreting guidelines with flexibility and high integrity in line with BCG’s values.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in finance/accounting/economics and/or an MBA
• A minimum of 12+ years related finance experience (professional services industry preferred but not essential)
• Deep knowledge of finance strategy – resource planning, budgeting, and investments
• Excellent communication skills – both verbal and written, with the ability to adjust to multiple audiences and the confidence to present to and influence senior management.
• Critical Thinking and problem solving – proven ability to work through complex problems and analyses in providing a thoughtful, concrete solution
• Strong project management skills: Ability to navigate across multiple competing priorities, facilitate fast decision-making in high-pace environments, pragmatically solve evolving problems.
• Motivation and self-drive – excited by tackling challenges and pro-actively finding new ways to provide value to senior leadership
• Advanced PowerPoint and Excel skills - experience building scalable financial models, analyzing large data sets, and the ability to turn data into business insights
• Consulting experience is an advantage

Who You'll Work With

You’ll work with all key leadership of the Function, global finance stakeholders (incl. Functional Finance team to which you belong) as well as other senior leaders, and local, regional and global colleagues across the organization.

Boston Consulting Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity / expression, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under national, provincial, or local law, where applicable, and those with criminal histories will be considered in a manner consistent with applicable state and local laws.
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