Finance Product Manager (Synergy Programme)

Government Recruitment Service; Pontypridd; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A government agency in the UK seeks a skilled Finance Product Manager to join the Synergy Programme. This role involves leading the design, implementation, and support of Finance processes that will impact a substantial segment of Civil Servants. You will manage cross-departmental teams and advocate for innovative solutions in financial services. The ideal candidate should possess strong technical, organizational, and leadership skills, and have experience with Chart of Accounts and Enterprise Structures. Join us to transform public service delivery.

Qualifications

• Experience in designing, testing, and deploying financial processes.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams effectively.
• Strong knowledge of end-to-end financial processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead Finance design, building, testing, and implementation for CoA & ES.
• Act as CoA & ES lead for Finance processes across multiple teams.
• Advocate for adopting new designs, not adapting old ones.

Skills

Leadership

Technical skills

Organisational skills

Interpersonal skills

Education

Experience with Chart of Accounts and Enterprise Structures

Knowledge of Finance Business Processes

Job description

Do you want to be part of an energetic, innovative team and bring your skills to one of the biggest changes to the administration of the Civil Service in decades?

An exciting new role is available within the Synergy Programme, a cross-departmental group formed in response to Government Business Service’s request for individual departments to group together in ‘clusters’ to drive efficiencies, increase buying power for future Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) and Business Outsource Provider (BPS) services and improve the quality of shared service to our end users – our people.

The Synergy Programme is the largest of five departmental clusters, comprising the Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office. The Department for Work and Pensions hosts the Synergy Programme. Your work will impact the procurement arrangements for the next 15 years, impacting over 50% of all Civil Servants – that’s around 250,000 people across the four departments and arm’s length bodies.

Success of the Programme is crucial as Civil Servants rely on shared services to provide business critical tools in human resources, finance, payroll and procurement. It affects everything we do, from joining a department as a new starter, the way we claim for expenses, how we buy goods and services such as our laptops and canteen provisions, to the way we receive our pensions when we retire.

We’re looking for applications from people who can also demonstrate a passion for our core ambition - delivering a once in a generation, transformed service that Civil Servants will use as a result of the Synergy Programme.

Drawing upon your knowledge and experience, you will be responsible for supporting the Finance Product Lead to deliver Finance process convergence and the design, testing and deployment of the new Synergy ERP and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) systems and associated BPS services. As a Finance Product Manager, you will be an integral part of the programme and be expected to demonstrate leadership from programme inception to live deployment and throughout the post go-live support period. You will be the custodian for the transformational end-to‑end design on Chart of Accounts and Enterprise Structure common design and be responsible for ensuring it is future‑focused and transformational for Synergy.

This role will sustain, but also develop, throughout the programme life cycle and into live running services. This is an exciting opportunity for people with excellent technical, organisational and interpersonal skills to work in a fast-paced environment over both Change and Finance functional disciplines. The role offers the opportunity to use existing Finance knowledge to broaden your experience. It will suit someone who has a strong grounding across the Record to Report process, with specific experience and expertise in Chart of Accounts and Enterprise Structures (CoA & ES).

Key tasks will include:

• Leading the Finance aspects of designing, building, testing, implementing and live‑running CoA & ES services for the Synergy Programme on behalf of the cluster departments. This will include leading a cross‑departmental Design Squad dedicated to the CoA & ES requirements.
• Acting as the CoA & ES lead across all Finance, HR and Procurement Design Squads for the solution design, understanding the dependencies across the functional design and raising any potential risks or issues.
• Communicating CoA & ES business, functional, and technical information across multiple stakeholders, representing Synergy in key forums as required and being able to reach resolutions amongst challenging stakeholder groups.
• Being an advocate of the ‘Adopt not Adapt’ principle of design, challenging established ways of working to realise the transformation aspirations of the programme and move to Software as a Service for Finance processes.
• Own the end-to-end Finance Business Process Service and its associated products within the CoA & ES areas of responsibility.
• Work across a ‘product centric’ multi-disciplinary team to design and successfully implement the programme deliverables. This will include working alongside multiple Synergy technical teams, delivery teams, user and business change teams and strategic partners.