Director - Business Services & Outsourcing

Ideas | People | Trust

We’re BDO. An accountancy and business advisory firm, providing the advice and solutions businesses need to navigate today’s changing world.

We’ll broaden your horizons

BDO LLP is an accountancy and business advisory firm, we provide integrated advice and solutions to help businesses navigate a changing world. Our clients are Britain’s economic engine – ambitious, entrepreneurially-spirited and high growth businesses that fuel the economy.

We share our clients’ ambitions and their entrepreneurial mind-set. We have the right combination of global reach, integrity and expertise to help them succeed.

BDO LLP operates in 17 locations across the UK, employing 5,000 people offering tax, audit and assurance, and a range of advisory services. BDO LLP has revenues of £590m and is the UK member firm of the BDO International network. The BDO global network provides business advisory services in 162 countries, with 80,000 people working out of 1,500 offices worldwide.

The Business Services and Outsourcing team are essential to meeting our clients' evolving requirements. As well as delivering long-term, sustainable value to businesses by providing a range of solutions such as accounting, payroll and compliance services, they also play a key role in tying together many of our services across BDO both domestically and internationally. By building deep and meaningful relationships with a range of clients from ambitious entrepreneurial SMEs to large multi-national groups, our BS&O team don’t just advise on their specific business challenges, they open doors for other teams to provide our firm’s wider service offering. To succeed in this agile environment, you’ll need to demonstrate excellent problem-solving skills and initiative. In return, you’ll have the opportunity for progression, and the chance to develop in one of the industry’s most exciting and varied roles.

We’ll help you succeed

Based in our Edinburgh office, but covering all of Scotland, you will be responsible for providing leadership to the team, managing a portfolio of clients and supporting the Partner. This includes planning, monitoring, reviewing work of junior members and taking responsibility for business development and marketing initiatives. The main focus of the role is to help the partner grow and develop the Business Service and Outsourcing offering in Scotland.

In this role you will:

• Develop, execute and manage the marketing and business development strategy for own portfolio, working with the partners to realise these
• Develops plans and forecasts for the area of the practice they are responsible for; manages the full lifecycle of practice management from budgeting through to collections.
• Contribute to the economic management of the department in matters such as budgeting and monitoring and managing to key metrics
• Ensures that cloud accounting software and add-ons are being used to the maximum effect across their outsourcing portfolio.
• Open to new solutions and ideas to improve the profitability of engagement and actively seeks to implement these
• Educate clients with new ideas minimalising the perception of buyers risk, differentiating our services, demonstrating our experience, building trust and confidence
• Seek to be a step ahead of the client and anticipate their future needs in a way that will make a significant commercial difference
• Use knowledge and understanding of the client, business drivers, and technology to help design custom or complex management reports and complex KPI dashboards
• Act as project director on larger clients, with signing off rights and overall responsibility for the job, with Partner retaining relationship responsibilities only
• Apply accounting standards to argue accounting treatment for complex or contentious areas, and know when to bring in experts
• Serve as a resource for the team, having developed an in-depth knowledge and understanding of finance accounting functions
• Uses their broad financial, accounting, business and industry knowledge to educate clients on how their finance and accounting needs will evolve as their business grows; helps clients identify what is next and persuades the client to value those unperceived needs; identifies what needs are critical versus what are not and looks at the business of the client holistically.

When you join us, we’ll make your growth our priority. If you can demonstrate the following skills, we can help you go far. We’re looking for someone with:

• Qualified Accountant (CA, ACCA or equivalent) or equivalent experience
• Excellent UK GAAP knowledge
• Relevant experience of managing a large team is essential
• Proven experience in managing a wide portfolio of concurrent projects and project teams in a project management framework
• Full knowledge of compliance and take on procedures
• Knowledge of the impacts that different client/industries and service offerings have on the technical work and final deliverables
• In depth knowledge of financial reporting and accounting functions
• Excellent understanding of ecosystem of cloud accounting software and ad-ons and can articulate the purpose and value of appropriate systems to clients
• Excellent understanding of the rules and regulations of doing business in the UK
• The ability to lead by example and provide a figurehead for the group

We’re in it together

At BDO, we believe that when our people feel valued and rewarded, their potential is unlimited. We offer highly competitive starting salaries and review renumeration packages regularly to ensure that our pay always positively reflects performance. As well offering support with tuition and professional qualifications, we also provide the following benefits, as standard:

• 28 days’ holiday;
• access to a personal pension scheme, with matched employer contributions;
• life assurance cover;
• and income protection insurance.

That’s not all. We understand that everyone is different so, we offer a range of voluntary benefits to suit every lifestyle. Our flexible benefits platform, Flexcel, means our people can choose from a range of tax efficient options to design a benefit package that best suits them. Through Flexcel, they can:

• buy up to ten days’ extra holiday;
• add on private medical, personal accident, dental insurance or travel insurance;
• enrol in our Bike to Work scheme;
• receive an interest free season ticket loan or interest free graduate loan;
• take an online health assessment and utilise our employee assistance programme.

Agile working at BDO (Workable)

• Workable is our approach to making working at BDO work for everyone. It’s a framework – including policies, guidance, tools, resources, and support – that offers flexibility and choice around how, when and where we do our work. WORKABLE gives BDO people the freedom they need to be able to work at their best. Because sometimes, the hub is the best environment to get things done, and sometimes we’re more productive working from home: WORKABLE gives us that choice.
• We aim to offer you more choice and flexibility to plan around work and life, which can lead to improved wellbeing, access to more diverse projects and learning opportunities and increased job satisfaction.

We’re looking forward to the future

At BDO, we’re big enough to make the difference and collaborative enough to never lose sight of where we’re going. We know that it’s our people that make our success possible. Across our 17 UK locations, more than 6,000 of them work together to provide tax, audit, assurance and a range of advisory services that help our clients achieve their ambitious goals. Together, they’re fuelling Britain’s economic engine. Behind every complex client challenge and every untapped innovation, they’re there: ensuring we continue to find the right combination of global reach, integrity and expertise. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to invest in our people. That means providing them with an environment where they can grow, learn, laugh and feel respected, at all times.

Are you ready to join them?

For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below.