Rutherford Cross is delighted to be working with Spark Energy, a leading utilities company, to appoint a Collections Strategy and Reporting Manager on a permanent basis.

Spark Energy, based in Selkirk, launched in 2007 and today is the leading multi-utility supplier for home movers with annual revenues of over £200m. In addition, the company works with letting agents, social landlords and homeowners to provide a hassle-free alternative to setting up utilities. The company has recently acquired a telco business and are developing a product to deliver the same simple service for broadband, phone and TV.

Company Overview

Here at Spark, we do things differently. We’re the leading energy supplier for home movers and we work with some of the UK’s top letting and estate agents as well social landlords and others in the home move chain to make household gas and electricity as simple as it can be. Last year we acquired a telco business so we help with broadband, phone and TV too.

We started out in 2007 as a small but promising start-up company. Our background was in the letting industry and we launched Spark to fill a gap in the utility market to meet the needs of letting agents, landlords and tenants.

Today we have a turnover of £200m+ and over 400 staff based at our offices in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, Edinburgh and Horsham in Surrey.

We’ve been named as the fastest growing company in Scotland and 23rd fastest growing in the UK by the Sunday Times FastTrack 100 and on top of that, the Telegraph have included us in their list of 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain. We’re one of the 1000 fastest growing business in Europe according to the FT.

At Spark, our values are at the centre of everything we do. The working environment is Vibrant and we encourage everyone to be Ambitious, Open, Creative and Straightforward in everything they do, to give all our customers the experience they deserve.

Needless to say we can’t achieve any of this without a strong programme of training and development. That’s why around 90% of our team told us in a recent survey that they’re much more skilled than when they joined us. Whichever role you join us in, you can be sure that we’ll take your personal development very seriously.

If you think you share our values and if you’d like to build your career in a fun, fast-paced business where what you do, how you do it and your opinions all make a difference – then get in touch. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Purpose of the Role

Cash generation is critical to a rapidly growing business, and as such understanding how to maximise cash collection, forecast accurately and define the company’s collection strategies is of critical importance to Spark. This senior opportunity is newly created as a high profile role to work across collections, finance and the business to optimise collections performance and drive in depth insight to manage the business.

Key Responsibilities

The main responsibilities of this role are to lead a high performing team to forecast, analyse and improve cash collection across all paths of the business. To continually, review evaluate and improve collections strategies as well as provide operational oversight to ensure all key activities are performed on time and in full. Collation and review of relevant KPI’s and presenting overall performance to key senior stakeholders e.g. CFO and Operations director. Working closely with finance to prepare and review the monthly operational cash projections and targets.

Knowledge & Experience

Essential

• Significant demonstrable leadership experience
• Extensive experience in an analysis and reporting role
• Ability to continually drive improvement in insight and analysis
• Experience of collections and bad debt
• Preparation and presentation of KPI’s to senior stakeholders
• Managing and motiving a high performing team
• Operational understanding of a collections function
• Good knowledge of Power BI, Excel and power point
• Strong thought leadership to drive and shape a developing area of the function

Desirable

• Experience of forecasting
• Worked in or had interaction with a finance function
• Cashflow management
• Energy sector collections experience
• Character and Personal Qualities
• A strategic thinker, able to structure high volumes of data into key themes and observations
• Thrives on challenges and making a difference
• Ability to approach your work with a “can-do” attitude
• Highly collaborative leadership style
• Intellectually curious and professional sceptical
• Continually challenging to reach the route cause
• Able to motivate and inspire a team
• Tenacious with a drive to succeed
• You understand the importance of large-company protocols
• Excellent time and task management skills
• Able to communicate effectively with staff at all levels in the organisation

For more details on his role, get in contact with Sean Hanley on [email protected]