Justine Sharp Email & Phone Number

Stevenage, Gb

In my role as an application consultant, I find that having a finance background and having worked in several law firms really supports me in this current position. Since joining the team in 2022 (formerly with Thomson Reuters), I have provided support to several clients by helping them find solutions to their firm's requirements. I understand that not all law firms are the same and whilst they may share some similarities, it is important to adapt to their specific requirements. My role involves preparing and delivering workshops to support strategic decisions, be on hand to support user acceptance testing, document writing (function requirements for sign off), masking to the GL, balancing (subledger to the GL) and assisting with metrics/reporting. I work across the various Elite teams and have also developed a good understanding of the core 3E product to help deliver solutions as part of their go live.

In my time at CRS, I worked on the merger between Charles Russell and Speechly Bircham in November 2014. I also worked as a Subject Matter Expert for the rollout of 3E and AFS (previously Xcelerate) from Jul 2017 to Sept 2019 (see next section). I prepared the firms monthly management accounts, provided cash flow comparisons, was involved in the annual budget cycle, prepared banking covenants, assisted with the year end statutory accounts and also worked on various finance solutions/applications during this time, such as Cognos, Redwood and Crystal Reporting before the successful rollout of Elite 3E and AFS. I also supervised/provided support for two junior members of the team.

During this period, I was seconded to the core project team to assist with the implementation of Elite 3E and Xcelerate (Budgeting and Management Accounting application/known now as AFS). My role was to test many of the core 3E processes such as intercompany billing, tax area matrix, unrealised gains/losses as well as work with the Xcelerate team/other members of finance to integrate a new budgeting and management accounts platform. This work involved developing an overhead allocation module which absorbed indirect/firm costs across the legal fee earning teams to the lowest hierarchical structure, for us, this was to section level. I also worked on developing a module to provide WIP and Debt valuations/provisions which fed into the monthly management accounts rather than an annual year end true up exercise. This work underpinned one of the firms’ goals to provide more accurate reporting around key KPIs.Another of our project goals was to achieve accurate management accounts that were deliverable within a short period of time post month end close that could be viewed by office, department, section level etc (to support/ aide decision making across the entire firm).I was also involved in developing dashboards for resource heads as we moved away from multiple budgeting spreadsheets (versions/scenarios etc) to deliver a budgeting/forecasting system that worked across the entire firm and not central/dependant on finance to maintain. This improved visibility around actual v budgeting / forecasting costs for resource/group heads and this also supported another goal which was to move to a self-serve environment whereby fee earners/secretaries were not dependant on finance teams to provide this information. Group heads/Resource heads etc had more visibility of their budgets because of this work. The actual v budget information was also available on a live platform and not distributed via reports post month end close etc.

London Area, United Kingdom

Preparation of the weekly consolidation of cash flows, incorporating both long and short term debt management.Development, maintenance and production of all general ledger and operational reports (BI)

Preparation of global management accountsSupervision of two account juniors