Innovation Consultant (Sempar Accountancy & Tax Ltd)

Reference
1100494

Branch
University of Staffordshire

Start date
01/09/2025

Duration
Other - See Job

Hours and days
360 hours total over 18 weeks (20 hours p/w)

Dress code
Smart Casual

Rate of pay
£12.21

Holiday rate
£1.47

Role

We are looking for a successful applicant who will be looking into the building and implementation of a user-friendly dashboard to display real-time metrics from the company software Karbon. 

Sempar Accountancy & Tax Ltd is an accountancy, business and tax advisory firm. This collaboration is bespoke and a truly unique opportunity for you to get involved in and greatly increase your career development moving forward.

While completing this work the Consultant will report to the company/ business supervisor on a weekly basis and be provided with regular support from the Academic supervisor and University Project Manager.

Duties and responsibilities

Live Dashboard Development:

• Build a simple, user-friendly dashboard to display real-time metrics, such as: 
  • Number of items in "triage," "my week," and "later" (from Karbon).
  • Overdue tasks by employee and work type (from Karbon/Breathe HR).
  • Completed tasks vs. allocated tasks in the month (from Karbon).
  • Percentage of work due this week completed (from Karbon).
  • Proposals sent/accepted (from Ignition).
  • Billing and debtors (from Xero).
  • Staff location (office, clients, WFH) and kudos given/received (from Breathe HR).
• Implement basic access controls to restrict data visibility by team member role (e.g., using Power BI’s Row-Level Security or similar).

Monthly Reporting Pack

• Create an automated report summarising prior month and year-to-date (YTD) data, including:
  • time and completed jobs by category (from Karbon).
  • Upcoming deadlines (from Karbon/Xero),
  • Overtime hours and sickness (from Breathe HR),
  • Most contacted clients and top 10 fee vs. time spent (£) (from Karbon/Xero),
  • Billing, new clients, pipeline clients, declined proposals, and lost clients (from Xero/Ignition),
  • Financial analysis of YTD vs. budget (from Xero),
• Deliver reports in an accessible format (e.g., PDF, Power BI, or email),

Data Integration: 

• Use APIs or connectors to pull data from Karbon, Ignition, Breathe HR, and Xero.
• cleaning and organising data for accurate reporting.

Collaboration and Learning:

• Work closely with senior team members to refine dashboards and reports based on feedback.
• Learn and apply best practices in data visualisation and BI tool usage.

Skills and experience

Required Skills

• Current enrolment in or recent graduation from a degree program in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Basic proficiency in SQL for querying and manipulating data (e.g., filtering tasks or aggregating billing data).
• Familiarity with Python for data processing and automation (e.g., using pandas or requests for API calls).
• Interest in Business Intelligence tools like Microsoft Power BI (preferred) or Tableau for creating dashboards and reports.
• Basic understanding of APIs and data formats like JSON or CSV.
• Strong problem-solving skills and eagerness to learn new technologies.
• Good communication skills to collaborate with non-technical team members.

Preferred Skills (Not Required)

• Exposure to JavaScript for web-based dashboard enhancements (e.g., using Chart.js).
• Familiarity with accounting or business metrics (e.g., billing, client pipelines).
• Experience with version control (e.g., Git) for managing code.
• Any prior projects or coursework involving data visualisation or BI tools.

Location
Hybrid – remote and onsite with business

Additional information
This appointment is available on a fixed-term basis for 20 hours per week over 18 weeks or as agreed with the successful candidate up to a maximum of 360hrs.

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