Interim Regional Finance and Capital Director — Delivery (Business Services)

A two-year arc that starts with cash

In a professional services business, cash discipline is decided far from the finance function: in how engagements are scoped and priced, how quickly work is billed, how firmly collections are pursued and how many people sit on a job. This interim director's 24 months are about making that discipline visible and then making it normal.

By day ninety there should be a regional cash forecast people trust, an accountable owner for each element of working capital, and a rhythm of performance reviews that you and the Group Chief Financial Officer have settled. By month nine, the next planning cycle should have been built on that cash baseline, with every capital request tested against a downside case before it is accepted. By month 24, cash and performance discipline should be embedded in every market, and a successor finance team should own the planning cycle without leaning on you.

Authority over the region's money

The role carries executive authority across the region. Its first use is to set how finance decisions are allocated, including the thresholds that stay local, and to decide what evidence governs capital, people and controls. Each financial commitment will go on, wait or stop on your decision. Proposals that move cost or risk to someone else without an owner will stop with you, as will investment cases that leave out adoption, dependencies or the bad case. You will approve the finance leadership structure and how issues climb, and settle conflicts with practice and operating heads before money is committed. In services businesses those conflicts are often about how much latitude practice leaders have over pricing, staffing and billing, and a finance leader has to know when that latitude serves the client and when it simply erodes cash.

Cash judgement under pressure

You have made finance choices in professional services where waiting had a cost you could put a number on, in businesses with at least $715 million in revenue and 3,000 or more people across two countries. In earlier finance work you identified who carried the economic cost of an exception before agreeing that it could continue. Geographic expansion, platform pivots and succession are the experiences the group will weigh most; capital allocation is wanted at level 4, and at level 3 risk judgement, FP&A forecasting, and controls and reporting. You protect controls that work, price every exception openly and leave the finance team deeper than it was. You can tell a group finance chief exactly what is unresolved and still commit to a course. A commitment that should stop stops on evidence, not on a full set of country-leader signatures, and the full 24 months are yours to account for.

The four meetings

The Group Chief Financial Officer opens the process in week one with a confidential conversation over video. The Board Chair takes week three, working through with you how cash discipline would enter the planning cycle. Week five is in person with executive leaders from several functions, many of whom hold the levers of working capital; in week 7 you meet the board's directors. Our view of each meeting follows in writing, within two working days.