Interim Chief Financial Officer — Margin Renewal

Twenty-four months to a margin the board can rely on

When the first ninety days are over, the board should have a margin bridge it agrees with: a way of splitting reported margin into the part that is structural, which will persist, and the parts driven by temporary price and volume effects, which will not. Agreed with the Board of Directors and assigned to accountable people, the bridge becomes the reference point for every margin conversation that follows.

Around month nine the bridge should be in daily use. Forecasts and management reporting should show structural margin separately from price and volume effects, and the Audit Committee should have tested the bridge's assumptions rather than simply accepted them.

By month 24 margin decisions should be taken on structural evidence, price and volume effects reported distinctly as a matter of routine, and the finance exceptions that accumulated along the way closed.

Why the separation matters

In telecommunications and technology, margin is pulled by forces with very different lifespans. A price change, a temporary surge in volume or a one-off contract can flatter a quarter, while the cost of running the network and the platform moves slowly. When the two are blended, capital is allocated on effects that will not last. A strong interim CFO separates them carefully, shows the board the method, and resists pressure to present the more comfortable number.

Finance decisions within your remit

Executive authority comes with the seat, which reports to the Board of Directors. You will fix the finance thresholds below which local leaders decide alone, and choose the financial evidence on which spending, headcount and the strength of controls are judged. Inherited commitments keep their funding only if you confirm them. You can stop a proposal that buries a cost or a risk where no one has agreed to hold it, and decline an investment case that assumes take-up, leaves its dependencies unexamined or does not quantify what could go wrong. You approve how the finance leadership is organised and how disputes rise, and when directors and management disagree, you settle it before money is committed.

The finance leader we are seeking

Your grasp of telecommunications and technology comes from decisions that were yours, including a commitment without support that you stopped before it did harm. You can point to a well-liked spending commitment you ended, the numbers that justified it and what the freed capital funded instead. The businesses concerned had revenue of $495 million or more, employed at least 1,300 people and operated in two countries or more. The board weighs restructuring, professionalisation and cost transformation. Capital allocation at level 4 is the defining capability, supported at level 3 by risk judgement, by FP&A forecasting and by controls and reporting. A finance leader who would rather report the flattering number than explain the structural one will not suit this seat.

Building the bridge in front of the board

The Board of Directors meets you first, confidentially by video, in week one. In week three you walk the Audit Committee Chair through how you would build and test a margin bridge. Week five is a half-day, in person, with a panel of executives who lead the company's functions; the seventh week, a closing session with the full board. We reply in writing to every stage within 3 working days.