Order-to-Cash Leakage Advisory Director

The mandate

The recurring leadership question is where value is being lost between a commercially agreed obligation and collected, correctly applied cash. Aggregate ageing does not answer it. The adviser will help finance distinguish disputes, billing failure, unauthorised concessions, credit choices, cash-application defects and collection execution, then direct executive attention to the few interventions that change cash and accounting outcomes.

This is a six-month advisory appointment built around evidence and influence. Three days each week will be used to examine leakage cohorts, coach the finance and commercial owners, and prepare a fortnightly decision paper. Once each month, the adviser will join the executive review to test progress and surface choices that cannot be resolved inside the operating teams.

The adviser will establish a common economic language for leakage. It must separate timing from permanent loss, identify whether the root cause arises before or after invoicing, and prevent the same balance from being claimed as a collection opportunity, dispute reduction and working-capital benefit. Recommendations should show the cash, revenue, customer and control consequence of each option.

There is no line authority, collection authority, customer-contact mandate or power to alter credit terms. The accountable executives decide policy and execute remediation. The adviser may request analysis, challenge classifications and recommend sequencing, but will not become the operational escalation point for individual accounts. Independence from collection agencies, finance providers and implementation firms is mandatory.

At completion, management should possess a repeatable leakage review, a decision-ready exposure view and a set of interventions with named owners. The adviser will close with a candid effectiveness assessment showing which causes have moved, which remain structurally embedded and which apparent benefits cannot yet be substantiated.

What you will own

• Define leakage categories from commercial commitment through billing, dispute, credit, collection and cash application, with rules preventing overlapping benefit claims.
• Establish cohort views by cause, age, materiality and recoverability rather than relying on a single receivables ageing total.
• Test whether credit notes, rebills, deductions and unapplied cash are correcting valid events or concealing repeated upstream failure.
• Produce fortnightly decision papers that quantify cash at risk, permanence of loss, customer consequence and accountable owner.
• Recommend the first intervention portfolio, including fast containment and structural correction, with benefit baselines and disconfirming measures.
• Challenge incentive or target designs that encourage premature billing, indiscriminate collection activity or movement of balances between categories.
• Coach process owners to run the review independently and to escalate cross-functional decisions with sufficient evidence.
• Deliver a final leakage maturity assessment without certifying balances, approving write-offs or directing customer action.

Candidate qualifications

• Show leadership of order-to-cash or working-capital improvement where reported opportunity was reconciled to realised cash and accounting treatment.
• Provide a case in which aggregate ageing pointed to the wrong intervention and cohort analysis changed the executive choice.
• Demonstrate depth across contract-to-bill handoffs, disputes, credit, collections, cash application and bad-debt decision interfaces.
• Evidence the ability to challenge both commercial and finance leaders without assuming ownership of their operating decisions.
• Explain how you prevented double counting when several teams claimed benefit from the same receivable movement.
• Demonstrate advisory independence and disclose any relationships with collection, receivables-finance or implementation providers.
• Bring concise written judgement and the ability to turn imperfect operating data into bounded, transparent recommendations.

Working terms and boundaries

• The monthly retainer covers three days a week, a weekly owner session, fortnightly written advice and one executive review each month.
• Exceptional attendance, travel or customer-specific review requires advance written agreement and separate commercial treatment.
• The adviser has no authority to contact customers, alter credit limits, approve concessions, write off balances or direct employees.
• Management owns source-data accuracy, operational execution and financial-accounting conclusions.
• Conflicts involving receivables financing, collection services or implementation interests must be declared throughout the term.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 9 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-ADV-2026-AMS-08.