Cost-to-Serve Stabilisation Director

The mandate

An interim Director is required to restore a decision-grade view of service cost after allocation methods, operating definitions and finance ownership have diverged. Reported totals remain reconcilable, but leaders cannot consistently explain why comparable activities carry different unit costs or which portion can be influenced in the next planning horizon. Start is expected within three weeks of contract.

The first six weeks will establish a controlled cost baseline and trace the largest distortions to volume measures, capacity assumptions, exception handling and shared-cost treatment. The assignment will then build a practical cost-to-serve model that supports resource decisions without mistaking accounting allocation for operational causality.

Temporary authority includes approving definitions, freezing baseline versions, requiring evidence from cost owners and rejecting unsupported efficiency claims. The Director will not restructure operations, renegotiate supplier arrangements or alter customer commitments. Those decisions remain with operating leaders and must be recorded as dependencies when they affect the model.

Departure depends on more than delivery of a workbook. A permanent leader must be appointed, lead two monthly cost reviews and reproduce the principal reconciliations independently. The interim Director will leave an exception register, control schedule and benefits-backcheck process accepted by the Regional CFO.

What you will own

• Reconcile the controllable cost baseline to the general financial view and document every material allocation, exclusion and timing adjustment.
• Define service units and activity drivers that are stable enough for comparison yet specific enough to reveal genuine consumption differences.
• Separate fixed, step, variable, avoidable and committed cost behavior across the decision horizons used in planning.
• Quantify the ten largest cost-to-serve distortions and secure named owners for correcting data, process or policy causes.
• Establish a monthly bridge showing volume, complexity, capacity, productivity, rate and allocation effects with no residual labelled merely as other.
• Introduce benefit claims that carry baselines, confidence levels, delivery owners, cash timing and independent financial validation.
• Decide which local exceptions are economically justified, time-limited or non-compliant with the approved measurement policy.
• Transfer review chairing and release control to the permanent owner after two accurately reproduced cycles.

Candidate qualifications

• Fourteen or more years in FP&A, cost transformation or operational finance, including at least two interim stabilisation mandates.
• Evidence of designing cost-to-serve models in ambiguous operating environments and reconciling them to controlled finance totals.
• Fluency in activity drivers, capacity economics, cost behavior, allocation consequences, productivity baselines and benefit validation.
• A documented case where you prevented an apparent saving from being counted because the cost was not avoidable in the stated horizon.
• Experience enforcing common definitions across senior functional owners without taking ownership of their operating decisions.
• Proof of leaving a sustainable monthly process, including successor rehearsals, exception control and benefits backchecking.
• Availability for five days a week on-site in Dubai through baseline stabilisation and the first successor-led review.

Working terms and boundaries

• The assignment lasts eight months; a narrowly justified two-month extension may cover handover but cannot broaden the commission.
• Financial definitions, baselines and release quality fall within interim authority, while operating changes and external negotiations are explicitly excluded.
• All claimed benefits remain provisional until independently tied to a baseline, an approved action and an observable financial consequence.
• A permanent owner should be identified by month four and assume meeting leadership no later than month six.
• Exit acceptance requires reconciled cost views, working monthly controls, a closed ownership map and two successful successor-led cycles.

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 10 October 2026. Mandate reference FPA-INT-2026-DXB-06.