Integrated Planning Design Director

The mandate

The consulting problem is to design one integrated planning method where financial, resource and operating choices currently arrive through different calendars and definitions. The assignment does not seek a general transformation review. It must deliver an approved operating model, a working pilot and a controlled route to enterprise adoption within eight months.

Five artifacts define the commission: a decision-and-calendar blueprint, a governed assumption catalogue, an integrated model specification, a pilot planning pack and an adoption-and-control handbook. The consultant will convert executive decision needs into design requirements, resolve points of ownership and demonstrate that the method can run using agreed source inputs.

Milestones fall at weeks four, ten, eighteen, twenty-six and thirty-two. The Executive Sponsor accepts the first two; a finance-and-operations steering group accepts the model specification and pilot; the Chief Financial Officer accepts the final handbook. Acceptance requires documented traceability, agreed controls, completion of pilot reconciliations and signed ownership for the next cycle.

The client will provide nominated subject-matter owners, current calendars and definitions, approved data extracts, decision-forum access and a pilot population by the agreed mobilisation dates. Delayed or incomplete inputs move the affected milestone through change control; they do not permit the consultant to invent assumptions or claim acceptance through elapsed time.

What you will own

• Map every material planning decision to its required lead time, information owner, approval forum, financial consequence and downstream dependency.
• Produce a unified calendar that removes circular hand-offs and defines when demand, resource, investment and financial assumptions become binding or remain provisional.
• Specify an assumption catalogue with definitions, evidence standards, materiality, refresh rules, escalation paths and complete lineage to model outputs.
• Design an integrated model specification covering income, balance sheet, cash, capacity and scenario logic without prescribing an unapproved technology purchase.
• Run a representative pilot, reconcile its outputs to approved baselines and document defects, decisions and remediation before scaling is recommended.
• Construct executive planning pages that make choices, trade-offs, confidence and action ownership visible at the point of review.
• Establish design authority and change-control terms that protect comparability while permitting locally necessary detail through governed extensions.
• Deliver a costed adoption sequence, capability plan and control handbook whose owners have formally accepted post-project obligations.

Candidate qualifications

• Fifteen or more years in FP&A operating-model and integrated-planning work, with at least three personally led enterprise design-and-pilot assignments.
• Samples of decision architecture, model specifications and governance controls that show individual authorship without disclosing protected client material.
• Advanced understanding of integrated financial statements, operating drivers, resource constraints, scenario mechanics and reconciliation controls.
• Evidence of converting conflicting executive requirements into accepted design decisions with a maintained decision log and explicit dissent handling.
• Experience piloting a planning method before scale, including defect thresholds, acceptance criteria and quantified adoption measures.
• Ability to remain technology-neutral, distinguish process defects from tooling limitations and define interfaces without extending scope into implementation procurement.

Working terms and boundaries

• The commission is eight months at four days a week and contains five milestones; no workstream is considered complete solely because its allocated time has elapsed.
• Deliverables are limited to the five named artifacts, pilot and adoption sequence; software selection, configuration, data cleansing and organisation-wide rollout are excluded.
• The consultant may convene design decisions and recommend dispositions but cannot approve capital, change reporting lines or represent management in governance forums.
• Acceptance depends on timely access to nominated owners, approved extracts, current artifacts and the agreed pilot population; missing inputs enter written dependency and change control.
• Final completion occurs only when the pilot reconciles within agreed tolerances, controls are assigned and the CFO accepts the adoption-and-control handbook.

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 8 October 2026. Mandate reference FPA-CON-2026-SYD-04.