Distributor Workflow Friction and Pilot Design Lead

The mandate

The defined problem is avoidable friction in distributor-facing digital workflows: repeated capture, unresolved ownership and exceptions that disappear between field and office teams. This assignment will identify which frictions are structural and which can be corrected within an agreed pilot. It is not a commission to recommend replacement software before the operating evidence has been gathered.

The deliverable is a distributor workflow friction evidence book accompanied by a pilot playbook, role-specific job aids and an exception-measurement specification. The consultant must connect each proposed change to observed cases, expected effort and a testable consequence. An attractive process map with no evidence of actual use will not be accepted.

Contracting starts on 19 October 2026 and the three-month engagement ends on 18 January 2027. Milestone one, due 9 November, is a sampled transaction trail and ranked friction register. Milestone two, due 7 December, is the pilot design with baseline measures, participant consent arrangements and a reversible exception route. Milestone three, due 18 January, is the pilot findings, revised playbook and transfer workshop.

Acceptance rests with the transformation sponsor and a nominated commercial process owner. They must be able to reproduce the ranking from the case evidence, verify the pilot's before-and-after measures and distinguish improvement attributable to the intervention from changes in demand. Negative or inconclusive pilot findings remain acceptable where the method was followed and the limits are disclosed; claiming success without a valid baseline does not.

The sponsor provides authorised transaction extracts, access to representative users and an internal analyst who can maintain the evidence register. Delivery is expected over three working days weekly, primarily hybrid from Mumbai with agreed observation visits. Technology build, channel contract negotiation and nationwide deployment are excluded; additional workflow families require a separately approved scope and fee before investigation begins.

What you will own

• Trace selected distributor transactions across digital and manual steps, retaining timestamps and ownership changes so the first milestone explains delay rather than merely reporting its existence.
• Classify friction by duplicate entry, missing decision rights, unsuitable process order and legitimate exception, documenting the evidence that separates a defect from an intentional control.
• Construct the ranked friction register with estimated effort and service consequences, making sampling limitations visible where the observed cases do not represent the wider network.
• Design the pilot around a small set of reversible interventions, specifying participant selection, measurement windows and how users return to the previous process if service deteriorates.
• Build job aids that resolve the exact decision users struggled with, validating comprehension through observed execution instead of counting attendance at a briefing.
• Analyse pilot outcomes against comparable baseline cases, separating volume, seasonality and user-selection effects from the contribution of the changed workflow.
• Deliver the evidence book and maintenance instructions, walking the nominated analyst through a fresh case so acceptance includes demonstrable transfer of method.

Candidate qualifications

• Show a completed workflow diagnostic in distribution, FMCG commercial operations or a sufficiently similar multi-party service environment. Explain how cases were selected, how off-system activity was captured and how the final prioritisation could be traced back to observations rather than stakeholder popularity.
• Evidence the ability to design a pilot with meaningful acceptance tests. Candidates should describe an intervention that produced an unexpected result, the confounding factors investigated and the conclusion delivered to the sponsor. Delivery credibility depends on methodological honesty, not on promising that every pilot will improve every measure.
• Demonstrate practical process-analysis and change-enablement skills: interviewing without leading the answer, translating observed friction into role-level guidance, and maintaining a record that an internal analyst can continue. Extensive software implementation experience is not a substitute for this operating diagnostic.
• Provide a sample of how you bound a consulting assignment when requests expanded into adjacent workflows. Explain the artifact retained within the original fee, the change-control decision and the basis on which the acceptor judged completion. Availability must support three focused days weekly and approved field observation, with no reliance on unsolicited access to partner data.

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 PCT-CON-2026-IND-01.