Principal, Acquired-Business Finance Operating Architecture

The mandate

Acquired technology service businesses share ownership but retain inconsistent finance responsibilities, resulting in duplicated reviews and gaps at the handoffs between entity and group teams. The principal owns specialist design judgements and reproducible validation of a Finance Integration Operating Architecture for the agreed close, management reporting and cash-planning processes. Executive operation and adoption decisions remain with the sponsors; the principal is accountable for a defensible design and tested internal transfer.

Work begins on 26 October 2026 for eight months, with three days of weekly capacity reserved. The deliverables are a current-interface diagnostic, an approved target responsibility and control architecture, and a tested implementation handoff pack. The architecture must retain necessary entity duties while reducing duplicate group activity; efficiency cannot be claimed by deleting a review whose purpose has not been understood.

On 14 December 2026, milestone one provides the diagnostic and material handoff risk map. Milestone two on 12 April 2027 delivers the target operating architecture, interface specifications and control-test scripts. Milestone three on 26 June 2027 supplies owner-led workflow trials, the final implementation readiness file and maintenance ownership, completing the full eight-month project rather than leaving an unpriced tail of operating support.

The Group CFO and Integration Director accept the artifacts together, supported by the designated process owners. Acceptance requires every material decision and reconciliation in the agreed perimeter to have a single accountable owner, a documented interface and a reproducible test. Internal teams must execute selected close and cash-planning handoffs from the pack, with gaps repaired or explicitly accepted as implementation dependencies by the sponsor.

The sponsor supplies entity procedures, reporting samples, approved financial policies and six owners with protected trial time. Payments are 25% for the accepted diagnostic, 40% for the accepted target architecture and 35% for the completed trial and transfer file. ERP implementation, legal restructuring and accounting policy opinions are excluded. New process families or additional implementation work require written change approval, a revised acceptance scope and separately agreed fees.

What you will own

• Diagnose the agreed finance handoffs through actual transaction and reporting samples, distinguishing inefficient duplication from controls that exist for different entity and group purposes in the first milestone evidence.
• Map material decision and reconciliation ownership, exposing gaps where several teams assume another has reviewed the underlying evidence before a combined result or cash forecast reaches leadership.
• Design the target responsibility architecture with process owners, preserving statutory and specialist duties while specifying which group decisions require consistent evidence across the acquired businesses.
• Develop interface specifications for close, management reporting and cash planning, including input conditions and exception routes that make the intended operating model testable rather than merely diagrammatic.
• Build control-test scripts linked to sampled risks and acceptance owners, ensuring the second-stage architecture includes the proof needed before a duplicated review can safely be removed.
• Facilitate owner-led workflow trials using unfamiliar cases, recording where the operating pack fails and repairing its instructions before the sponsors assess final readiness and transfer.
• Deliver an implementation dependency register with maintenance duties and change rules, distinguishing the accepted consulting design from future operating actions that remain management's accountable responsibility.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate finance ownership, interface or control redesign during a material operating change in technology, digital services or a comparable multi-entity environment. Acquisition integration is one relevant setting; ERP-related responsibility change or group-process realignment can establish the same discipline. Describe a duplicated review you retained for its distinct control purpose and a handoff gap you resolved through records and accountable owners, then explain how that method would support acquired businesses.
• Strong finance technical understanding is necessary to distinguish statutory accountability, management reporting and treasury evidence within the operating architecture. Explain how you identified a review that could be redesigned without weakening the underlying control and who accepted the test. A professional finance qualification or equivalent proven technical standing should support coordination with accounting, legal and technology specialists.
• Applicants must be able to create reproducible interface and responsibility artifacts that experienced internal owners can challenge and maintain. Provide a case where a workflow trial exposed ambiguity in your design, explain the repair and show how unresolved implementation dependencies were recorded. Consulting neutrality requires making contested ownership visible rather than smoothing it into a generic shared-responsibility label.
• Reserve three weekly days across the full eight-month term and demonstrate disciplined commercial scope management. Experience should include acceptance charters, sponsor-supplied inputs and transfer tests agreed before delivery. The role ends on an accepted operating architecture and internal trial evidence; it does not guarantee merger synergies, legal restructuring results or implementation performance outside the defined design perimeter.

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 12 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-CON-2026-IND-205.