Vice President, Technology Business Finance — Product and Service Profit Architecture

The mandate

An enterprise technology business sells a combination of proprietary products, implementation work and continuing support. Its management accounts describe each stream independently, while customers negotiate bundles whose profitability depends on the interaction among them. The VP will establish business-finance leadership across that interaction. The central question is whether product growth can support the service obligations it creates, and how executives should change the commercial model when a profitable-looking sale requires implementation effort or support commitments that current planning does not capture.

Employment continues on an open-ended basis. The initial eighteen-month agenda covers a reconciled profit bridge, commercial decision standards and regular product-service portfolio reviews. Twenty-two finance specialists sit within the function, with Bengaluru as the principal base. Product, sales and delivery executives remain accountable for their operations. This appointment gives them a senior finance partner who can identify cross-subsidy, challenge assumptions and recommend a funded operating model rather than accepting disconnected P&Ls as an adequate explanation of enterprise performance.

The VP owns management profitability definitions, planning assumptions and finance approval of commercial exceptions within delegated thresholds. Changes to strategic pricing architecture, customer contract obligations or total investment require the appropriate executive, legal and accounting approvals. Controllers retain revenue recognition and statutory policy. The finance analysis must therefore distinguish commercial contribution from recognised income, including the consequences of implementation discounts, free support periods, customer-specific development and resources committed before the related product revenue becomes economically sufficient.

The enduring remit includes forecasting, long-range business planning and executive challenge of product-service trade-offs. It excludes software architecture, delivery scheduling and independent technical estimates of engineering feasibility. Finance must work with those qualified owners to translate their evidence into economics. Directors expect clear alternatives: charge appropriately, narrow the promise, fund an intentional adoption investment or stop selling an arrangement whose apparent product margin is supported by an unacknowledged service loss. The resulting decisions should remain understandable after the individual deal sponsor has moved on.

What you will own

• Establish a product-service profit bridge that reconciles bundle-level economics to management accounts, identifying support obligations, implementation concessions and shared costs without allocating every inconvenient variance mechanically to the service organisation.
• Govern finance assessment of bundled proposals within delegation, requiring explicit treatment of customer-specific work and future support before an attractive product booking is accepted as evidence of sustainable commercial value.
• Recommend product and service investment priorities using lifecycle contribution scenarios, showing when an adoption subsidy is deliberate, how much funding it consumes and what evidence would justify continuing it.
• Challenge forecast mix changes by separating price, product volume, implementation effort and continuing support demand, making hidden operational requirements visible before leaders endorse an improved margin target.
• Develop commercial exception reviews with sales, delivery and controllers, distinguishing financial recommendation, contract approval and accounting policy so participants understand who can authorise each consequence of a proposed offer.
• Present portfolio choices about standardisation, paid implementation and support tiers, comparing credible economic alternatives while leaving technical design and customer delivery commitments with their responsible operating executives.
• Build finance leaders who can explain cross-unit economics without inflaming allocation disputes, maintain reliable evidence and challenge a strategically attractive deal when its service burden has not been properly funded.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring substantial function-head or equivalent senior business-finance responsibility in technology, industrial solutions or a comparable business combining products with services. Demonstrate a commercial model you changed by examining the costs attached to a product sale. Your contribution must include a decision or approved recommendation, with evidence explaining why separate reported margins did not fully represent the customer arrangement's economics.
• Show strong FP&A, P&L analysis and management-accounting capability through relevant finance education or equivalent senior practice. Explain how you reconciled a commercial contribution view to reliable accounts while preserving the controller's policy responsibility. The role requires understanding implementation concessions and continuing obligations, including cases where management economics and the timing of recognised revenue give different but legitimate views of the same transaction.
• Have challenged product, sales and delivery leaders constructively when their local incentives encouraged cross-subsidy. Evidence should identify an assumption you tested with operating specialists, the uncertainty that remained and the alternative you recommended. You must be able to discuss engineering or support estimates intelligently without claiming technical authority over product architecture or promising a delivery improvement solely to make a financial model work.
• Have developed specialist finance teams and owned executive communication across competing P&Ls. Describe how you kept a bundle-level decision reproducible as offers changed, and how you avoided cost allocation rules that obscured actionable economics. Commercial confidentiality, disciplined delegation and practical engagement with delivery operations are essential; persuasive presentations must be supported by traceable financial evidence and accountable follow-through.

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 15 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-240.