Finance Target Operating Model Design Director

The mandate

This project will define a finance target operating model precise enough to drive accountable decisions on work, ownership, capability, governance and transition. The requested output is not an aspirational organisation chart. It must resolve how finance work enters the function, where judgement sits, which services are standard, how exceptions are governed and what capabilities remain close to decision makers.

During the first six weeks, the director will evidence current decision delays, duplicated ownership, retained shadow work, handoff failure and capability constraints. By the end of month three, alternative design choices must be tested against control, service, cost, talent and change scenarios. Months four and five convert the selected principles into role, service and governance designs; months six and seven establish a sequenced transition case.

Six acceptance artifacts structure the engagement: current-state decision evidence, design principles and non-negotiables, evaluated operating-model options, selected accountability architecture, service-and-capability blueprint, and an implementation roadmap with value and risk conditions. Each artifact must expose choices and consequences. Attractive boxes unsupported by work and decision evidence will be rejected.

Management will provide process inventories, role information, service measures, cost views, control responsibilities and access to representative decision makers. The consulting director may recommend spans, ownership, capability and delivery-location choices, but cannot announce organisation changes, select individuals, negotiate employment consequences or approve investment.

The Group Chief Financial Officer accepts the final roadmap when every transition wave has a business outcome, accountable owner, prerequisite, control condition, talent consequence and decision gate. Implementation delivery, technology configuration and workforce consultation are outside the fixed project. The result must be usable by a subsequent internal or external implementation team without reinterpretation.

What you will own

• Map material finance decisions and work flows, identifying duplicate authority, orphaned accountability, shadow activity and recurring exception routes.
• Define operating-model principles grounded in decision speed, controllership, service differentiation, talent sustainability and economic transparency.
• Develop and compare at least three credible design options, showing benefits, trade-offs and failure scenarios rather than presenting a predetermined answer.
• Specify process ownership, service execution, accounting judgement, data stewardship, control and change accountabilities in one coherent architecture.
• Design governance and exception routes with thresholds, evidence requirements and final decision owners.
• Build capability and workforce implications by role family without naming individuals or pre-empting formal employee processes.
• Recommend the selected model and transition sequence; management retains organisation, people, sourcing and investment approval.
• Deliver a roadmap whose waves each contain prerequisites, acceptance tests, value logic, risk controls and accountable ownership.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate delivery of a finance operating model that progressed from decision and work evidence into implemented accountabilities.
• Show a design option you abandoned after control, talent or service scenario testing, despite its attractive cost case.
• Bring depth across finance processes, controllership, shared services, business partnering, data and transformation responsibilities.
• Provide an example of exposing retained shadow work that materially changed the proposed operating model.
• Evidence sensitive treatment of role and capability implications before formal organisation or employee decisions.
• Show artifact discipline: options, decisions and roadmaps that another delivery team could execute without reliance on oral context.
• Demonstrate fixed-scope leadership and transparent treatment of missing inputs, disputed facts and implementation exclusions.

Working terms and boundaries

• The seven-month fixed fee covers six milestones at three days a week, from evidence baseline through implementation roadmap.
• The Group Chief Financial Officer accepts artifacts against evidence, option integrity, accountability precision and executable transition conditions.
• Management provides process, role, cost, control and service evidence plus timely access to representative leaders.
• Organisation announcements, individual selection, employment consultation, technology build and implementation execution are excluded.
• Any added geography or process perimeter requires a written change note with evidence, schedule, acceptance and fee effects.

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 FNA-CON-2026-JNB-17.