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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Director of Financial Planning

💰 $150,000 - $250,000

FinanceFP&ALeadership

🎯 Role Definition

The Director of Financial Planning (Director of FP&A) leads the company's financial planning and analysis function, owns the budgeting and forecasting cycle, builds advanced financial models, partners with business leaders to drive profitable growth, informs strategic decisions through insightful analysis, and manages a high-performing FP&A team. This senior finance leader is responsible for delivering timely, accurate financial plans, scenario analysis, and performance reporting to the CFO and executive leadership while continuously improving processes, systems, and data quality.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Manager / Head of FP&A
  • Corporate Finance Manager or Senior Financial Analyst
  • Finance Business Partner for a major business unit

Advancement To:

  • Vice President of Finance (VP Finance)
  • Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
  • Head of Corporate Strategy & Finance

Lateral Moves:

  • Head of Corporate Development (M&A)
  • Treasurer / Head of Capital Markets
  • Head of Commercial Finance or Revenue Operations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end annual budgeting, quarterly reforecasting, and rolling forecast processes across corporate and business unit P&Ls, ensuring accuracy, timely delivery, clear narratives, and alignment to strategic priorities.
  • Build, validate and maintain robust financial models (driver-based, bottom-up, top-down and scenario models) to support multi-year strategic planning, long-range planning (LRP), and sensitivity analysis used by the executive team.
  • Own monthly and quarterly financial reporting cycles: deliver actionable management reports, KPI dashboards, variance analysis against plan and prior periods, executive summaries, and board-ready materials.
  • Partner closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, Operations and HR leaders to translate business plans into financial assumptions, quantify revenue drivers, margin dynamics and cost-to-serve, and align forecasting cadence across functions.
  • Direct the preparation of investor-facing materials, quarterly business reviews, and board reporting, articulating the financial story, growth levers, and risk mitigation strategies in plain language.
  • Drive financial performance improvement initiatives, including cost optimization programs, pricing analysis, margin expansion opportunities, and operational efficiency projects with measurable targets and execution plans.
  • Design and implement KPIs, dashboards and automated reporting frameworks using BI tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau) and FP&A platforms (e.g., Anaplan, Adaptive, Hyperion) to reduce manual effort and improve decision velocity.
  • Lead the consolidation and analysis of monthly close inputs affecting revenue recognition, accruals, reserves and one-time items; collaborate with Accounting to ensure SOX compliance, internal controls and audit readiness.
  • Manage and mentor a team of FP&A managers and senior analysts: set goals, deliver development plans, conduct performance reviews, recruit top talent, and create a high-performance culture with clear accountability.
  • Translate complex financial data into succinct executive summaries and recommendations that influence strategic decisions, capital allocation and resource prioritization.
  • Run scenario planning and “what-if” analysis for M&A opportunities, new product launches, pricing changes, and market expansion to quantify impact on revenue, EBITDA and cash flow.
  • Own cash flow forecasting and working capital analysis in partnership with Treasury, prioritizing initiatives that improve liquidity, reduce days sales outstanding (DSO) and optimize inventory turns.
  • Establish and enforce best practices for forecast governance: data lineage, assumptions documentation, version control, stakeholder escalation paths and sign-off matrices.
  • Lead cross-functional planning programs such as strategic workforce planning, capex budgeting, and service-level profitability reviews to ensure business initiatives are backed by rigorous financial evaluation.
  • Collaborate with FP&A systems/IT to scope, prioritize and implement enhancements to ERP, EPM and reporting infrastructure; champion data quality improvements and integration of new data sources (e.g., CRM, billing).
  • Perform deep-dive variance analysis on revenue, gross margin, SG&A and other P&L line items to identify root causes, quantify impact, and recommend corrective actions with owners and timelines.
  • Establish pricing analytics and margin modeling to support commercial negotiations, contract renewals and incentive compensation plans, ensuring alignment with company profitability objectives.
  • Oversee capital allocation analysis for strategic investments, product development and growth initiatives; build business cases with NPV, IRR and payback period assessments.
  • Serve as a key finance business partner during strategic initiatives such as product launches, geographic expansion, reorganizations and cost transformation programs; provide financial guidance and track outcomes.
  • Ensure compliance with regulatory and tax-related reporting impacts of planning decisions; coordinate with Tax and Legal on modeling implications and disclosures for significant transactions.
  • Represent Finance on cross-functional leadership forums and strategy off-sites; drive alignment between long-term strategy and annual operating plans through continuous engagement and transparent metrics.
  • Monitor industry benchmarks, competitive landscape and macroeconomic indicators to update planning assumptions and to provide forward-looking risk assessments to senior leadership.
  • Lead post-merger integration (PMI) planning effort for finance-related activities, harmonize reporting structures, align KPIs and realize identified synergies with defined measurement.
  • Implement continuous process improvements to reduce FP&A cycle time, improve forecast accuracy, and increase the proportion of value-added analysis vs. data collection.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc business cases and decision-support models for product managers and business unit leaders.
  • Facilitate cross-functional monthly business reviews and operating rhythm meetings to ensure execution on financial priorities.
  • Provide training and enablement to finance partners and business stakeholders on financial literacy, forecasting tools and reporting interpretation.
  • Help define and monitor incentive compensation metrics and dashboards in coordination with HR and Sales Operations.
  • Collaborate with internal audit and external auditors on FP&A-related queries and documentation to support audit cycles.
  • Lead small, cross-functional projects to prototype analytics proofs-of-concept that improve planning accuracy or reporting speed.
  • Maintain and continuously update an assumptions library and model documentation to ensure transparency and reproducibility of forecasts.
  • Participate in vendor selection and due diligence for financial planning systems and analytics platforms.
  • Contribute to corporate risk management efforts by modeling downside scenarios and contingency plans tied to revenue and cash flow.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced financial modeling and valuation skills: driver-based models, DCF, NPV, IRR, sensitivity and scenario analysis.
  • Expert-level Microsoft Excel (pivot tables, Power Query, advanced formulas, VBA/macros where required).
  • Hands-on experience with FP&A/EPM tools such as Anaplan, Oracle HFM/Hyperion, Adaptive Insights or Workday Adaptive Planning.
  • BI and visualization skills with Power BI, Tableau, Looker or equivalent to create executive dashboards and automated reports.
  • Strong knowledge of accounting principles (US GAAP or IFRS) and experience coordinating with Accounting and Audit.
  • Experience with ERP systems (NetSuite, Oracle, SAP) and familiarity with integrating FP&A processes to ERP data models.
  • Familiarity with SQL and data analytics techniques to extract, transform and validate large datasets from multiple sources.
  • Cash flow modeling, working capital optimization techniques and capital planning expertise.
  • Pricing analysis, margin optimization and commercial finance experience underpinning go-to-market strategies.
  • Experience supporting M&A, carve-outs, integration planning and post-merger synergy tracking.
  • Proven track record implementing process automation and continuous improvement initiatives within FP&A.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic and commercial mindset: ability to connect financial insights to business strategy and growth levers.
  • Strong leadership and people management skills: coach, develop and inspire a high-performing team.
  • Exceptional communication and presentation skills: concise storyteller who delivers board-ready materials and engages non-finance stakeholders.
  • Influential business partner capable of challenging assumptions, negotiating trade-offs and driving cross-functional alignment.
  • High attention to detail combined with the ability to synthesize complex information into actionable recommendations.
  • Results-oriented with strong project management skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities under tight deadlines.
  • Intellectual curiosity and continuous learning mindset to adopt new tools, data capabilities and analytics methods.
  • Ethical judgment and integrity, comfortable handling confidential financial information.
  • Change management skills to lead adoption of new systems, processes and behaviors across the organization.
  • Resilience and adaptability in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • MBA, Master’s in Finance, or professional designation such as CPA, CFA or CTP preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Finance
  • Accounting
  • Economics
  • Business Administration
  • Data Analytics / Information Systems (preferred for data-driven FP&A roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 10–15+ years of progressive experience in financial planning & analysis, corporate finance, or management accounting with at least 5 years in a leadership role.

Preferred:

  • Proven experience leading cross-functional FP&A teams in high-growth, multi-entity or public company environments, implementing FP&A systems (Anaplan, Adaptive, Hyperion), and delivering measurable improvements in forecast accuracy and decision support.
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