Associate Director - Business Finance

Associate Director Business Finance (Deeksha Vedantu)

Location: Bangalore.

Working Days: 6 Days, In Office.

Key Responsibilities:

This role focuses on comprehensive revenue planning rather than cost planning, overseeing the entire conversion journey.

Summary:

- Mapping out the lead-to-admission pipeline, from lead generation to sales qualification, initial sales interactions, walk-ins, and finally, admissions.

- Strategically planning lead generation efforts and allocating the marketing budget based on conversion rates and channel-lead ROI.

- Integrating marketing and sales budgets to optimize resource and capital deployment.

- Developing and implementing course/product strategies and go-to-market (GTM) interventions.

- Establishing sales excellence models and performance tracking systems.

- Conducting root cause analysis (RCA) on planned vs. actual performance across channels, lead sources, and conversion rates (CVR) to identify and implement corrective actions.

- Ensuring in-depth, detailed visibility of each stage in the funnel.

Responsibilities

1. Revenue, Sales & Marketing Planning (70%):

- Annual Operating Plan (AOP) & Monthly Business Planning: Co-own the AOP process with the Business Head, Category Leads, Sales, Marketing, and Finance from revenue target setting and funnel assumptions to final plan sign-off.

- Break annual targets into monthly, weekly, and channel-level plans; own the cascade of targets across all stakeholders and functions.

- Run structured Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs) tracking plan vs. actuals, identifying gaps early, and aligning corrective action owners with clear timelines.

- Maintain a live monthly planning tracker across leads, conversions, revenue, and costs updated and shared proactively.

- Revenue Funnel Planning & Tracking: Own end-to-end visibility of the lead-to-revenue funnel: lead generation, marketing qualified leads (MQLs), sales qualified leads (SQLs), trials/demos, conversions, and renewals.

- Plan lead volumes, conversion rate benchmarks, and revenue outcomes by course, category, channel, and cohort and hold each stage of the funnel accountable.

- Build and maintain dashboards to track funnel health in real time; surface early warning signals before they translate into a revenue miss.

- Sales & Marketing Channel Strategy & Budget Planning: Partner with marketing leads to build channel-wise lead budgets grounded in CPL, channel CVR, and ROI ensuring spend is performance-linked, not just historical.

- Evaluate and recommend reallocation of marketing budgets across channels scaling high-ROI sources, rationalizing underperformers.

- Work with Sales Head to build sales productivity models: revenue target per head, funnel throughput per rep, and team sizing vs. plan.

- Integrate marketing and sales budgets into a unified revenue plan no siloed planning.

- Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Plan vs. Actual: Lead structured RCAs whenever revenue deviates from plan dissecting by channel, lead source, category, funnel stage, cohort, and time period.

- Translate RCA findings into corrective actions with named owners, timelines, and success metrics not just diagnosis, but recovery planning.

- Present RCA outputs to Sales Head, Marketing Leads, Category Leads, Academics Head, and Business Head with solutions, not just slides.

- Maintain a living tracker of open RCA actions and their status across functions.

- Course & Category-wise Revenue Strategy: Partner with Category Leads and the Academics Head to build course-level revenue targets, pricing strategies, and GTM intervention plans.

- Track category performance: enrollments, revenue per student, dropout rates, renewal rates, and course-level contribution margins.

- Build business cases for new course launches or pricing changes, including market sizing, competitive benchmarking, and projected ROI.

- Performance Reporting & Business Intelligence: Own the performance reporting cadence daily/weekly/monthly with clear accountability mapped to each KPI.

- Build and manage dashboards across revenue, sales productivity, marketing efficiency, and funnel health.

- Prepare crisp, insight-driven decks for Business Head and senior leadership reviews distilling complexity into decision-ready outputs.

2. Cost, Headcount & Investment Planning (30%):

- Headcount Planning & Resource Budgeting: Plan and track headcount requirements across sales, marketing, and operations aligned to revenue targets and per-head productivity benchmarks.

- Collaborate with functional heads to build hiring plans, role-level budgets, and cost-per-hire models for the AOP cycle.

- Flag headcount risks proactively over-hiring against a revenue shortfall, or under-hiring against an aggressive plan.

- Marketing Spend Governance & Efficiency: Own marketing budget tracking planned vs. actual spend by channel, campaign, and period; update in real time.

- Monitor marketing efficiency ratios (CAC, CPL, ROAS, payback period) and call out inefficiencies with recommended actions.

- Flag budget overruns or reallocation opportunities in real time do not wait for month-end reviews.

- Course-wise P&L Tracking: Maintain course-level P&L visibility revenue, direct variable costs, contribution margins, and profitability trends by cohort.

- Identify underperforming courses or categories early; propose strategic or operational interventions to course heads and BH.

- Ensure P&L data is granular, trusted, and decision-ready not a backward-looking report, but a forward-looking signal.

- New Investment Evaluation & ROI Tracking: Evaluate business cases for new investments course launches, technology tools, marketing experiments, and team expansions.

- Build financial models and ROI frameworks to support go/no-go decisions; set clear return expectations and payback timelines.

- Track post-investment outcomes vs. projections; close the loop with stakeholders and inform future investment decisions.

- Risk Identification, Call-outs & Contingency Planning: Proactively identify financial and operational risks across revenue and cost and present solutions alongside the flag, not separately.

- Develop contingency plans for high-probability scenarios: demand softness, channel saturation, CAC inflation, cost overruns.

- Maintain a live risk register with impact assessments, probability ratings, and mitigation owners reviewed at every MBR.

Qualifications:

- Bachelor & Master degree from tier 1 college.

- 4+ years of experience in revenue planning, growth planning, conversion/sales strategy, business planning, financial analysis, or strategic planning roles.

- Strong financial modeling and data analysis skills, with experience in using advanced analytics tools and software.

- Proven track record in developing and executing business plans in a corporate environment.

- Excellent communication and presentation skills with experience presenting to senior leadership.

- Strong project management skills, with the ability to prioritize and manage multiple initiatives.

- Strategic thinker with excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.