Head - Business Planning & Analytics

WE'RE HIRING | HEAD - BUSINESS PLANNING & ANALYTICS

The Opportunity

IMS is at an interesting point in its growth journey. We have a large and complex education business spanning products, centres, regions and multiple student segments. The next phase of growth will require us to understand the business deeply - what is driving growth, what is holding it back, where we are creating value, where we are losing productivity, and where the next opportunity lies.

We are therefore looking for a person who can build the Business Planning & Analytics function from the ground up and make data, analysis and business planning an integral part of how IMS makes decisions. You will be the analytical and planning partner to the CEO - helping convert numbers into insights, insights into decisions, and decisions into business outcomes.

What You Will Get to Build

- Build the Business Intelligence Engine: Move IMS from reporting what happened to understanding why it happened and what will happen next. Build a robust analytics framework across products, centres, regions, channels and customer segments to identify the real drivers of revenue, growth and profitability.

- Build a Forward-Looking Planning System: Create a planning engine that enables IMS to look ahead - with sharper annual, quarterly and monthly forecasting, scenario planning and business projections.

- Build the Growth & Revenue Analytics Framework: Understand the economics of the IMS business at multiple levels - product, centre, region and channel. Identify the levers that influence revenue: leads, walk-ins, conversions, enrolments, pricing, batch sizes, capacity, retention, product mix and productivity. Turn these into actionable business insights for leadership.

- Build a Performance & Productivity Lens: Create a common analytical framework to understand business productivity across centres, regions and functions. Identify where resources, people and investments are generating disproportionate returns - and where they are not.

- Build the CEO's Business Cockpit: Create a sharp, integrated view of the business that enables the CEO and leadership team to quickly see: Where the business is winning, Where performance is slipping, What is driving the variance, Where the next growth opportunity exists, What decisions need to be taken now. Build the analytical rhythm that makes business reviews more insight-led and less MIS-led.

- Build a Culture of Data-led Decision Making: Bring rigour to the way IMS plans, reviews and makes business decisions. Challenge assumptions with data. Ask the difficult questions. Bring structure to ambiguous business problems. Over time, make "What does the data tell us?" as important as "What do we think?"

What You Will Own

- Business Planning: Own the planning and forecasting architecture across the business and continuously improve its accuracy and usefulness.

- Business Analytics: Own the analytical framework through which IMS understands growth, performance, productivity and business economics.

- Performance Intelligence: Own the identification of performance gaps, emerging trends and business opportunities - and ensure insights translate into action.

- CEO Decision Support: Work closely with the CEO on critical business questions, strategic reviews, business cases and growth decisions.

- The Analytics Team & Capability: Build the team, tools, dashboards and analytical capability required to make this function a strategic asset for IMS.

Why This Role Matters

You will be building something that does not yet exist at the level IMS needs. Your work will influence where we invest, where we grow, where we intervene, how we allocate resources and how we measure productivity.

If you enjoy going beyond the numbers - finding the story behind them, questioning the assumptions and using them to shape business decisions - this is an opportunity to build a function with significant organisation-wide impact.

What We're Looking For

- CA / Cost Accountant / MBA - Finance from a strong institution.

- 10+ years of experience in business planning, FP&A, business analytics, financial planning, consulting or a similar strategic analytics role.

- Strong understanding of business economics, financial analysis, forecasting and performance tracking.

- Ability to work comfortably with large and complex datasets and translate them into clear business insights.

- Strong commercial orientation - someone who understands that analysis is valuable only when it changes a decision or improves an outcome.

- Experience partnering with senior leadership / CXOs and influencing business decisions.

- Strong problem-solving and communication skills.

- Ability to build a function, team and processes rather than simply manage an existing MIS setup.

The Person

We are looking for someone who is curious enough to ask why, analytical enough to find the answer, and commercially minded enough to know what to do with it. Someone who doesn't see a spreadsheet as the output - but as the starting point for a better business decision.

Location: Mumbai (BKC)

Function: Finance

Reporting to: CEO