Head - Finance & Accounting Quality

Head Finance and Accounting (F&A) Quality

Location: India (Open)

Role Purpose

Lead the design, deployment, governance, and continuous improvement of an independent Finance & Accounting Quality function across Procure-to-Pay (PTP), Order-to-Cash (OTC), Record to-Report (RTR), FP&A, Master Data, and other F&A towers.

The role is responsible for establishing a centralized quality operating model that drives transaction accuracy, control compliance, defect prevention, customer satisfaction, operational excellence, and delivery risk reduction across all F&A engagements.

This leader will build and institutionalize a scalable quality governance framework covering quality methodology, sampling strategy, control validation, calibration, RCA, training, certification, reporting, and continuous improvement.

The role will also own governance of process-related training across F&A, ensuring that teams are trained, assessed, and certified on approved processes, SOPs, desktop procedures, job aids, controls, and client-specific requirements before performing activities independently.

Key Responsibilities

1. Quality Function Establishment & Governance

• Design and institutionalize an enterprise-wide F&A Quality Management Framework.
• Establish independent QC operations across all F&A towers.
• Define quality governance structure, operating cadence, escalation mechanisms, and review forums.
• Standardize defect taxonomy, scoring methodology, quality criteria, and control requirements.
• Create quality policies, SOPs, and governance standards.

2. Deployment of Dedicated QC Organization

• Build and scale centralized and account-level QC teams.
• Define QC staffing models, spans, and coverage ratios.
• Drive deployment of QC Leads, Analysts, Calibration Specialists, and Quality Managers.
• Establish quality operating rhythms across all accounts.
• Ensure independence of quality teams from transaction processing teams.

3. Quality Control Framework

• Define risk-based sampling methodology across PTP, OTC, RTR, FP&A, and Master Data.
• Establish process-specific quality checklists and evaluation parameters.
• Implement layered quality reviews, control validation, and QA audit mechanisms.
• Drive quality coverage enhancement for high-risk and judgment-intensive activities.

4. RCA and Defect Prevention

• Establish structured defect prevention programs.
• Lead root cause analysis governance for all critical quality failures.
• Drive corrective and preventive action programs.
• Create enterprise defect repositories and knowledge-sharing mechanisms.
• Ensure closure tracking and effectiveness validation of improvement actions.

5. Process Training Governance, Calibration & Capability Assurance

• Establish periodic calibration programs across all F&A towers.
• Drive certification and accreditation programs for Operations and QC teams.
• Create quality knowledge repositories and training curriculum.
• Lead bottom-quartile improvement initiatives.
• Institutionalize process-specific competency assessments.
• Own governance of process training across PTP, OTC, RTR, FP&A, Master Data, and other F&A processes.
• Ensure all employees complete role-based training on approved SOPs, desktop procedures, job aids, controls, policies, and client-specific requirements.
• Implement training-needs analysis linked to quality defects, process changes, audit findings, customer feedback, and control failures.
• Establish training calendars, trainer qualification standards, attendance and completion tracking, knowledge assessments, certification criteria, and refresher-training triggers.
• Ensure new hires and employees moving to new activities are certified before independent processing or system access, in line with applicable operational requirements.
• Govern SOP and training-content currency through version control, periodic reviews, approval workflows, and timely updates following process or policy changes.
• Monitor training effectiveness through post-training quality performance, assessment results, error recurrence, control adherence, and action closure.
• Provide leadership visibility through training-compliance dashboards, overdue actions, certification status, capability risks, and improvement plans.

6. Metrics, Reporting & Analytics

• Build enterprise quality dashboards and scorecards.
• Track accuracy, defect density, customer defects, audit findings, control failures, RCA closure, sampling coverage, and training effectiveness.
• Present quality performance reviews to leadership and clients.
• Drive predictive quality analytics and trend identification.

7. Client Governance

• Act as quality SME during client reviews and governance meetings.
• Lead customer defect management and remediation programs.
• Provide executive updates on quality health, risks, and mitigation strategies.
• Support quality commitments during transitions and new deal mobilization.

8. Continuous Improvement

• Partner with Transformation, Operational Excellence, Lean Six Sigma, and Automation teams.
• Identify systemic quality improvement opportunities.
• Drive process standardization across accounts.
• Improve first-time-right performance and reduce recurring errors.
• Build a prevention-focused quality culture.

Required Qualifications

Educational Qualification

• CA / CMA / CPA / MBA Finance / M.Com or equivalent.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt mandatory.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt preferred.

Experience

• 15-20 years of overall F&A/BPS operations experience.
• Minimum 8-10 years in Quality, Audit, Controls, Compliance, Operational Excellence, or Governance roles.
• Proven experience setting up dedicated Quality/QA/QC functions for large-scale F&A operations.
• Experience managing multi-tower F&A environments covering PTP, OTC, RTR, FP&A, Master Data, and preferably Treasury / Tax.

Mandatory Experience

• Creating centralized QA/QC organizations.
• Designing sampling and quality frameworks.
• Quality scorecard design and deployment.
• Internal audit and control adherence.
• Defect management and RCA governance.
• Client governance and executive reporting.
• Quality Control Team setup and capability development.
• Governance of process training, SOP readiness, knowledge assessment, certification, and training-effectiveness measurement.
• Experience establishing learning governance for new hires, cross-training, process changes, refresher training, and remedial training linked to quality outcomes.