Director, Business Optimization (AP Audits)

Profit Recovery Partners•Santa Ana, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Profit Recovery Partners (PRP) is seeking a solution-oriented leader with an entrepreneurial mindset to join their team as a Director. This role involves tackling complex challenges and driving cost reduction strategies for clients. The Director will provide vision and direction for assessing client opportunities, collaborating with experts to create solutions, and driving Practice Group growth. Key responsibilities include executing strategic initiatives, managing P&L, and developing a team. This is a fully onsite position at the Santa Ana office.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree required
Minimum of 9-13 years of expense management, vendor management, consulting or other related experience
4+ years of management/supervisory experience
Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills
Excellent quantitative and qualitative skills
Advanced Microsoft Office and Excel skills
Ability to lead others to complete complex projects on time
Experience in building relationships and alignment amongst team members and clients with demonstrated leadership skills
Proven ability to deliver results

Responsibilities

Lead PRP’s Accounts Payable (AP) Recovery Audit practice, overseeing client engagements, team execution, and overall P&L performance.
Manage the end-to-end audit lifecycle, from data acquisition and normalization to claims identification, validation, and recovery tracking.
Partner with clients’ Finance, Procurement, and Shared Services teams to identify duplicate payments, missed credits, overpayments, and vendor compliance issues.
Develop customized audit strategies leveraging analytics, automation tools, and proprietary benchmarking data to uncover root-cause trends and savings opportunities.
Present findings, recovery recommendations, and process-improvement initiatives directly to CFOs, Controllers, and Procurement executives.
Negotiate and secure recovery of funds on behalf of clients, ensuring full documentation and transparency in accordance with client policies.
Build and maintain relationships with vendors and suppliers to facilitate efficient claim resolution and future-state process improvements.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives by identifying audit patterns, error sources, and control gaps to strengthen clients’ AP processes.
Collaborate with PRP’s data analytics and technology teams to enhance automation, dashboard reporting, and machine-learning audit capabilities.
Oversee and mentor audit managers and analysts; establish clear KPIs, ensure quality control, and foster a high-performance, entrepreneurial culture.
Support new business development by contributing to proposals, pricing models, client pitches, and thought leadership related to spend recovery and AP optimization.
Stay current on payment trends, ERP/AP automation tools, and industry best practices to continuously evolve PRP’s audit methodology.
Represent the firm as a subject-matter expert in AP recovery, participating in client workshops, webinars, and strategic advisory sessions.
Establish productive working collaborative relationships with partners in other operational groups within the company.
Quickly garner internal resources from all departments to collaborate with and find a way to keep projects moving forward when faced with adversity.
Other duties as assigned.