Director of Financial Planning & Analysis

Case Paper Co•Chicago, IL

2d•Remote

About The Position

This role owns the forecasting, modeling, margin strategy, and long-range planning that determine where Case Paper invests, what it sells, and how it grows. The most visible part of that work is commercial, serving as the analytical partner to the Chief Commercial Officer and sales leadership on margin, pricing, mix, and customer and product profitability. The second is executive decision support, defining the KPI framework and delivering analysis behind capital, pricing, and strategic decisions with a recommendation. The role reports to the VP of Finance & Administration, with strategic matters running on a dotted line to the President. The individual will pull their own data, build their own models, and produce their own analysis.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or business administration.
Eight or more years in financial planning and analysis, corporate finance, or strategic finance.
Experience as the senior-most FP&A resource for a business or business unit — not one contributor inside a larger department.
Ownership of budgeting, forecasting, and multi-year financial modeling for a full business.
A track record partnering with a sales or commercial organization on pricing, margin, and profitability, with measurable results.
Advanced Excel — pivot tables, complex formulas, financial modeling — built personally and from scratch.
Working knowledge of SQL or Power BI, with the ability to query, join, and validate datasets without support.
Demonstrated experience with legacy, fragmented, or weak systems, and the judgment to reach a defensible answer from imperfect data.
Proven success working remotely at a senior level, with the self-direction that requires.
The ability to explain financial results in operational terms to non-financial audiences.

Nice To Haves

Paper, board, packaging, or converting industry experience.
Manufacturing and/or distribution background, including cost accounting.
Hands-on experience with AS/400 (IBM i), Lansa, or comparable legacy platforms.
Experience standing up a reporting or BI layer where none existed.
Practical use of AI-enabled tools to accelerate analysis, reporting, and research.
Involvement in an ERP selection, implementation, or major system conversion.
Experience in a privately held or family-owned business where structure is still being built.
MBA, CPA, or CMA.

Responsibilities

Own the annual operating budget and the rolling 12-month forecast — revenue, margin, expense, and headcount.
Build and maintain the core financial model, with scenario and sensitivity analysis for volume shifts, price movement, cost inflation, and market disruption.
Own monthly P&L analysis and variance against budget and forecast, explaining the drivers — price, volume, mix, material, labor efficiency, equipment utilization, quality, freight, and overhead.
Review P&Ls by site with the leadership team, and surface risks and early warning indicators before they land in results.
Partner with sales leadership on margin performance, pricing strategy, and quote and bid support.
Find and quantify margin leakage across pricing, mix, rebates, freight, terms, and inventory — and drive the fix to completion.
Own customer, product, channel, and facility profitability, and identify unprofitable products, customers, and cost structures.
Build the tools and guardrails that let sales make faster, better-informed pricing decisions on their own.
Lead the multi-year strategic and financial planning process.
Maintain a 3–5 year model covering growth, capacity, capital needs, and infrastructure.
Frame strategic options for the President and ownership with the risks, trade-offs, and expected returns made explicit.
Model capital projects, facility decisions, acquisitions, and major customer opportunities — and bring a recommendation with each.
Independently extract, clean, reconcile, and validate data from AS/400, Lansa, and other fragmented sources using advanced Excel, SQL, Power BI, and AI-enabled tools.
Define the KPI framework and own the monthly executive performance package.
Build dashboards and self-service reporting so leaders can see their own drivers without having to ask.
Serve as a key finance participant in the ERP implementation, anticipated in 27/28 — data mapping, chart of accounts design, reporting structure, testing, and reconciliation.
Establish the model library, reporting calendar, and analytical standards from scratch.
Document every recurring model and report, so no analysis lives only in one person’s head.
Reduce the time spent moving data and increase the time spent interpreting it.