VP, FP&A and Business Operations

Forrester•Cambridge, MA

About The Position

At Forrester, we’re trusted to work on trailblazing, mission critical problems that business and technology leaders face today. That’s why we’re always looking to empower talented individuals to perform at their best every single day. We’re proud of our community of smart people and vibrant voices who come together to do what’s right by our clients and each other. Our success is driven by curiosity, courage and customer obsession. The confidence and drive to be bold at work. Join us and build an extraordinary future. About This Role: The Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis and Business Operations will manage and scale a strategic finance business operations function for Forrester. In this highly influential and visible role, the successful candidate will report directly to the CFO and collaborate closely across executive leadership to ensure our financial and business strategies are aligned for success, driving the operations of the company across finance, sales, and our go-to-market. The Vice President of FP&A and Business Operations is a senior finance leader responsible for driving financial insight, operational efficiency, and revenue-enabling infrastructure across the organization. This executive owns the company’s planning and forecasting functions, partners closely with the commercial organization on sales operations and compensation design, and governs the revenue operations data standards that underpin account management within Salesforce CRM. This role is uniquely cross-functional — sitting at the intersection of finance, sales, and technology — and is critical to the company’s ability to plan accurately, execute efficiently, and scale its go-to-market motion as a publicly traded company, supporting long-term shareholder value.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or a related field required; MBA or CPA strongly preferred.
Fifteen-plus years of progressive finance and/or business operations experience, with at least five years in a senior leadership role.
Prior experience at a publicly traded company required; small- to mid-cap environment strongly preferred.
Demonstrated experience owning FP&A at a company with a direct or inside sales force, including hands-on involvement in quota setting and an understanding of comp plan design.
Prior exposure to Salesforce CRM administration, data governance, or revenue operations is highly valued.
Financial modeling excellence — able to build and review complex, multiscenario models with confidence and communicate outputs to nonfinance audiences.
Commercial acumen — genuine curiosity about the go-to-market motion and ability to connect financial outcomes to sales behavior and process quality.
Systems fluency — working knowledge of enterprise planning tools (e.g., Adaptive Insights/Workday Planning, Anaplan, or equivalent) and CRM platforms (Salesforce required).
Data governance mindset — understands the downstream impact of data quality issues and has experience designing and enforcing standards at scale.
Executive communication — polished written and verbal communicator capable of presenting to a public company board, institutional investors, and the executive team.
People leadership — track record of building, coaching, and retaining high-performing teams in a fast-paced environment.
Bias for process improvement — comfort with ambiguity and a proven ability to design scalable processes in a lean, resource-constrained setting.

Responsibilities

Financial planning and analysis Lead the annual operating plan, multiyear strategic forecast, and rolling monthly forecast processes in close partnership with the CFO, CEO, and functional business leaders.
Deliver timely, high-quality financial reporting packages for the board of directors and executive leadership team.
Own the management reporting framework, including consolidated P&L, variance analysis, and KPI dashboards that provide actionable insight to senior leadership.
Support the external reporting and investor relations processes, including preparation of earnings materials, guidance modeling, and investor Q&A analysis for a publicly traded environment.
Drive continuous improvement and innovation in financial systems, planning tools, and data architecture, leveraging AI capabilities to increase forecast accuracy and reduce cycle times.
Build, develop, and retain a high-performing FP&A team; establish clear standards for analytical rigor and business partnership.
Sales operations, compensation administration, and go-to-market efficiency Partner with sales, marketing, and customer success leadership to design and operate a scalable, data-driven sales operations function.
Oversee sales territory design and optimization — balancing market opportunity, rep capacity, and historical performance to maximize revenue coverage and pipeline productivity.
Lead the annual and in-year sales capacity planning process, including headcount modeling, quota setting, and attainment analysis in support of operating plan commitments.
Own pipeline and forecast governance in partnership with sales leadership, ensuring consistent definitions, stage progression discipline, and forecast accuracy across the revenue funnel.
Develop and maintain dashboards and reporting that give sales management real-time visibility into pipeline health, quota attainment, and productivity metrics.
Oversee the end-to-end compensation administration process, including plan document execution, quota assignment, attainment tracking, and commissions calculation. Ensure effective partnership with total rewards leader and legal.
Manage the relationship with compensation administration platforms and drive automation of manual processes.
Revenue operations data governance and Salesforce CRM Establish and enforce revenue operations data governance standards within Salesforce CRM, with particular focus on account hierarchy, ownership rules, and data quality across the commercial funnel.
Partner with Salesforce admins/architects and IT to ensure the CRM data model supports accurate territory assignment, compensation calculation, and financial reporting.
Own the account management data framework — including rules of engagement, segmentation criteria, and account assignment logic — to reduce disputes and improve rep productivity.
Drive adoption of consistent data definitions and input standards across sales, finance, and customer success to enable reliable cross-functional reporting.
Serve as the finance and operations voice in CRM-related projects, ensuring system changes are evaluated for downstream impact on forecasting, compensation, and financial close.