Overview:

Manager – Operations Excellence (AI & GenAI)

About Catalyst Brands:
Catalyst Brands is a leading U.S.-based retail organization formed in 2025 through the merger of JCPenney and SPARC Group, combining multiple iconic fashion brands under one umbrella. The company manages a diversified portfolio of well-known brands including Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Nautica, Lucky Brand, and JCPenney. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Catalyst Brands focuses on delivering modern retail experiences while leveraging the heritage of established global brands. With a workforce of over tens of thousands and multi-billion-dollar revenue, the organization operates at a large scale across retail, e-commerce, and supply chain domains. The company emphasizes innovation, digital transformation, and customer-centric strategies to enhance brand value and consumer engagement. Catalyst Brands is expanding its global presence, including a growing capability centre in India that supports technology, digital operations, and analytics. It aims to drive operational excellence and business growth by integrating technology, data-driven insights, and productive retail practices.

Role Summary

Lead the Finance AI and Transformation agenda across Catalyst Brands Finance by identifying, prioritizing, implementing, and scaling AI-, automation-, and agentic workflow-driven solutions. Partner with Finance leaders to transform manual processes into intelligent, scalable, and measurable digital capabilities while ensuring business value realization.

Core Responsibilities

AI Strategy & Transformation

- Develop and execute Finance AI roadmap
- Identify and prioritize AI opportunities across Finance functions
- Build Finance AI adoption framework and governance
- Drive Finance transformation initiatives aligned with CFO priorities
- Establish Finance AI Center of Excellence (CoE) capability

AI Use Case Discovery

- Conduct structured discovery sessions with Finance leaders
- Evaluate opportunities based on value, feasibility, and data readiness
- Build and maintain AI opportunity portfolio
- Develop business cases and implementation roadmaps

Operational Excellence & Transformation

- Partner with AP, Payroll, GL , Inventory and Credit/CSA managers to define annual productivity, cycle-time, and quality improvement goals.
- Conduct process diagnostics,



maturity assessments, and root cause analysis to identify systemic inefficiencies and eliminate waste.
- Lead Lean-driven improvements that enhance throughput, SLA performance, stability, and control posture across all three functions.
- Establish enterprise-aligned governance rhythms — weekly dashboards, KPI packs, exception logs, audit readiness scorecards.
- Ensure standardized execution of Ops Excellence frameworks across towers, reducing variation and strengthening process predictability.

Controls, Compliance & Quality

- Strengthen maker–checker, exception governance, reconciliation controls, and audit preparedness across all three operational towers.
- Identify control gaps, analyze exceptions, and implement systemic fixes to reduce defects, rework, and audit observations.
- Drive compliance with SOPs, DoA policies, reconciliation timelines, data-quality requirements, and regulatory expectations.
- Partner with Quality/Controls teams to embed preventive controls, enhance evidence trails, and support certifications and audits.

People, Capability & Change Management

- Coach tower managers and teams on Lean, structured problem solving, AI literacy, process thinking, and automation-first ways of working.
- Conduct Kaizens, workshops, learning sprints, and capability uplift initiatives that build CI culture across AP, Payroll, General Accounting End to end process and Inventory End to End and Credit/CSA.
- Develop change adoption plans, communication packs, and updated SOPs/playbooks to ensure successful rollout of new processes/tools.

Stakeholder Management & Collaboration

- Engage closely with US/SLC stakeholders, Finance Ops leadership, IT/Access, Procurement, HR, Merchant Services, Accounting/GL, and other upstream/downstream partners.
- Drive structured issue triage, escalation management, and cross-functional alignment on volume spikes, close cycles, and system changes.




- Provide leadership with data-backed recommendations, trend insights, and process/automation opportunity identification.

Automation & Agentic Workflows

- Lead implementation of AI agents and workflow automation
- Design agentic workflows across Finance processes
- Drive process simplification before automation
- Scale successful pilots into enterprise-wide solutions

Change Management

- Drive AI adoption across the Finance organization
- Build training and capability-building programs
- Track adoption and value realization
- Partner with leadership to remove barriers to adoption

KPI & Value Realization

- Establish productivity, quality, cycle-time, and adoption KPIs
- Measure benefits at 30/60/90 days
- Report outcomes to Finance leadership
- Ensure realized business value from investments

Systems Exposure
Preferred experience with:

- OneStream
- Oracle EBS
- Kyriba
- Esker
- Infor Nexus
- Power Platform
- Microsoft Copilot
- Power BI
- SharePoint
- Teams
- AI Agent Platforms
- Workflow Automation Platforms

Experience:

-
8–12+ years experience
- Finance Shared Services / Controllers / FP&A; / Transformation
- Experience leading digital transformation initiatives
- Process Excellence and Automation experience
- Exposure to AI, Machine Learning, Copilot, or GenAI programs preferred

Qualifications

- CA / CMA / MBA Finance / Commerce Graduate
- Lean Six Sigma preferred
- AI, Data Analytics, Power Platform certifications desirable
- Program Management experience preferred

Competencies:

- Analytical rigor and structured problem-solving
- Digital-first mindset with strong curiosity and experimentation orientation
- Influential communicator with strong stakeholder management
- Strong execution discipline and data-backed decision making
- Ability to simplify complexity and drive clarity in ambiguous environments
- Innovation, creativity, and solution-oriented thinking

Behavioral Expectations:

- High ownership, accountability, and proactive risk management
- Transparent communicator; escalates early and clearly
- Inclusive leadership that builds capability across teams
- Calm under pressure; thrives in high-volume, fast-paced operations
- Demonstrates continuous learning and embraces emerging technologies

Pay Range: INR ₹0.00 - INR ₹0.00 /Yr.

📌 Accounting Manager (India)
🏢 JCPenney
📍 India