GM / Head - Operations Excellence & Profitability

Ciel HR; Kolkata District; On-site; INR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Bajaj Parivahan seeks a senior operations professional with a strong commercial mindset to improve efficiency and bottom-line performance across traffic operations, vehicle sourcing, vendors, branches, finance and management.

You will identify cost leakages, enhance vehicle utilisation, strengthen operational controls and systematically improve margins while strengthening credit control and working-capital efficiency.

Qualifications

• Experience in transportation, logistics, fleet operations or related industries.
• Strong analytical ability to convert operational data into commercial decisions.
• Experience implementing SOPs, MIS dashboards and operational controls.

Responsibilities

• Analyse transportation costs across routes, customers, branches and vehicle categories.
• Track cost per trip, cost per km, cost per tonne and other metrics.
• Identify cost leakages and implement structured cost-reduction initiatives.
• Improve vehicle sourcing economics and vendor negotiations.
• Benchmark freight rates and reduce dependence on last-minute sourcing.
• Establish visibility on profitability at trip/route/lane level and act on losses.
• Strengthen credit control and working-capital efficiency; improve DSO.

Skills

Analytical ability

Vendor negotiation

Cross-functional collaboration

Fleet operations knowledge

Job description

Role Purpose

Bajaj Parivahan is looking for a senior operations professional with a strong commercial and profitability mindset to improve the efficiency and bottom-line performance of its transportation business. This is not a routine transport operations role. The person will work across traffic operations, vehicle sourcing, vendors, branches, finance and management to identify cost leakages, improve vehicle utilisation, strengthen operational controls and systematically improve operating margins. The role will also strengthen credit control, outstanding collection discipline and working-capital efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

1. Transport Cost Optimisation

• Analyse transportation costs across routes, customers, branches and vehicle categories.
• Track cost per trip, cost per km, cost per tonne and other relevant operating metrics.
• Identify unnecessary expenditure, cost leakages and inefficient operating practices.
• Develop and execute structured cost-reduction initiatives.

2. Vehicle & Vendor Efficiency

• Improve vehicle sourcing economics and vendor negotiations.
• Benchmark market freight rates and vendor rates across major lanes.
• Reduce dependence on expensive last-minute / spot vehicle sourcing.
• Improve vendor performance, availability and commercial terms; build a reliable transporter network.

3. Trip & Route Profitability

• Establish visibility on profitability at trip, route/lane, customer and branch level.
• Identify loss-making or low-margin movements and recommend corrective action.
• Improve load planning, vehicle utilisation and return-load opportunities.
• Reduce empty kilometres and non-productive vehicle movement.

4. Operational Leakage Control

• Reduce leakages arising from detention, waiting time, fuel/trip expenses and loading/unloading inefficiencies.
• Control claims, damages, penalties, POD delays, unbilled trips, delayed billing and excess vendor payments.
• Strengthen controls to prevent operational errors and avoidable expenses.

5. Productivity & Process Improvement

• Review operational processes across branches and improve turnaround time and manpower productivity.
• Standardise critical transport operating procedures and SOPs.
• Introduce measurable KPIs for traffic and operations teams.
• Identify opportunities for automation, TMS/ERP usage and technology adoption.

6. Commercial & Working-Capital Efficiency

• Work with Finance and Commercial teams to improve the operational billing cycle.
• Reduce delays between trip completion, POD submission and invoicing.
• Improve operational controls impacting receivables and vendor payments.
• Ensure customer commercial terms are reflected accurately in operating practices.

7. MIS & Management Visibility

• Build dashboards covering Revenue, Gross Margin, Trip Margin, Cost/km, Vehicle Utilisation, Empty KM, Detention, Vendor Cost, Claims, POD TAT, Billing TAT and Branch Productivity.
• Present monthly findings, savings achieved, risks and improvement recommendations to senior management.

8. Credit Control & Outstanding Collection

• Take ownership of credit control and timely collection of customer outstandings in coordination with Finance, Sales, Operations and branch teams.
• Monitor customer-wise outstanding, ageing and overdue receivables and ensure systematic follow-up.
• Establish clear controls for customer credit periods, credit limits and payment terms.
• Identify customers with chronic payment delays and recommend corrective commercial actions.
• Ensure POD delays, documentation gaps, billing errors, claims or disputes do not unnecessarily delay collections.
• Conduct regular receivables ageing reviews and establish accountability for overdue amounts.
• Improve DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) and overall cash-conversion efficiency.
• Escalate high-risk or significantly overdue accounts to management and support recovery plans.
• Ensure business growth does not come at the cost of uncontrolled credit exposure.

Key Performance Indicators

• Improvement in operating margin / EBITDA.
• Reduction in transportation cost as a percentage of revenue.
• Improvement in trip and lane profitability.
• Reduction in empty kilometres, detention and turnaround time.
• Improvement in vehicle utilisation and vendor cost efficiency.
• Reduction in operational leakages, claims and avoidable expenses.Improvement in POD-to-billing turnaround and branch/manpower productivity.
• Documented and validated annualised cost savings.
• Timely collection of customer outstandings and improvement in collection efficiency.
• Reduction in DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) and overdue receivables.
• Reduction in receivables ageing, particularly overdue amounts beyond 30 / 60 / 90 days.
• Improvement in billing-to-collection turnaround time and control over customer credit exposure.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• 1220+ years of experience in transportation, logistics, fleet operations or related industries.
• Strong understanding of road transportation economics, freight costing and route/lane profitability.
• Hands-on exposure to vehicle sourcing, traffic operations, transport vendors and branch operations.
• Strong analytical ability to convert operational data into commercial decisions.
• Strong vendor negotiation and commercial capabilities.Experience implementing SOPs, MIS, dashboards and operational controls.
• Ability to work across Finance, Operations, Commercial and senior leadership.

Preferred sectors: FTL/PTL transportation, 3PL, surface logistics, industrial transportation, steel/cement/commodity transportation or large fleet/transport networks.