Director, Finance - Forecasting

This role provides leadership within the forecasting function of NAOU’s Finance Planning, Analysis & Insights (FP&I) team and serves as a key business partner to cross-functional stakeholders. Leveraging advanced analytics and statistical forecasting, the role delivers a reliable financial signal to support planning and decision-making. Working closely with peers and business partners, the role drives step change improvements in weekly and monthly forecasting routines and develops actionable insights and recommendations across short, mid, and long-term horizons. The role will ensure accuracy and consistency across systems and planning processes and leads the monthly Forecast Alignment process with clear assumptions and performance tracking. This role will also support key metrics calculation and tracking priorities in partnership with the broader FP&I team. Working collaboratively across the FP&I team, this role will work flexibly to pivot to key priorities across the broader team.  

What You’ll Do for Us: 

• Support RTM teams with models/analysis/alignment on weekly volume call process 

• Tune statistical models generated in the forecasting platform as often as necessary (minimum weekly) to provide a clear starting point for cross-functional stakeholders to collaborate and align on. 

• Project Total Unit Case volume for the short-, mid-, and long-term, using input from internal stakeholders, such as Brand, Sales, Franchise, Finance, Category Commercialization, and RGM (Revenue Growth Management) by leveraging statistical modeling and value-add capabilities in the forecasting platform 

• Provide a clear POV on volume risks and opportunities based on an understanding of key inputs and objective assessment of the range of possible outcomes. 

• Drive alignment through robust collaboration and analyses to provide the best demand signal for both financial forecast and supply chain planning for US Ops. 

• Ensure databases and systems have accurate volumes for the various internal routines such as Weekly Customer/Brand Reviews, Monthly Rolling Estimate, and Annual Business Planning. 

• Own the final volume forecast coming out of the monthly Forecast Alignment routines with clear assumption documentation and tracking.  

Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• Drive the monthly Unit Case Forecast Alignment sessions with Brand and Finance partners, with inputs from Franchise and Retail Sales (NRS + AO) with the ultimate outcome of feeding the RE (Rolling Estimate) and supply chain planning processes.  

• Provide clear insights and misses/beats to the BP (Business Plan), RE, and Aligned Forecast in order to continuously improve the process and forecast accuracy/attainment across the organization. 

• Actively collaborate with Product Commercialization, Sales and Marketing to capture brand initiatives and campaigns driving incremental volume vs. statistical baseline. 

• Drive accountability by updating Risks & Opportunities as often as necessary (minimum monthly) in order to have the latest assumptions and resulting volume in the RE. 

Analysis 

• Analyze shipment and consumption/sell-through data to identify forecast variances and root causes to drive forecast process and accuracy improvement. 

• Provide insights, volume risks and opportunities, and scenarios in order to drive aligned forecasts for the downhill periods. 

• Actively manage exceptions in the forecasting platform to identify and resolve high-error BPPs. 

• Track, analyze, and improve forecast performance by leveraging multiple data sources (shipments, orders, primary vs. secondary vs. consumption/sell-through sales, etc.). 

• Track forecast attainment, bias, MAPE and WAPE to identify high-error exceptions and drive improvement through various methodologies. 

• Improve statistical forecasting model capabilities by continuous learning, testing, and experimenting.  

• Develop, implement, and maintain robust volume forecasting models and insights. 

• Lead cross-functional teams in the development, monitoring, and refinement of volume and transaction forecasts. 

• Oversee short- and long-term financial planning and analysis to forecast and evaluate business performance, with a focus on volume, shipments, and transactions. 

• Manage the preparation and distribution of internal and external financial reports and maintain corporate financial systems. 

• Configure, maintain, and produce accurate and reliable financial and volume reports from finance information systems. 

• Facilitate forecast review discussions, including recommended adjustments and assessment of risks and opportunities. 

• Build advanced analytical models informed by value drivers, economic conditions, competitive cost structures, pricing, and market dynamics. 

• Develop deep expertise in system revenue performance and drive automation initiatives. 

• Lead the digitization of finance workflows, owning the design and deployment of multidimensional models built on a single source of truth across use cases. 

• Lean into the support of the overall objectives of the team with ad hoc analysis 

Qualifications and Requirements: 

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a relevant field, with an MBA or equivalent preferred. 

• 5 + experience in Forecasting, Data Modeling and Visualization, Automation, and Business Analytics, Business Planning. 

• Proven expertise in business partnering and decision support, as well as managing projects and resources. 

• Experience leveraging skills in project management; change management; process development/improvement; and strong negotiation and collaboration is needed.  

• Experience with data management methods, analytics deployment and orchestration tools, database and visualization tools for customer facing applications is needed.  

• Experience synthesizing large, complex data sets from various sources and building machine learning models, data science methods, and analytics is needed.  

• Must possess exceptional communication skills (story telling) evidenced by good verbal/written presentation ability.