Business Analyst
You will be a key member of the Central Forecasting's Signal Strategy & Planning Team within the Global Planning organization.
You will be responsible provide insight and intelligence to the team to improve the accuracy of demand forecasts.
In this role you would be involved in solving complex and ambiguous problems by breaking them down into smaller parts, and implementing creative, data-driven solutions.
**The Team**
The Central Forecasting's Demand Signal Strategy & Planning team drives several core capabilities and processes relating to the demand signal generation and its adoption.
The team,
- generates and synthesizes the demand signal from multiple points of expert and ML based viewpoints over multiple forecast horizons
- influences the consensus plan for the highest impact Products/Product IDs
- helps the development and improvement of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities generating automated and expert augmented forecast streams at Product ID and Business Unit/Product Family levels
- develops estimates of forecast ranges based on uncertainty and recommendations on errors and corresponding buffers
- provides detailed demand signal hand-off to internal and cross functional partners
**What You'll Do**
You will work with a team of business analysts and data scientists in the Central Forecasting team, and with other planning functions within the Global Planning team and within Supply Chain Operations.
Specifically,
- You will build relationships with sales planning, demand planning and central planning teams within global planning and with cross functional teams such as global manufacturing, global supplier management, product operations, market insights, sales finance etc.
to gather business insights
- You will model data and implement quantitative analysis that translates data into useful insight, in order to create forecasts for multiple products, business lines and segments
- You will be closely working with the business/product teams to enable data driven decision making
- You will drive the team to embrace new and innovative ways of solving business problems
**Roles & Responsibilities**
- Own and become an expert one or more business segments for which you will synthesize and formulate data-driven demand forecasts at a Product family or at Product ID level
- Develop a data and descriptive analytics-driven understanding of important drivers and patterns in historical bookings, ideate and test hypotheses, and help identification and development of new features that improve AI/ML models and the quality of your synthesized forecasts
- Engage in one or more of the business planning pillars of the Central Forecast Planning process such as margin planning, cost planning, pricing and discounting etc., develop a point of view substantiated by data analysis, in order to influence the direction of the central forecast plan
- Partner closely with Sales and Co-Planning teams, bringing key information and insights to the Central Forecasting team and the Demand Planning functions from the engagement
- Develop close relationships with the Demand Planning function that has product and transition knowledge to learn from and build trust with
- Engage in projects with Data Scientists and other Business Analysts to develop new transformative capabilities and improved AI/ML forecasting and ensemble models
**Who You'll Work With**
You will work closely with business analysts, data scientists, data engineers, solutions managers, demand planners, and Sales co-planning managers within the Global Planning Organization
- Who You Are_
- You are a fast learner who loves a steep learning curve
- You possess strong advanced analytical skills and an eye for business to assess, structure, and solve ambiguous problems with qualitative and quantitative data.
You possess meticulous attention to detail.
- You understand planning concepts, forecasting concepts, basic statistics
- You have substantial financial and/or supply chain modeling experience
- You are capable of leading conversations to influence and drive better decisions with multiple partners
- You have the ability to assess business conditions and align cross-functional customers and business partners to make collective progress
- Our minimum requirements for this role_
- 5-7 years of relevant experience in business planning, financial analysis, supply chain, demand planning, forecasting or one of more of these
- Must have advanced analytical abilities, expertise in python, R, SQL would be preferred
- Experience working with global teams and demonstrated ability to develop and foster strong cross-functional partnerships
**We Are Cisco**
WeAreCisco, where each person is outstanding, but we bring our talents to work as a team and make a difference powering an inclusive future for all.
We embrace digital, and help our customers implement change in their digital businesses.
Some may think we're "old" (36 years