Shell - Planning & Appraisal Manager

PAR JG4

- Finance Operations (FO) contributes to the Shell aspiration of becoming the world's most competitive and innovative energy company by promising to deliver sustainable, externally benchmarked, world class end to end performance in the five processes we operate. FO plays a vital role in enabling the delivery of Finance Functional excellence to Shell.

- Reporting & Analysis is one of the five processes & employs some 25% of staff within FO. The core purpose of R&A is to support the various businesses of Shell with financial accounting, reporting and analysis. The team is setup under the four core business pillars of RDS, namely Upstream, Downstream, P&T and Corporate, Holdings and Treasury).

Purpose & Accountabilities:

The PAR Manager delivers value by enabling the business to manage performance through providing insights into past, current and expected future performance.

The PAR Manager will:

- Deliver the business planning and performance management processes, facilitating plans & appraisals across their area of responsibility, in conjunction with the Business EVP/VP and LT. This will include the annual Operating Plan process, Business Monitoring process, Performance Appraisal, PIRs/Assurance Reviews.

- Provide clear and articulate commentary to senior decision makers regarding the underlying business results.

- Combine deep business knowledge, external insights & macro understanding with a capacity to leverage technology to build value adding insights

- As a business partner use insights derived to drive performance on measures such as cost, cash and gap to potential in the business

Interfaces

The PAR Manager will:

- Act as an integrator between the Business (technical, planning teams, horizontals), strategy, business finance & FO organizations

- Work with Process Executives to ensure best practices.

- Challenges and value opportunities are leveraged and shared across country/CoB/LoB teams within the PAR manager's scope

Professional growth

PAR Managers will benefit from:

- Working with senior Finance and Business stakeholders and being part of decision making at the most senior levels in the Group.

- Getting a detailed understanding of the complete business, its interdependencies, opportunities and challenges.

- Being on the cutting-edge of trends to create information from data and analytics that are then translated and used to drive business performance

ACCOUNTABILITIES:

- Contribute to preparation of the annual Business Plan and related assessments to together ensure a sound submission, including operational, economic and financial KPIs

- Contribute to preparation of performance overviews and appraisals

- Ensuring that performance is well analyzed and explained in management information packs delivered on a regular basis

- Resolving reporting issues and providing steers on financial queries

- Ad hoc analysis for leadership teams, including insights on financials/results, working capital analysis, price movement impact on cash/earnings, etc.

- MI packs, including commentaries and dashboards.

- Monthly cost analysis and tracking

- Resolving reporting issues and providing steers on financial queries

- Take ownership for quality of data and analysis with specific venture focus, and for specific KPIs. For example, NIBIAT, Cashflow, Production.

- Provide insightful analysis which incorporates external perspective - to support decision-making and drive the performance improvement agenda

- Develop productive relationships with key stakeholders, to deepen team's understanding of underlying issues within the Plan

- Where relevant coach other team members in areas of expertise

SPECIAL CHALLENGES:

The team must balance inputs from many stakeholders into a consistent business plan submission.

The nature of the process can result in periods of high workload and all team members are expected to contribute and demonstrate flexibility, so that all key milestones are met, and deliverables submitted.

The sensitivity of working with most confidential, market-sensitive data

Skills & requirements

ESSENTIAL:

- University degree in a finance related discipline with preference for a professional qualification and/or certification like CIMA an MBA, etc.)

- Core finance value management knowledge plus in some specific roles non finance experiences would be an advantage (incl. business, commercial and/or IT)

- 7-11 years of relevant professional experience

- Combined skillsets across (1) business knowledge & key drivers (2) analytical and logical reasoning (3) data capability that aid them to discover insight

- Self-starter with a track record of performance and proven ability to deliver quality results under significant time pressure and to tight deadlines

- Strong interpersonal & leadership skills with personal confidence to quickly build credibility, respect and rapport;

- Excellent communication skills, clarity of thought and ability to translate complex raw data into simple, powerful and easy to communicate key messages & insights, that are understood by business partners in non financial terms

- Evidence of external focus and understanding of the energy industry, competitors, suppliers and markets is helpful

- Able to work across organizational boundaries with a diverse group of colleagues and stakeholders at multiple levels in the organization

- Exposure or experience with continuous improvement (especially Lean) is welcomed

PREFERRED:

Excellent IT skills (power point, excel, word, management information systems)

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

This position is ideally suited for people with leadership skills with a robust analytical background who would like to influence decision making and the performance management agenda in Shell