Strategic Forecasting Specialist

Job Description

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

The Forecasting and Strategic Planning Team exists to crystalise the dreams, ambitions and capabilities of OVO’s Fulfillment Pod and Operations into clear, well defined, forecasts, plans and targets. This enables OVO to steer a course through very complex challenges.

OVO’s Fulfillment Pod and Operation works on a demand led structure where we ensure there is a field based workforce, of correctly skilled engineers, to the deliver the capacity needed to satisfy numerous energy metering worktypes from Smart meter Installations, meter maintenance through to Electric Vehicle charge point installations.

We’re hiring world class change leaders. Each role that we are hiring plays their own part in our mission; our role is to become the best in class energy provider, creating effortless customer experience built on trust and getting things right, first time. We do this through finding and working on the problems that matter most to our customers and employees.

This role in a nutshell

We are looking for a highly skilled and experienced forecaster to join our dynamic Fulfil Pod, where you will join a team of experienced forecasters and analysts.

This meaningful role offers an exciting opportunity to work on strategically vital deployment forecasts, playing a pivotal role as part of the deployment teams and feeding these in to the wider demand forecasts across Fulfillment and the Fulfillment POD.

As our Strategic Forecasting Specialist, you will play an integral role within Fulfillment, helping senior leaders and Agile POD teams understand opportunities, challenges and risks of key strategic deployments. This role will also look ahead to wider future requirements and opportunities across Fulfillment supporting scoping in a fast paced and fluid environment.

Your key outputs will be

• Creation and maintenance of specific forecasts for key strategic deployments, bringing them to life and helping us understand the risks, opportunities and interdependencies.
• Play an active role in POD teams and working groups to support delivery of POD goals.
• Partnering with teams across Fulfillment and Commercial to ensure alignment of data, forecasting assumptions and understanding of business process’s.
• Improve communication flows between Fulfillment, Care, Asset Management and wider teams to optimise customer experience and cost where gaps exist in planning functions in the operations verticals.
• Establish business priorities, identify and communicate risks and create mitigation and milestone plans in collaboration with stakeholders.
• Develop and continuously improve key end-to-end planning performance indicators.
• Partner with forecasters on demand and capacity planning mechanisms, e.g. creation of a workflow to keep engineers optimally productive and balancing waste of underutilisation with over demand to mitigate capacity risks. Clearly communicate dependencies and manage/track exceptions.
• Opportunity to develop and support maintaining and developing our Anaplan forecast models alongside forecasting model builders.
• Contribute to your development and the teams’ technical skills by demonstrating inclusive behaviours and establishing a culture of highest performing teams.

You’ll be a successful Forecasting Analyst at OVO if you…

• Enjoy being in amongst the action - getting involved with working groups and PODs, really getting under the skin of any strategic development and being a knowledge leader to support deployments.
• Are comfortable in the world of telling the story of forecasts and plans at a senior leadership level - effectively constructing narratives based on modelled forecasts to effectively communicate insights and recommendations to senior leadership.
• Are passionate about creating accurate forecasts - using insightful data to drive realistic modelling assumptions to deliver real world expectations with the ability to create scenarios and answer “what if…” questions. Great opportunities to use your strong mathematical and analytical skills.
• Love solving complex modelling problems and making a difference through collaboration. Bringing the right skills together to perform analytical deep dives on business issues to identify drivers and trends, extract insight from data and clearly explain their meaning.. Applying the appropriate tools and methods to reach the best outcome and deliver the highest value impact for our customers and business.
• Are keen to develop your own skills and ways of working. We want to help enhance your skills whilst working here, and you’ll have time to do this. We embrace mentoring/coaching and there are ample opportunities for peer to peer and self led learning.
• Have mastery of the key technical skills - demonstrating high skill level and experience using Google Sheets/Excel to create complex forecasting models with a healthy appetite to learn new technical skills.
• Have a real positive attitude and is easily able to connect and interact with people, working in a truly dynamic and exciting team, with a “roll-up your sleeves” approach.
• Have a genuine passion for problem solving and persistence when vital, getting job satisfaction from delivering outputs under time constraints and where priorities change regularly.
• Possess the ability to drive execution with strong attention to details, while keeping focus on the big picture; able to connect the dots across multiple pieces of work.
• Are comfortable challenging old ways of doing things and constantly finding better ways of working more efficiently and effectively within your team.
• Are able to thrive in a fast paced environment with strong analytics capability / business acumen with ability to understand and interpret information from multiple sources.
• Have excellent presentation, communication and interpersonal skills, with a strong ability to build effective relationships at different levels of the organisation. Comfortable clear communication of headline messages supported by detailed analysis.
• Possess excellent listening skills that enable you to grasp business needs and shape a shared vision for a solution that reflects the pace and quality required.
• Have experience building models in / using Anaplan with hands-on experience of multi-dimensional modelling, forecasting tools, business intelligence or analytics techniques/methodologies/tools with plenty of opportunity to develop in these areas.

You won’t like this role if you…

• Aren’t comfortable with ambiguity and fast pace change.
• Are not open to new ways of working, adapting and merging of multiple methodologies.
• Are not constantly thinking about ways to improve or challenge the status quo.
• Are not passionate about contributing to our fight towards zero carbon living.
• Are not able to work in a cross-functional team to understand a problem and get consensus on what needs to be done.

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you

We’ll pay you between £38,000 - £43,000 depending on your specific skills and experience. If your expectations are a little different, have a chat with us!

We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission.

You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal.

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay. It’s an extra 9% of your salary on top of your core pay to use as you like. You can take it as cash, add to your pension, or choose to spend it on a huge range of flex benefits.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer:

For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).

For your health
With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more

For your wellbeing
With gym membership, gadget, travel and cyber insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, DNA testing, dental insurance, and more

For your lifestyle
With extra holiday buying, discount dining, culture cards, tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations

For your home
Get up to £300 off any OVO Energy plan (when you pay by Direct Debit), plus personal carbon offsetting and great discounts on smart thermostats and EV chargers

For your commute
Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging

To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.

Oh, and one last thing...

We’d be thrilled if you tick off all our boxes yet we also believe it’s just as important we tick off all of yours. And if you think you have most of what we’re looking for but not every single thing, go ahead and hit apply. We’d still love to hear from you!

If you have any additional requirements, there’s a space to let us know on the application form; we want to make the process as easy and comfortable for you as possible.