Senior Director, Business Planning & Capabilities, GIACE, BBU

Senior Director, Business Planning & Capabilities, GIACE, BBU

Location: Cambridge (UK) | Wilmington (DE)

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven BioPharmaceutical business that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialisation of prescription medicines for some of the world’s most serious disease. But we’re more than one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. At AstraZeneca we’re dedicated to being a Great Place to Work. Where you are empowered to push the boundaries of science and unleash your entrepreneurial spirit. There’s no better place to make a difference to medicine, patients and society. An inclusive culture that champions diversity and collaboration. Always committed to lifelong learning, growth and development.

AstraZeneca is organized around three core business units, BioPharmaceuticals (BBU), Oncology, and Rare diseases.The BBU focuses on development and commercialization of AstraZeneca’s Respiratory, Immunology, Cardiovascular, Metabolic, Renal, and Infectious Disease therapeutic areas.

GIACE(Global Insights, Analytics and Commercial Excellence) is a strategic function, critical for enabling success in the growth of the BBU business. Our mission is to influence every business decision – from early-stage to late-stage commercial – to improve people’s lives. We are building an industry-leading organization, empowering our Commercial teams through the generation of compelling evidence and insights, while ensuring they have the tools and skills to deliver impactful launches that change the practice of medicine for the benefit of patients.

GIACE’s I&A teams are responsible for both the US and Global organizations, and is structured around the following core capabilities:

• Insights

• Forecasting

• Brand Analytics

• Reporting

• Business Planning and Capabilities (BP&C)

The BP&C team is a key part of GIACE and is responsible for excellence of all our capabilities, across our therapy areas. We are looking for leaders who have the passion to drive business results and bring innovation to what we do for greater impact.

Role overview:

An engaging and influential leader who is able to create new solutions to drive GIACE capability building across all activities, and leverage those solutions to drive business performance.

• Ensures Forecasting, Analytics and Insights approaches, tools & capabilities are refined to provide maximum value in underpinning therapy area and brand strategies, clinical investments and business development decisions.

• Leads the implementation of standards and governance for key GIACE and BBU Commercial deliverables across Investment Decision and Business Planning processes.

• Able to exert a high level of influence across functions and Senior Executive Team (SET) areas (including Finance, Operations, Commercial, Market Access & Pricing, etc) to leverage strategic analytics, driving efficient and effective decision making.

• Able to influence at a high level without formal authority and to drive behaviour across BBU and SET areas.

What you’ll do:

Responsible for innovation, simplification and capability building initiatives across GIACE:

• Anticipating future organisational needs and working with the team to build the right capabilities to meet them

• Monitoring the external environment for the latest leading analytic capabilities, both within and outside of pharma, which can be applied within the organization

• Developing and executing long term capability roadmaps in each of Forecasting, Analytics, Insights.

• Implementing ongoing initiatives. E.g. Forecasting knowledge management platform, Analogue tool, Patient Analytics platform, Time-to-Insight reduction.

Secretariat to the Forecast Review Committee

• Responsible for the quality and running of the Forecast Review Committee (FRC), an independent body, chaired by the VP GIACE, which reviews commercial cases prior to key Investment Decisions.

• Responsible for working work with cross-functional leaders to ensure appropriate governance of internal and external asset investment decisions.

• Driving continual improvement in the quality of business cases through feedback prior and post FRCs and through sharing learning and best practice across the team.

Responsible for BBU Business Planning cycle input and infrastructure

• Working closely with the BBU Commercial, Finance, GIACE I&A Heads and Forecasting Senior directors to ensure that key BBU deliverables are met

• Responsible for driving simplification and clarity of responsibilities of GIACE vis-a-vis marketers across each TA

• Responsible for providing tools for automating key business cycle deliverables, dashboards for Global, Regional and Country teams have transparency on forecast assumptions, variance and totals

Responsible for the capabilities of the Brand Analytics team. Brand Analytics people within GIACE are aligned to each of the key brands/disease areas. BP&C serves to unite this team to: ensure tools, standards, best practices are shared; own the relationship with Global Commercial Operations, who provide support via a Chennai based Analytics team; develop new platforms, processes, tools, data strategy, etc.

Responsible for driving a standardized and clear input from GIACE and BBU commercial into strategic volume forecasts to drive long term supply planning, and secure short term supply in countries.

Serve as a member of the extended GIACE Leadership team. Ensuring alignment and contribution to key GIACE initiatives.

Reporting Structure

This role reports to the Vice President, GIACE, and has 2 Director level direct reports.

Essential for the role:

• 10+ years in the pharmaceutical industry, in Insights, Analytics and Forecasting

• Passion for Customers: Understands one’s customers and uses that insight to provide value.

• Thinks Strategically: Quickly identifies and acts on opportunities, combining forethought with action. This is based on an understanding of the external environment and its impact on AZ.

• Drives Performance: Holds self and others accountable for the achievement of performance expectations. Creates an environment that enables others to perform at their best.

• Demonstrated ability to effectively challenge for improved systems or process outcomes.

• Works effectively in a matrix reporting relationship. Demonstrated ability to influence laterally and vertically

• Able to communicate clearly and effectively to stakeholders of all levels of seniority Able to juggle multiple priorities across teams with diverse interests

• Develops People and Organization: Demonstrates a genuine commitment to the time and effort needed to develop oneself and others.

• Experience working in global and country roles.

• Experience in MS Office products - Excel and PowerPoint skills required.

• Breadth of corporate systems and finance planning knowledge and application in a global pharmaceutical setting

• P&L understanding

• Occasional travel may be required.

Why AstraZeneca?

At AstraZeneca we’re dedicated to being a Great Place to Work. Where you are empowered to push the boundaries of science and unleash your entrepreneurial spirit. There’s no better place to make a difference to medicine, patients and society. An inclusive culture that champions diversity and collaboration, and always committed to lifelong learning, growth and development. We’re on an exciting journey to pioneer the future of healthcare.

So, what’s next?

Are you already imagining yourself joining our team? Good, because we can’t wait to hear from you.

Where can I find out more?

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Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.

AstraZeneca requires all US employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 but will consider requests for reasonable accommodations as required by applicable law.