Business Planning Analyst Entry

Minimum Pay Rate: $74,900.80 

Maximum Pay Rate: $104,187.20 

Civil Service Status: Civil Service 

Apply by Date: 04/16/2024 

Posting Type: Open 

 

The Budget Office is excited to announce an opening for our Business Planning Analyst Entry/Journey. This position presents a unique opportunity for you to learn the intricacies of the back office, which provides a different perspective of SMUD financials. While this position builds upon on current understanding of WBS forecasting and planning, you will also learn the monthly close process, master data creation, and general SAP/BPC/BW maintenance. You will also be responsible for supporting your Business Unit Planning Coordinator, as well as the Communications, Marketing & Community Relations (CMCR) Business Segment.

 

As the successful candidate, you will demonstrate the ability to provide financial support to your assigned BUPC, be a solid contributor to your team, collaborate, provide value-add analysis, translate "budget speak" to the business, and provide value to the client while keeping the bigger picture in view. You will be able to adapt to fast changing deliverables, as well as be flexible in everyday roles and responsibilities, while demonstrating exceptional attention to detail and possessing strong technical skills. As a member of the team, you will play an integral part in being a trusted advisor in supporting SMUD's business objectives through tailored services to meet client's needs, actionable, forward-looking information and performance reporting, and data driven analysis and consultation.

 

We are posting this opportunity for the Business Planning Analyst Entry along with our Business Planning Analyst Journey level position. The department will be filling one position at either of those levels. If you are interested in the Business Planning Analyst Journey position you will need to apply to that position separately.

Purpose

To provide value-added financial and technical analysis, consultation, reporting and assistance to client organizations to drive effective planning, budget and work process management practices, and timely business decisions.

Nature and Scope

This classification is comprised of two levels: Level "E" is the entry-level where incumbents are provided formal training and/or certification for progression to the journey-level of the classification. The incumbent is promoted/progressed to the journey level "J" upon successful completion of all training and/or certification requirements for the classification. Incumbents hired at the entry-level are required to successfully progress to the journey-level within 18 to 60 months, depending on the length of the training and/or certification program. If an employee is unsuccessful with progressing to the journey-level they will return to last class held or separate from SMUD.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Learns to partners closely with assigned client organizations to develop work plans, resource requirements and budgets, and work performance measures for SMUD core work and services, programs, projects, and overhead expenditures.
• Gains knowledge and experience to analyze, evaluate, and report on budget and work performance; accurately measures plan to work completed and actual cost, and fully determines drivers and causes of work and financial variances; provides value added recommendations to budget and work process owners for effective planning and work performance management.
• Proactively seeks to understand business unit/area dynamics, including business drivers, challenges, constraints, and opportunities to enable high-value consultation and assistance for planning, budget and work process management.
• Translates financial and work performance data into value-added information and presents to enlighten and persuade decision makers.
• Prepares budget and work performance management reports; determines the materiality of variances to formally report and discusses with budget and work process owners; identifies resource constraints and variance and provides exception monitoring.
• Researches and develops budget expenditure forecasts using a well-developed knowledge of the client organization's operations and dynamics in combination with statistical tools and methods, such as trend analysis, and seasonal fluctuation patterns. Partners closely with internal clients to develop, finalize and report on forecast projections.
• Develops cost-benefit analyses, including identifying relevant costs, resource requirements and optimization for decisions at hand; performs scenario analysis with most likely outcomes identified.
• Reports monthly/quarterly financial data to internal stakeholders.
• Utilizes software tools, such as Excel, SAP, BPC, Power BI and enterprise data warehouse at a high level of proficiency to an