Job Purpose
The Senior Business Analyst – Africa BP&A plays a key role in driving integrated financial planning and performance management for Pernod Ricard Africa. Based in South Africa, the role supports the BP&A Director by translating strategy into financial plans and forecasts across multiple African markets. It provides a unified view of regional performance through analysis and consolidation, enabling data-driven decision-making in a complex environment. The position combines planning, forecasting, performance analysis, and business partnering to support profitable growth, ensure alignment with Group objectives, and deliver valuable insights to senior leadership.
Key Duties and Responsibilities
1. Strategic Planning & Budgeting
- Integrated Planning: Support and coordinate the end-to-end strategic planning and annual budgeting process for PR Africa, in close partnership with the BP&A Director. This includes consolidating multi-year strategic plans, annual budgets, and Risks & Opportunities (R&O) for all African markets, ensuring alignment with Africa & Middle East (AME) regional priorities and Group guidance.
- Robust Assumptions & Scenario Planning: Ensure that long-range plans and annual budgets are built on robust, well-documented assumptions (e.g. volume, price/mix, A&P, OPEX, CAPEX, FX, working capital). Conduct scenario analyses and sensitivity modelling to test key assumptions and support strategic decision-making, providing management with contingency views for volatile market conditions (e.g., FX swings, inflation, demand shocks).
- Stakeholder Alignment: Work with commercial leads and other key stakeholders and business leaders to translate strategic goals into clear financial plans for each market, challenging and validating submissions to drive ambition while ensuring plans remain realistic and aligned to Group/AME guidelines. Facilitate review sessions and secure sign-offs for budgets and strategic plans at Africa CFO/ExCo level.
2. Rolling Forecasting & Performance Management
- Rolling Forecast (RF) Orchestration: Lead the preparation, consolidation, and analysis of rolling forecasts (e.g., 18+ month outlooks) across all African markets on a periodic (monthly/quarterly) basis. Ensure a disciplined RF cycle is followed region-wide, coordinating input from local finance teams and updating outlooks continuously to reflect current trends and new developments.
- Performance Analysis & Reporting: Analyse financial performance vs. plan, prior year, and latest forecasts for the region, identifying variance drivers, trends, risks and opportunities. Prepare high-quality P&L analyses and executive commentary (e.g., P&L Slicer, Flash reports) for the Africa CFO, regional CODI/ExCo, and Group FP&A, clearly explaining business performance, root causes of variances, and forecast changes.
- Restitution & Corrective Actions: Highlight under-performance or gaps (versus targets) and proactively recommend corrective measures. Work with affiliate finance teams to track mitigation plans and restitution actions addressing risks or shortfalls, and follow up to ensure timely execution and accountability for performance improvement.
- Executive Support: Provide timely financial updates and business forecasts to the Africa CFO and leadership, enabling agile responses to new information. Step in to represent the BP&A function in performance reviews when needed, ensuring continuity of insights and advice.
3. Regional Financial Consolidation & Reporting
- Africa Financial Consolidation: Oversee the consolidation of financial results, forecasts, and plans across all African markets (and support Middle East where required) to deliver a single source of truth and unified regional view. Validate and reconcile submissions from various country units, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and compliance with Group reporting standards and timelines.
- Management Reporting & Commentary: Ensure the timely and accurate delivery of monthly and quarterly management reports for Africa, including P&Ls, KPIs, dashboards, and ad-hoc analyses for regional reviews. Own the preparation and submission of Africas financial reports into Group consolidation systems (e.g., Polaris, HFM, Essbase) within deadlines.
- Investment Analysis & Governance: Support the BP&A Director and Africa CFO in evaluating major investments, business cases, and resource allocation decisions, ensuring consistency with strategic plans and robust ROI analysis. Track post-investment performance to inform future decision-making and capital allocation across markets.
4. Business Partnering & Decision Support
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Act as senior finance business partner to Africas leadership teams in Commercial (Sales & Trade Marketing), Brand Marketing, Supply Chain/Operations, and country management. Collaborate closely with these functions to integrate financial insights into commercial strategies, operations planning, and strategic initiatives.
- Decision-Enabling Analysis: Provide deep financial analysis, insight-led scenario modelling, and decision support to evaluate strategic options (e.g. pricing and Revenue Growth Management (RGM) decisions, portfolio prioritisation, new market entries, cost optimisation initiatives). Translate complex financial data into clear recommendations and what-if scenarios.
- Focus on Value Creation: Ensure all business decisions are grounded in value creation metrics and long-term financial goals. Emphasise topline growth, PRO (Profit from Recurring Operations) and margin improvement, cash flow generation, and return on investment (ROI) in analyses and recommendations.
- Market Collaboration: Build strong working relationships with finance counterparts across African affiliates to support local performance management and share best practices in financial planning & analysis region-wide. Serve as a trusted advisor, providing guidance on forecasts, financial analysis, and actions to achieve targets.
5. Financial Governance & Process Improvement
- Planning & Forecasting Governance: Implement and enforce robust BP&A processes and governance across the region, aligned with Pernod Ricard Group policies and best ways of working. Maintain clear calendars and timetables for strategic planning, budgeting, and rolling forecast cycles, ensuring all markets adhere to deadlines and submission standards.
- Standardisation & Best Practices: Standardise methodologies, templates, and tools for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting across varying market maturities, balancing consistency with local relevance. Champion best practices in financial analysis and reporting, promoting continuous improvement in accuracy, efficiency, and insight generation across Africa BP&A.
- Continuous Improvement: Proactively seek opportunities to simplify and improve planning processes and analytical methods, leveraging lean principles and feedback from local teams. Drive a culture of continuous improvement and agility.
6. Tools, Systems & Data Management
- Digital Finance & Systems: Act as the Africa regions power userand champion for BP&A systems and tools, such as Group consolidation/planning platforms and BI dashboards. Drive effective use of tools (e.g., Polaris, HFM/Essbase, Anaplan) for forecasting, reporting, and analysis; ensure high data integrity through rigorous validation, master data management, and reconciliation across ERP and BI platforms.
- Enhancements & Analytics: Collaborate with Group FP&A and Transformation teams to roll out system enhancements and new analytical capabilities (e.g., advanced planning models, predictive analytics). Promote adoption of digital analytics (including AI tools) to improve forecast accuracy, automate variance analysis, and accelerate reporting processes.
- Training & Support: Train and support country finance teams in using BP&A tools and templates correctly for their submissions, providing ongoing guidance on reporting standards and use of data/BI tools.
7. Leadership & Team Development
- People Development: Mentor and coach junior BP&A team members (e.g., Business Analysts, Analysts, Interns) to build analytical capabilities and strong BP&A skills across the region. Foster a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and high performance within the BP&A community.
- Collaboration & Communication: Exhibit strong leadership behaviours that encourage cross-functional collaboration, proactive communication, and mutual accountability for results. Act as a deputy to the BP&A Director when required, ensuring continuity of leadership and effective representation of the BP&A function in regional forums.
Qualifications and Experience:
- Bachelors degree in Finance, Accounting, Business or related field (required). A postgraduate qualification (e.g., MBA) or professional certification such as CIMA, CA(SA), CPA is highly advantageous.
- 5-8 years relevant experience in FP&A, management reporting, or related finance roles; regional/multinational exposure and coordination of budgeting/forecast cycles preferred.
- Proven delivery of end-to-end budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes; demonstrated ability to derive insights and present analysis to senior management and cross-functional teams.
Technical Skills: Advanced Excel; experience with ERPs and BI tools (e.g., SAP, JDE, Essbase, PowerBI, QlikView). Familiarity with planning/consolidation platforms (e.g., Polaris, Anaplan) and strong aptitude to learn new tools.
Job Posting End Date:
Target Hire Date:
2026-07-01
Target End Date:
