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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for BBP Analyst

💰 $ - $

FinanceFP&ABusiness PlanningBudgetingAnalytics

🎯 Role Definition

The BBP Analyst (Business Budgeting & Planning Analyst / Business, Budget & Planning Analyst) is a finance and business-partnering professional responsible for driving accurate planning, budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis and performance reporting. This role partners with cross-functional teams to translate strategic priorities into financial plans, build robust models, deliver insightful management reporting, and recommend actions to improve profitability and operational performance.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Financial Analyst / Finance Intern with exposure to budgeting and reporting
  • Business Analyst or Data Analyst with finance-facing responsibilities
  • Accounting Analyst with month-end close and reconciliation experience

Advancement To:

  • Senior BBP Analyst / Senior FP&A Analyst
  • Finance Business Partner or Financial Planning Manager
  • FP&A Manager → Director of FP&A → Head of Finance / CFO (long-term)

Lateral Moves:

  • Data Analyst / Analytics Engineer (finance data focus)
  • Business Systems Analyst (ERP/FP&A tools specialist)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the end-to-end annual budgeting process for assigned business units or cost centers, coordinating timelines, consolidating input from stakeholders, validating assumptions, and producing final budget deliverables aligned to corporate strategy.
  • Create detailed monthly and quarterly financial forecasts using driver-based models and scenario analysis to quantify upside/downside risk and support executive decision-making.
  • Perform comprehensive variance analysis (actual vs. budget vs. forecast) for revenue, COGS, operating expenses and capital spend; identify root causes and prepare clear, actionable commentary and remediation plans.
  • Build, maintain and continuously improve dynamic financial models in Excel (and/or Anaplan/Hyperion) that support rolling forecasts, scenario planning and long-range financial plans; ensure models are auditable and version-controlled.
  • Develop and own key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards and executive reports (Power BI / Tableau) to visualize financial performance, trend analysis and operational metrics for business leaders and C-suite stakeholders.
  • Partner with commercial, operations, product and supply chain teams to translate operational drivers into financial impacts, guiding business leaders on levers to improve margin, cash flow and working capital.
  • Manage month-end and quarter-end reporting cycles: prepare consolidated variance packs, P&L analyses, capex reporting and balance-sheet reconciliations used by finance leadership and external auditors.
  • Conduct ad-hoc financial analysis to support business cases, pricing decisions, new product launches, promotional trade-offs and investment proposals; quantify ROI and present recommendations to leadership.
  • Optimize and automate recurring reporting processes through Excel macros, Power Query, Power BI, SQL scripts or automation tools to reduce manual effort and improve data reliability and timeliness.
  • Validate and reconcile transactional data from ERP and sub-ledger systems (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite) to ensure accurate inputs to budgeting and forecasting models and to maintain general ledger integrity.
  • Support the implementation and ongoing optimization of FP&A systems (Anaplan, Hyperion, Adaptive Insights), including requirements gathering, testing, user training and change management.
  • Lead cross-functional planning workshops, facilitating alignment on assumptions, volume drivers and cost expectations while driving consensus on final plans and priorities.
  • Maintain detailed documentation of planning processes, model logic, assumptions and data flows to ensure transparency and to accelerate onboarding of new team members.
  • Monitor and report on capital expenditure (CapEx) requests and approvals, including preparing business cases, tracking spend vs. plan and ensuring capitalization policies are applied consistently.
  • Provide financial governance and controls over planning activities; ensure compliance with internal policies, corporate guidelines and accounting standards such as GAAP/IFRS.
  • Conduct profitability and cost-to-serve analyses at product, customer or channel level to identify margin improvement opportunities and to inform pricing and promotional strategies.
  • Prepare investor-ready materials and management presentations for board meetings, monthly business reviews (MBRs) and quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with clear, concise narratives and decision-focused visuals.
  • Support M&A diligence or integration activities by preparing carve-out models, run-rate synergies estimates, and post-close tracking of integration metrics.
  • Maintain strong relationships with internal audit, tax and external auditors to provide required planning and variance support during reviews and financial close processes.
  • Track and analyze cash flow drivers, working capital trends and treasury impacts from planning scenarios to improve liquidity forecasting and cash optimization.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in training stakeholders on planning tools, reporting standards and the interpretation of financial metrics.
  • Identify process improvement opportunities and implement controls to reduce forecasting cycle time and error rates.
  • Coordinate with HR/Compensation on headcount planning, labor cost forecasting and scenario modeling for hiring or restructuring decisions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced Excel modeling skills: pivot tables, advanced formulas, INDEX/MATCH, dynamic named ranges, scenario manager and VBA/macro basics.
  • Strong experience with forecasting and budgeting methodologies, including driver-based and zero-based budgeting techniques.
  • Proficient in SQL for querying, cleansing and aggregating financial and operational datasets from transactional databases.
  • Power BI or Tableau experience for building dashboards, KPIs and interactive visualizations tailored to executive audiences.
  • Hands-on knowledge of FP&A platforms such as Anaplan, Hyperion, Adaptive Insights or similar planning tools.
  • Familiarity with ERP systems (SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, NetSuite) and extracting GL and sub-ledger data for analysis.
  • Financial accounting knowledge (GAAP/IFRS) and core concepts including revenue recognition, cost accounting and balance sheet impacts.
  • Experience with financial consolidation, month-end close schedules and variance reporting processes.
  • Basic scripting or analytics capabilities (Python, R, or Power Query) to automate data workflows and improve repeatability.
  • Strong competency in building business cases, ROI analysis, sensitivity testing and scenario planning.
  • Experience with capex planning, tracking and accounting treatment.
  • Knowledge of performance management frameworks and KPI definition for cross-functional teams.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate complex financial analyses into simple, decision-ready recommendations.
  • Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills; able to build credibility with business leaders and cross-functional teams.
  • Analytical mindset with attention to detail and a bias for data-driven decision making.
  • Proven project management skills, including the ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines and deliverables in a fast-paced environment.
  • Critical thinking and problem-solving: comfortable working with ambiguity and crafting pragmatic solutions.
  • Collaborative team player who can facilitate workshops and lead cross-functional discussions.
  • High level of integrity, discretion and confidentiality when handling sensitive financial information.
  • Adaptability and continuous improvement orientation; embraces new tools and process automation.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration, Data Analytics or a related quantitative field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree (MBA, MS Finance) or relevant professional certification (CMA, CPA, CFA) is preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Finance
  • Accounting
  • Economics
  • Business Analytics / Data Science
  • Management / Business Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–5 years of progressive experience in FP&A, corporate finance, business planning, or financial analysis roles.

Preferred:

  • 3–7 years of experience in FP&A or BBP roles with demonstrated ownership of budgeting, forecasting and financial modeling for complex businesses; experience in enterprise ERP and cloud FP&A tools is highly desirable.
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