Senior Forecasting Analyst - #1795360

Job Title: Senior Forecasting Analyst

Reports to: Head of Analytics

Department: Strategy, Policy & Insights (Analytics)

Location: Leeds. Manchester & Glasgow

Job Grade: P1

DEPARTMENT DESCRIPTION

The Strategy, Policy & Insight (Function) are trusted thought-leaders bringing expert strategy, policy, market & audience insight – challenging and advising the business to drive delivery of Channel 4’s strategy and remit.

The new centralised Audience Insights (Subfunction) purpose is to be independent thought leaders at the heart of Channel 4’s creative and commercial decision-making, bringing a single source of truth and big picture perspective, challenging and advising the business to ensure profitable business growth through the use of data.

Within the new centralised operating model, Specialists across Analytics, Research, Reporting and Data Enablement have come together from teams across the business to become centres of excellence in their respective disciplines. Working alongside Business Partners, these teams will work to translate data into actionable insights, managing jointly the presentation back of recommendations to the C-Suite or Senior Leader.

As part of this centralisation, audience forecasting processes for the streaming business fall under the Analytics remit in order to begin the journey of building a single view of how Channel 4 is performing and deliver this analysis to the business.

JOB PURPOSE

Working under the direction of the Analytics Lead, this individual will own the streaming forecasting process at Channel 4, and later help build and own the new centralised audience forecast process at Channel 4.

The role will work to deliver quarterly forecasting, generating insights across business performance to explain the drivers of change to the business whilst constantly striving to improve the process, creating a longer term, sustainable process, allowing for innovation and optimisation, incorporating insights and delivering all business requirements.

The role will report into the Analytics Lead, working alongside and having the opportunity to learn from Data engineering and (later) Data Science to provide the optimal outcome.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Deliver to the streaming forecasting needs of the business
• Communicate with stakeholders and current process owners to understand the current forecasting landscape and jobs that need to be completed
• Own key elements of the Channel 4 forecasting process, agreeing key deliverables and timelines. Eventually, work with the Reporting team to design self-serve reporting on the forecast
• Contribute ideas to the design of the longer term view of the project, including potential ideas on methodologies, capabilities and outputs that better deliver against remit and further unlocks the insight potential
• Build strong relationships across the Insight team (particularly within Analytics, Data Enablement and the Business Partnership team) to gain broader business context and support
• Promote understanding of forecasting techniques and best practice across the business and within Insight
• Contribute ideas, options & solutions to the Forecasting Analytics Manager and Analytics Lead to evolve the insight function’s impact, value & capability.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS / STAKEHOLDERS

• Analytics Lead for direction
• Reporting team to deliver automated solutions
• Current forecast owners (across Analytics and Business Partnership) to understand what is currently done and key requirements for future solutions
• Insight Business Partners for business context
• No direct financial accountability

ESSENTIAL SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Forecasting – Understanding and keen interest in forecasting in a large organisation is a must, along with understanding of methodologies and processes required to deliver this. Direct experience a plus
• Storytelling – the ability to translate complex data to clear messages and bring well considered, valued recommendations to drive profitable decision-making
• Coding - Advanced capability to write in SQL on complex datasets and conduct data modelling & forecasting ideal; Python/R or other statistical programming language experience a plus
• Innovative thinking – Demonstrable passion for Analytics techniques and ability to think outside the box to identify new solutions to business problems
• Collaborative - Experience working collaboratively with other Analysts within different domains
• Prioritisation - Ability to handle multiple projects and priorities, manage timescales and delivery often under pressure, knowing when to raise to line manager for help
• Presentation skills - Ability to engage effectively when presenting back on findings – specifically personal confidence, capability to challenge, debate, advise and recommend solutions
• Statistics - Understanding of statistics concepts (e.g., propensity modelling, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, time series analysis) preferred
• Media experience - Sector experience in a media or broadcast company including exposure to product & viewer data a plus

COMPETENCIES

• Enabling Strategy & Change, Advancing Analytics Capability, Managing Data & Information, Harnessing Insights & Learning