Senior Manager, Financial Planning

Panera Bread is actively seeking a Senior Manager, Financial Planning

Overview

 

Panera is a specialty bakery cafe concept offering careers as diverse as our breads. Panera Bread is currently looking to hire a highly-motivated individual with strong financial and analytical skills and experience to fill the role of Senior Manager, Financial Planning. This person will report to the Vice President, Finance and will be a member of Panera’s leadership team.

 

The Senior Manager, Financial Planning will be responsible for Panera’s annual planning, long range-planning and monthly forecasting. The position also requires managing a junior analyst and working with a cross functional team of analysts from Panera’s four business units (Development, Retail, Franchise and Supply Chain) to integrate planning and monthly forecasting and reporting activities. The Senior Manager,Financial Planning will serve as a partner to senior leaders throughout the business, providing them with analysis to support strategic decision-making and tactical execution as required.

 

The Senior Manager, Financial Planning will take immediate responsibility for managing the day-to-day planning & forecasting processes. We are looking for an individual to lead the improvement and standardization of financial planning and management reporting processes, including the tracking of key operating metrics fundamental to the business. This person will provide intellectual and team leadership to these processes and many areas of the company’s reporting and business analysis. The Senior Manager, Financial Planning will be in direct contact with the company’s CFO and entire finance team.

 

Key Responsibilities

 

Help Panera continue to be a top-performing bakery-cafe concept by analyzing, clarifying and resolving issues critical to our success. Assist with the preparation of the annual retail operating plan and periodic forecasts, while building productive relationships with your teammates across a variety of business units and the parent company. Personal competencies for success include the ability to master both strategic and operational issues, the ability to dynamically handle multiple competing priorities, outstanding teamwork and collaboration skills, excellent communication skills, and a positive “can-do� attitude.

 

If you’ve got a healthy competitive streak, good problem solving skills, strong attention to detail and experience in budgeting, forecasting and P & L analysis, we’d like to hear from you. We’ll ask you to leverage your talent and experience to contribute meaningfully to our business and culture; and we’ll give you the information, tools and mentors you need to succeed.

 

Accountabilities

 

- Manage and execute and improve the company’s bi-monthly forecasting process and the reporting on those forecasts

- Manage and execute on the company’s key metric reporting and forecasting, which is used by the senior management in turn to manage the entire business

- Act as a key player in the company’s annual plan process and execute key areas of that plan

- Work closely with a cross-functional team of analysts reporting into the business units to produce the forecasts and supporting analysis

- Participate monthly in the company’s P&L reviews of each department and business unit in the company

- Provide additional ad hoc analytical support as needed to senior management

 

Qualifications

 

- No jerks: Our relationships are based on respect and honesty. This is our foremost cultural value.

- Appreciation for our three other cultural values: Rule #1: We form a connection through authenticity and service. Rule #2: No shortcuts. We get the tough stuff done with optimism and mastery. Rule #3: Profit provides possibilities and sustains the growth of our concept and our people.

- Great sense of judgment and the humility to ask for advice.

- Personal commitment to excellence in your work.

- Appetite for success… and the gumption and endurance to achieve it.

- Willingness to roll up your sleeves and do what it takes for your projects to succeed.

- An attention to detail and an intense drive to “get it right�

- Ability to manage complexity and ambiguity

- Collaborative working style and an ability to foster effective working relationships within a team environment

- Strong verbal and written communication skills, including ability to communicate with a wide range of individuals and constituencies (from the CEO on down)

- Comfortable interacting with various levels of the organization from Senior Management to unit level associates.

- High proficiency in Excel required. Experience with any of the following a plus: Oracle General Ledger, Oracle Discoverer (Reporting and Query Tool), and Oracle Financials Software (OFA Budgeting Software).

- Experience with planning tools (i.e. OFA, Cognos, Hyperion) desirable

- An MBA from a top business school.

- 4-6 years experience in either corporate finance, planning, investment banking or consulting

- Very strong strategic, analytical and problem-solving skills

- Finance & accounting education critical

- Top tier academic credentials and performance