U.S. Forecasting Manager

About AbbVie
AbbVie’s mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people’s lives across several key therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, neuroscience, eye care, virology, women’s health and gastroenterology, in addition to products and services across its Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Position Overview

 

The primary objective of this position is to provide an end-to-end US Demand & Revenue forecast for the Central Nervous System (CNS) therapeutic area (TA). You will be directly supporting a portfolio of psychiatry brands, which presently attribute for over $1.5Bn of annual net sales (as of 2019). While being responsible for producing comprehensive analytics and presentations around the forecast to AbbVie leadership, this role owns the entire market and revenue models. The forecaster will also have the opportunity to support other key brands within the CNS portfolio, such as acute and preventive migraine brands.

 

The forecaster will primarily support the Associate Director of CNS Forecasting, the CNS Finance Controller, the CNS Commercial VP, Associate Vice President brand leads, and their teams. Emphasis is placed on explaining the brand evolution/outlook to executive leadership, facilitating optimal decision making & investment in the marketplace, as well as providing precise financial guidance to stakeholders.

 

This role will be responsible for partnering closely with the Revenue Recognition/Gross to Net (GTN), Market Analytics and Business Insight (MABI), Sales & Marketing, Market Access, and Customer Service teams.

 

 

Core Responsibilities

1. Actuals Reporting & Interpretation
   • Partner with the Revenue Recognition and MABI teams as well as consultants/external vendor to populate actuals data in the market and revenue models, while performing careful quality checks and asking analytical questions to ensure data integrity
   • Complete key financial close schedules for a variety of stakeholders to demonstrate the CNS financial results for monthly, quarterly, and annual fiscal periods
   • Triangulate the data described above and derive vital takeaways, trends, risks, and opportunities, highlighting them to leadership in a clear & concise manner
   • Synthesize the aggregated data & associated insights and leverage them into a more accurate forecast going forward, accounting for the conclusions from recent data while bifurcating the ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’ in statistical fluctuations

 

Forecast Cycles – Latest Best Estimate (LBE), Plan, Long Range Plan (LRP):

• Drive the LBE, Plan, and LRP forecast for CNS end to end. This entails:
• Align with commercial business partners and finance leaders on pro-forma hypotheses for forecast variables, supported by quantitative evidence as well as qualitative insights on past & future market events
• Integrate hypotheses into market model and revenue model variable forecasts, while ensuring the models are calibrated to provide the most precise outputs
• Curate the outputs from the forecast models into
  • (a) comprehensive analytical reports cut from several angles to provide sufficient brand detail to key finance customers
  • (b) thoughtful & streamlined presentations to provide leadership with a holistic understanding of the market dynamics and resulting financial outcomes

 

Partnership with Customers for Related Deliverables:

• While the Forecasting Cycles are the primary deliverable and most crucial objective for the Forecasting Team, there are a myriad of secondary deliverables which are also integral to successful performance. These include, but are not limited to:
• Investor Relations quarterly and ad-hoc reports to prepare for earnings calls and external facing interactions. These range from market and share related reports to sales & margin focused deliverables.
• Sales & Marketing field incentive compensation planning forecast scenarios as well as key commercial program rollout situation planning
• Division Headquarters ad hoc reporting requests and corporate initiatives, such as operational excellence and continuous improvement special projects
• Market Access payer/provider deal-related negotiation strategy input
• Revenue Recognition / Gross to Net forecast inputs to inform upon required balance sheet accruals, releases, and adjustments
• Trade Team collaboration to ensure optimal business practices with CNS customers, as well as anticipating ordering patterns and inventory fluctuations
• Global Operations & Demand Planning partnering to ensure optimal supply of inventory to support your financial forecasts, deliver max forecast scenarios, and be informed of supply chain strategies to improve distribution margin
• Competitive Intelligence teamwork to align on recent developments with competitor earnings reports, clinical trial data, filing, and approval timelines
• Global Commercial Development cooperation to understand internal clinical trial timelines and probabilities for success / approval and commercialization in new disease indications and lines of therapy

Qualifications

Required:

• 5+ years progressive accounting, finance and/or forecasting + analytics experience
• Bachelor’s Degree in Analytics, Mathematics/Statistics, Business, Economics, Finance, Accounting, Operations, or Marketing
• Must have strong analytical, technical, and problem-solving skills, along with good interpersonal skills to effectively work with all levels of management
• Proficiency in triangulating significant amounts of data and statistics from multiple sources, and building strong assumptions & hypotheses supported by the data
• Agility to prioritize and quickly understand issues and assess data integrity is critical due to challenging deadlines
• High aptitude for quantitative recall through organization & compartmentalization, dealing with 10+ variables simultaneously each with multiple scenarios & sensitivities
• Comfort working with large amounts of uncertainty through creative scenario modeling, data triangulation, & cross-functional collaboration to inform forecasting
• Experience presenting complex concepts to an organization’s executive leadership in high pressure settings
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel & Microsoft PowerPoint; above standard corporate finance usage
• Ability to work independently and self-starter, supporting the business and forecasting leadership in variety of locations
• Driven to stay current with current market events by reviewing internal analysis and performing independent research

Preferred:

• Master’s/MBA, CPA, CMA, and/or CFA
• 7+ years progressive accounting, finance and/or forecasting + analytics experience
• 2+ years of demand forecasting experience within the pharmaceutical industry
• Experience with US healthcare industry-standard data sets, specifically IMS/Quintiles (IQVIA) claims, NPA Rx, 867 and 852 feeds from pharmacies and wholesalers, along with primary research studies.
• Comfortable developing and presenting discounted cash flows models to support investment decision and profitability analysis
• Microsoft Excel VBA and Power BI (or other data visualization application) development proficiency

Significant Work Activities
N/A
Travel
Yes, 5 % of the Time
Job Type
Experienced
Schedule
Full-time
Job Level Code
IC
Equal Employment Opportunity
At AbbVie, we value bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds to develop new and innovative solutions for patients. As an equal opportunity employer we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.