Corporate Strategy and Business Planning Manager

Job purpose

To lead corporate strategic planning, performance management, and annual planning processes, ensuring alignment across business units and enabling data-driven decision-making through standardized planning frameworks, integrated data platforms, and performance analysis.

Key accountability areas

Strategic planning & alignment:

• Lead the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of corporate strategic objectives and plans.
• Cascade and align strategic objectives across the group, including sectors, subsidiaries, and business units.
• Ensure integration and consistency between all organizational strategies and the overall corporate strategy.
• Update strategic plans in response to internal and external changes, market dynamics, and organizational priorities.
• Evaluate strategic initiatives and ensure alignment with long-term corporate goals.

Performance management & KPI governance:

• Oversee the collection, consolidation, and analysis of strategic performance evaluation results.
• Ensure timely coordination with KPI owners and stakeholders for accurate and complete data submission.
• Analyze performance results and prepare periodic management reports in line with approved methodologies.
• Support KPI owners in assessing performance gaps and identifying challenges affecting low-performing indicators.
• Conduct root-cause analysis (RCA) for underperforming KPIs and propose actionable improvement plans.
• Monitor corrective actions and track improvement in KPI performance over time.

Project prioritization & portfolio analysis:

• Manage the prioritization of strategic projects based on organizational goals, resource availability, and constraints.
• Analyze interdependencies between projects in collaboration with project owners.
• Identify potential risks and propose mitigation strategies to ensure successful execution.
• Support decision-making for project selection, approval, and portfolio optimization.

Data platform development & standardization:

• Select, develop, and maintain data platforms for extraction, reporting, and executive decision-making.
• Standardize and unify data systems across sectors to ensure consistency in reporting and analysis.
• Build and enhance centralized databases, including foundational structures such as charts of accounts.
• Design and implement integrated platforms for annual planning, performance tracking, and reporting.
• Develop key data quality and performance indicators to ensure reliability and accuracy of information.
• Continuously improve data governance and platform integration across business units.

Annual planning & budget coordination:

• Standardize annual planning templates and ensure consistent adoption across all business units.
• Define timelines, submission requirements, and responsibilities for annual planning cycles.
• Ensure all business units maintain updated and approved annual plans.
• Monitor alignment of annual plans with strategic objectives and corporate priorities.

Annual plan performance monitoring & financial analysis:

• Analyze performance deviations in annual plans using centralized data platforms.
• Consolidate quarterly planning review outcomes and prepare executive reports.
• Review organizational and sector-level performance reports and consolidated budgets.
• Conduct financial and operational analysis at the sector level and provide actionable recommendations for improvement.
• Support leadership in identifying efficiency opportunities and performance optimization initiatives.

Role accountability

HR proficiency:

• Ability to recruit, recognize, and cultivate high performers and develop them in order to create a robust second line of management.
• Ability to recognize low performers and guide them to improve or release them.
• Ability to treat subordinates equally without any discrimination.
• Assessment criteria of subordinates is performance that leads to planned results.
• Ensure availability of delegation of authority matrix to have sufficient delegations as per company policy.

Responsibility:

• Must take full responsibility for his operation as per the job description and the required deliverables from this position, taking into consideration the general company guidelines.
• Able to anticipate problems and make the necessary proactive steps to prevent them.
• Ability to take necessary and proper timely decisions.

Delivery:

• Deliver the required results in a timely manner with required quality and cost.

Making a tangible difference:

• Must make a tangible difference to his area of operation and exceed business expectations.

Business planning and performance:

• Able to transform the corporate goals into business plans.
• Able to plan, follow-up, and execute those plans, whether they are annual or development plans.
• Monitor the plan performance and initiate action to strengthen results and take corrective action accordingly.
• Provide periodic work progress reports.
• Responsible for monitoring and controlling budgets and expenses to achieve optimum cost efficiency.

Organizational development:

• Develop the organizational structure according to the current requirements taking into consideration future and development plans.
• Ensure availability of job descriptions for all job roles and deployment.

Business process improvements:

• Develop, coordinate well-defined written systems, policies, procedures, and seek automation opportunities as much as possible.
• Should be conversant and able to navigate through IT solutions especially those relevant to his job and business.
• Promote the automated systems and use them fully, to spread its culture.

Quality:

Quality is considered as alfanar’s prime competitive advantage; as such, managers are expected to act accordingly.

Adaptation:

Adapt to new and alternative techniques, technologies, management structures, and business models.

Health, safety and environment:

Ensure a safe, secure, and legal work environment as per the standard regulations.

Academic qualification

Bachelor degree in business management or any relevant field.

Work experience

6 to 10 years.

Technical / functional competencies

• Financial analysis
• Financial forecasting
• Business planning
• Business planning and simulation (BPS)
• Business planning and consolidation (BPC)