Director, Business Planning & Operations GCC

Job Description

Company DescriptionVisa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating more than 215 billion payments transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive.When you join Visa, you join a culture of purpose and belonging ? where your growth is priority, your identity is emBrandced, and the work you do matters. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere. Your work will have a direct impact on billions of people around the world ? helping unlock financial access to enable the future of money movement.Join Visa: A Network Working for Everyone.The GCC Business Planning and Operations (BP&O) team directly supports the GCC Group Country Manager (GCM) and sets out to facilitate achievement of financial and business goals for the region. Closely engaging with all internal stakeholders (GCM, Country Managers, CEMEA Regional Hub and various functional verticals), the team provides guidance, oversight and project management across strategic and BAU priorities of the region.Principle Responsibilities - Key Results AreaThe Director-Business Planning and Operations will support the Head of BP&O GCC in financial planning, decision making, competitive tracking, managing strategic business initiatives, implementing important projects, tracking client support programs, management reporting, insights and related areas. Primary responsibilities of this position are:

• Ensure strategic projects are executed as per business requirements by:
• Overseeing major strategic project work streams related to Visa business. This includes tracking of progress against agreed milestones, designing and managing a governance structure, highlighting issues, and creating a mechanism for corrective action when required
• Maintaining business landscape knowledge to provide solid foundational context to critical strategic projects
• Collaborate with business line management across GCC
• Specific project content will vary greatly in sponsor, business or strategic focus, depth, and stakeholders served, ranging from broad co-ordination efforts across multiple countries or functional areas to focused special assignments for senior management that are of high strategic importance to Visa?s business
• Facilitate the annual business planning cycle, handle cross-functional discussions, review all proposals, and ensure optimal investment of resources in order to finalize the operating plan for GCC
• Identify, structure, and manage complex issues to arrive at recommendations that drive corporate objectives. Drive solving of a range of business problems by collaborating and coordinating with multiple internal stakeholders
• Research and analyse internal, external data, information and trends to present client and market level insights to the GCC leadership team
• Communicate and generate support for recommendations among business leaders across the organization
• Maintain tight alignment and work closely with Functional and Country management teams, acting as a project manager on strategic or pan-regional projects, and bringing timely and useful insight, perspective, analytical support, and research resources. Specific project content will vary greatly in sponsor, business or strategic focus, depth, and stakeholders served, ranging from broad co-ordination efforts across multiple countries or functional areas to focused special assignments for senior management that are of high strategic importance to Visa?s business
• Work with minimal direction, usually within a complex and often ambiguous environment, to drive rigorous, fact-based recommendations to regional management
• Balance facilitation, influence, and content contribution to help business leaders design their strategies and achieve their goals
• Prepare regular management reporting and presentation documents

Reporting Relationships

• The position is based in Dubai and reports to the Head of Business Planning & Operations, GCC
• This is an individual contributor role, with no direct reports

Qualifications

• Strategic consulting background is obligatory
• Experience in and/or exposure to the financial services payments industry is beneficial
• Strategic thinking, strong analytical skills and financial acumen
• Ability to clearly communicate, verbally and in writing, compelling messages to senior managers and other stakeholders
• Self-confident and hands-on, with the ability to operate in a fast paced and constantly changing work environment
• Ability to rally corporate resources and functional experts to drive business objectives
• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills to influence and build credibility with various GCC functions and Country teams, in order to work in a matrix organization
• Project management skills and strong execution ability to deliver against tight deadlines
• Collaborative and resilient
• Ability to learn quickly, deal with complexity and lead change
• Aptitude to source relevant information and facilitate timely decisions tolerance for ambiguity
• Ability to quickly assess an opportunity, using industry experience and fact-based analyses
• Good command of MS Excel and MS PowerPoint
• Bachelor?s degree with 10 years of business experience in Digital payments, Retail Banking, Management Consulting or Corporate Strategy
• Global or multi-national business experience strongly preferred, preferably in the GCC region
• Experience in handling projects with multiple work streams, and coordinating complex cross-enterprise processes with multiple stakeholders at both senior and junior levels

Additional InformationVisa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Keyskills :