I’m going to start this with a confession: I am a massive 
numbers geek and as such words are not something considered a strong point. So thanks to the army of people who have helped me to string together some coherent sentences, or not as the case may be!
So what does a Commercial Forecasting Manager actually do? Well despite the name I don’t actually manage anyone - I in fact manage Spreadsheets and Databases (the appraisals are very one sided). The primary function I have within the business is to report the Mark to Market value of our current portfolio every month for Gas, Power and Embedded Generation.
This essentially forecasts the forward value of live and future contracts, how profitable they are in the current market conditions, and includes the value of Procurements decisions off the back of contracts being signed. From this we can determine which contracts are performing well or not so well, the MtM value of a contract at any point in time, and potentially assist Sales and Risk with information for renewals.
This takes a large chunk of my month up and if you’re reading this over the month-end period then a day in my life is very structured. Run Databases, populate spreadsheets, validate and repeat until it all starts making sense. Disclaimer: Time taken to reply to e-mails/requests will dramatically increase during this period, thank you for your patience!
Outside of this rather hectic window I don’t really have a typical day (apart from making the decision to risk driving down the Balcombe Road or not to get here). My days are either led by projects or requests from others.
I can spend time doing various portfolio analysis, assessing the odd Risk reduction for my colleagues in Sales, making tea, developing and improving the current processes I run, making more tea, fixing databases the department or others use, making even more tea, preparing for upcoming reporting I have to produce like the Budget or Long Term Plan or…you’ve guessed it…making tea. I also analyse and set TGP’s Deemed rates; apologies to all for updating both fuels in under a year, I really didn’t want to be THAT guy.
If, after reading this, you would like to know more about what I do, then I am more than happy to set up a meeting and talk you through it. A previous review early in my career here of “I came out of that job watch thinking you were really boring” is something you can all look forward to. I like to think I’ve improved since then…
