Portfolio & Governance Analyst

Context: Our client is transforming its digital landscape. Within Group Digital, the Group Value Delivery Office owns the group’s Digital and IT investment and value delivery system: IT budget and portfolio governance, stage-gate investment decisions, efficiency management, strategic sourcing and partner governance, and performance and value assurance. The office works closely with the Group Chief Digital Officer, Group CFO and Finance, business leadership, the CIOs and CDOs of group entities, and Technical Capability Leads.

Role Summary: We are seeking an experienced Portfolio & Governance Analyst to support the Director of the Group Value Delivery Office in running the Digital and IT stage-gate process, portfolio governance and portfolio management cycle. The consultant will ensure that initiatives move through the stage gates with complete, good-quality decision material, that governance meetings are well prepared and followed up, and that the portfolio view is accurate and up to date.

The role also plays an active part in the IT budget cycle: actualising the current-year budget and translating it, together with all team leads, into next year’s capacity planning and IT budget. It works closely with Finance, Technical Capability Leads and domain leadership.

Key Responsibilities: Stage-Gate Process Follow-up: run the operational stage-gate cycle: intake of new demands, planning of gate reviews, and follow-up of gate decisions and conditions; check the completeness and quality of gate submissions (business case, scope, costs, planning, risks, benefits) and challenge project and domain owners where information is missing or inconsistent; keep the stage-gate log, decision register and action lists up to date; follow up open actions and escalate delays to the Director; propose practical improvements to stage-gate templates, criteria and ways of working.

Governance Support: prepare agendas, decision material and pre-reads for portfolio and investment governance meetings; take minutes, record decisions and track follow-up with the responsible owners; maintain the governance calendar and make sure the right stakeholders are involved at the right moment.

Portfolio Management Support: maintain the portfolio overview: status, budget consumption, forecast, milestones, risks and dependencies of Digital and IT initiatives; produce regular portfolio reporting and dashboards for the Director and executive stakeholders, highlighting deviations in scope, cost, timing and expected value; support capacity and cost trade-off analyses between run, change and innovation; contribute to benefit tracking of funded initiatives.

Budget Cycle & Capacity Planning for Next Year: take an active role in the IT budget cycle together with Finance: set up the planning calendar, templates and data requests, and coordinate input from Technical Capability Leads and domain leadership; lead the actualisation of the current-year budget: reconcile actuals, commitments, invoices and accruals against budget, update the forecast and explain variances; translate the actualised budget and the portfolio priorities into next year’s capacity planning, working with all team leads in the department: internal and external FTE, supplier capacity, and the split between run, change and innovation; consolidate budget and capacity requests, check them for consistency, and highlight gaps, overlaps and risks; prepare next year’s IT budget and portfolio plan for decision, including prioritisation scenarios and funding proposals.

Qualifications: Experience: 5 to 8 years of experience in IT portfolio management, PMO, IT governance, IT finance or business control in a large or multi-entity organisation; hands-on experience running or supporting a stage-gate or investment governance process; experience contributing to an annual IT budget cycle, including forecasting, budget actualisation and capacity planning.

Skills: good understanding of portfolio, programme and project management practices and of IT cost structures (run/change, capex/opex); strong analytical and reporting skills; advanced Excel and PowerPoint; experience with a portfolio management tool (e.g., Planview, Clarity, ServiceNow SPM) and with Power BI or similar reporting tools is an advantage; Master’s degree or equivalent experience; PMO, portfolio management (e.g., MoP, P3O) or PMP/PRINCE2 certification is an advantage.

Languages: fluent English and good knowledge of at least one of the local languages (Dutch or French).

Soft Skills: structured, rigorous and reliable; delivers on commitments and follows up without being chased; comfortable challenging senior stakeholders on the quality of information in a constructive way; clear written and verbal communication; able to turn complex information into concise decision material; able to work autonomously and pick up an existing process quickly.

Preferred Skills: experience in logistics, postal, transport or another large corporate environment with multiple business units; experience working with a Group Finance function on IT budgeting and forecasting.