Senior Demand Planning Specialist

About the role

Location: Remote (candidates must be located in the United States)

About This Role

Responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the Demand Plan for the departments.

This includes implementation of performance standards/operating procedures that affect the Demand Planning function; deployment of related demand planning tools/reports; and maintenance of demand forecast for the business unit.

Champion of the Sales and Operations Planning Process (MBP - Monthly Business Planning), assessing content of the Monthly Sales and Gap Reviews through collaboration meetings with cross functional partners, and Weekly Business Review (WBR) meetings, ensuring robust business processes and facilitating the interaction between Sales, Marketing, Finance and Operations

What You'll Do

• Creates and maintains the appropriate Master Data in the planning systems in use, minimizing errors, avoiding duplication/obsolescence and reflecting product lifecycle (e.g. Product Hierarchy, Finished Goods creation workflow, Demand Lifecycle Management).
• Generates and maintains a Demand Plan for the business unit at the levels (product hierarchy & time) at which the decisions are taken, appropriately considering recent events.
• Understands Demand Planning key performance metrics and targets.
• Consistently improves Demand Plan Accuracy and drives out systematic forecast bias through detailed root cause analysis on past performance, maintaining an efficient learning log.
• Effectively utilizing all Demand Planning system functionalities to enable an exception based management approach. Implement improvements to the Demand Planning processes and tools to deliver tangible benefits (e.g. time saving, efficiencies).
• Contributes to the cross-functional planning activities according to best practices and ensures necessary preparation and follow up actions for the Monthly Business Planning meetings are completed in due time.
• Makes recommendations on the baseline forecast for the business unit and defends the appropriate changes to the Consensus Demand Plan (CDP).

Additional information

Captures, prioritizes and analyzes forecast assumptions used in the consensus demand plan, such as Marketing and Sales events, customer, consumer and competitor information, product launches and related cannibalization with impact to the demand plan.

• Analyzes actual sales to Customers and sell-out (e.g. POS, if available) data to identify exceptional and unforecasted activities, challenging the appropriate groups to help explain deviations to forecast. Use findings to drive timely and appropriate actions to minimize the impact of deviations from the Demand Plan.
• Presents outcomes for the Monthly Business Planning process to leadership and get buy-in from the relevant stakeholders.
• Through systematic reporting, ensures the latest Demand Plan is readily available to internal business partners as required.
• Partnering with supply for discontinuations and reformulations.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• 3-5 years of business experience in one of the functions: Demand & Supply Planning; Supply Chain Development; Procurement; Physical Logistics; Customer Service; Sales & Marketing; Finance.
• Planning experience in the area of Demand or Supply Planning.

Bonus Points

• Proven ability to influence others.
• Demand Planning and statistical forecasting techniques. Preferable DTC and/or ecommerce.
• Experience of implementing processes and systems to improve organization and working methods.
• Strong analytical aptitude with a proven ability to analyze/interpret data and build quantitative models of business problems.
• Excellent oral and written skills, organizational and time-management abilities, effective inter-personal skills, and the ability to work with personnel at all organizational levels.
• Flexibility and adaptability to the demands and requirements of a fast-paced environment with multiple demands and priorities.
• Creative thinking skills with emphasis on developing innovative solutions to complex problems.

Compensation & Benefits

• Up to $43.00 per hour + Overtime
• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• 401(k)
• Disability insurance