Demand Planner Jobs

Demand Planner

We’re OperationsInc, a Human Resources consulting company. Our client, Yellow Wood Partners, is a Boston-based private investment firm that invests exclusively in the consumer industry https://www.yellowwoodpartners.com/. They have recently purchased Suave brand in North America from Unilever and have retained us to find a Demand Planner to join the new team at Suave Brands Co.

Suave is a leading personal care brand that sells products across hair care, body care, and anti-perspirant/ deodorant. This is an exciting opportunity to get in at the ground floor of this new, stand-alone company. Suave is the #1 hair care brand in America by volume stressing great product quality at an attractive price. They have been providing consumers with accessible high-quality products for over 75 years!

Position Summary

The Demand Planner will be responsible for forecast planning, including the creation of weekly and monthly forecasts by SKU, production launches and transitions. The responsibilities include creating and maintaining forecast models for all customers, incorporating business intelligence and forecasting information gathered from sales, marketing, finance, retail replenishment analyst and other sources. The Demand Planner is the liaison between Sales and Supply Chain organization. This position leads the dialogue each month for their respective products/customers with key counterparts in Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain Operations.

Primary Responsibilities Include the Following:

• Prepare and maintain meaningful reports pertaining to demand planning process.
• Contribute and participate in the monthly S&OP meeting.
• Maintain, analyze, update and own monthly item forecasts, including new products.
• Develop continuous improvement tasks such as data analysis, ABC segmentation calculation, monthly monitoring of alerts and deviation tracking, demand pattern identification and customer behavior analysis.
• Monitor and report on significant variances between sales forecast, budgets and actual volume sold.
• Improve relationships among planners, sales, finance and marketing which will lead to effective knowledge sharing and an optimal consensus forecast to better guide the company.
• Coordinate with the sales team and account managers to incorporate forecast for new opportunities.
• Coordinate with cross-functional (sales, marketing & finance) teams to reconcile significant variances to build an unconstrained demand plan.
• Ensure that the Demand Planning system (Stock IQ) is used optimally.
• Closely coordinate and communicate customer issues with supply planning.
• Facilitate and lead regional and/or local demand review meetings with sales team and account managers.
• Demonstrate strong work ethics, teamwork, innovation, productivity and driving profitable results.
• Lead root-cause analysis into major forecast variances, identify reasons/assumptions/risks behind forecasted numbers.
• Review historical sales trends, research demand drivers, integrate market intelligence to prepare forecast data.

Primary Requirements Include the Following:

• At least 5 years of experience in operations or supply chain with a minimum of 2 years in Demand Planning.
• Experience with supply chain planning software with strong Excel acumen.
• Bachelor's degree in supply chain management, finance, or business-related field. Master's degree a plus.
• Experience in the consumer goods industry is strongly preferred. Food, Drug, Mass channels is a plus. Personal care category a plus.
• Ability to stay current with industry trends and best practices in supply chain.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across departments.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to use data to drive decision-making.

Personal Attributes Include the Following:

• Knows what excellence looks like and how to get there.
• Inquisitive individual who has a history of seeking out best practices and successfully assimilating them into their organization.
• Ability to develop and implement strategy, with a high bias for execution and activation.
• Invokes trust, collaboration, shared accountability, and continuous improvement with the ability to quickly develop trust and loyalty at all levels in the organization and with external constituents.
• Demonstrated track record of problem solving and priority setting.
• Positive and energetic individual with a strong business acumen, an abiding sense of urgency to achieve results.