Senior Demand Planner - (Personal Care)

Clicks is looking to recruit a Senior Demand Planner. The purpose of this role is to ensure effective demand and statistical forecasting for assigned categories in order to drive profitability through increased sales, improved margins, and working capital productivity.

Job Objectives

• To be accountable for forecast accuracy within the allocated categories.
• To be accountable for optimized inventory levels within the allocated categories and minimum order quantity within the allocated categories.
• To partner with the Category Managers on the development of pre-season sales, markdown, margin, and inventory plans.
• To analyze and propose to the merchandising department top line shifts in the assortment investment at the category level.
• At the category level monitor projections, inventory flow and seasonal sell-off plans as well as validate monthly forecast for open to buy management.
• To recognize and reconcile forecast exceptions to track and manage sales against forecast and validate forecast for OTB management.
• To determine causal factors impacting forecasts and respond appropriately (weather, moving events, promotions etc.).
• To ensure effective stakeholder management and engagement in order to determine trends, identify new products, evaluate risks and determine inventory and replenishment requirements.
• To generate and deliver accurate and timely management reports and maintain key metrics against goals in order to analyze forecast performance and ensure forecast accuracy and inventory optimization.
• To effectively analyze post promotional and event data to determine opportunities and improve future forecasts.
• To effectively lead and prepare for the consensus forecast meetings with key stakeholders in order to enhance key insights and decisions taken.
• To ensure the effective execution of the range review process and decision making in order to assist the Category Team to determine optimal range.

Job Related Knowledge

• Retail / FMCG Demand Forecasting, Supply Chain and Logistics.
• Ability to understand and fine tune algorithms for optimal forecast performance.
• Execution of the new stores / lines / products process using required commercial acumen.
• Understanding of the consistent management and planning of the supplier base performance metrics, promotional planning cycle, product lifecycle, supply chain optimization for their products, business analysis and reporting.
• Financial planning models and methodologies.
• Understanding of customer needs and wants, trends, competitive environment and market share.

Job Related Skills

• Deep analytical skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, to build relationships and drive consensus and collaboration across functional groups.
• Business math acumen and analysis to comprehend financial information and reporting to make business decisions.
• Forecasting consumer trends and buying habits 9 – 24 months in the future.
• Complex decision making based on statistics, trends and opinions.
• Presentation skills with focus being on oral and written communication skills.
• Proficiency on MS Office Excel, Word, Outlook and Power Point, spreadsheets, databases.
• Complex problem solving.
• Retail financial & mathematical calculations (e.g. variance to last year, percent of total, turn, Open-to-Buy).
• Strong negotiating and influencing skills.
• Strong planning and buying experience with solid understanding of financial and statistical analysis of both.
• 5 years’ experience in Demand Planning in a retail / FMCG environment.
• Distributions requirement planning and other supply chain processes such as production planning, scheduling and transportation.
• 2 - 4 years planning and executing projects. Experience with retail buying or logistics preferred.
• Supply chain software knowledge (BY / EP) advantageous.

Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics, Math, Decision Science, Marketing, Business, related area or equivalent experience.