Job Opportunities

Job Description

The Demand Planner, Brand & Innovation is responsible for working cross functionally with strategic Commercial Teams, such as Marketing, Innovation, and Finance to create and maintain a consensus depletion forecast at the brand and item levels as part of the IBP process, enabling effective operational planning, financial guidance organizational execution signals, and strategic direction at the enterprise level.

This role serves as the primary demand planning counterpart to Marketing, bridging brand strategy and execution by translating portfolio decisions, innovation plans, and cannibalization impacts into a coherent demand outlook and generating content for decisions needed in the Portfolio Review process. As a Planner, this role will support the Manager, Brand and Portfolio Demand Planning in additional key activities such as team process definitions and improvements, long range annual planning, and scenario development.

This role requires a professional with a strong analytical background, the ability to communicate effectively and collaboratively and a track record of delivering results.

Key Responsibilities:

• Forecasting & Demand Planning
  • Proactively gather and validate commercial assumptions that are aligned and approved with appropriate insight owners prior to integration into demand plans.
  • Demonstrate the ability to quantify relationships between business drivers and demand outcomes.
  • Proficiency in statistical modeling and its application to forecasting.
  • Expertise in data visualization and business intelligence tools, to drive decision making/consensus across cross functional partners
  • Digital Competency: Demonstrated experience across use of Data Science and Analytics- knowledge of advanced analytics and ML models and use of predictive and prescriptive analytics.
  • Own and defend demand volumes, drivers, and Risks & Opportunities (R&Os) at item, brand, and brand-family levels.
  • Provide content for the Monthly Portfolio Review meeting and process, framing tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities for gap closure to plan.

• Collaboration and Communication:
  • Foster strong relationships with marketing, operations, and finance teams to integrate relevant data and insights to drive the right forecast enhancements.
  • Work closely with counterparts in regional Demand Planning team to ensure overlay of brand insights are appropriately integrated into the consensus forecast.
  • Lead cross-functional meetings with partners in sales, marketing, and finance to align on commercial insights affecting the depletion forecast.
  • Demonstrates effective communication that is genuine and authentic, as well as clear, concise, and persuasive in both written and oral communication.
  • Ability to own, present and drive consensus of overall forecast to multiple levels and functions in the organization

• Continuous Improvement:
  • Stay updated and apply relevant industry trends, best practices and emerging technologies in demand planning and supply chain management
  • Challenge the status quo to improve demand planning processes and tools.
  • Drive continuous improvement efforts to increase forecast accuracy and operational efficiency

Role Expertise

• Must have a bachelor’s degree and prefer 2 years’ experience in a demand planning role / sales or marketing forecasting role
• Experience in CPG industry, preferred. 
• Experience leveraging data and analytics solutions, such as o9 and Power BI, preferred
• Must have excellent quantitative and qualitative skills to consolidate and analyze large volumes of data, with the ability to translate information for all areas of the business.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills with the ability to communicate well across all levels of the organization. Excellent customer service skills with the ability to work with both internal and external customers.
• Make decisions independently and recommend viable solutions to problems and issues.  Mediate issues that arise and drive planning and data gathering meetings to successful resolutions. 

Individual Skills

• Excellent analytical skills with a demonstrated ability to zoom into the details to find root causes of deviations and to zoom out to understand the big picture impact to the organization
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex concepts and influence stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Demonstrated ability to lead customer facing meetings and collaborative efforts across multiple levels of the organization.

• Skilled collaborator with an ability to work cross-functionally with co-workers, related internal functions, external partners, and on project teams.
• Experience in using digital solutions to drive performance along with a demonstrated ability to use data to tell a story - an ability to communicate effectively across all formats.

• Must be a detail-minded, deadline-oriented self-starter who can work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.

Mindsets & Behaviors

• Passion to challenge the status quo and find new solutions and drive out of the box ideas – loves and embraces change.
• Consumer obsessed – commitment to delivering a best-in-class customer experience.
• Believes in a non-hierarchical culture of collaboration, transparency, safety, and trust.
• Not afraid to “roll up the sleeves” and seeks to go outside comfort zone to learn – pushes teams to do the same.
• Empowers others to fail, learn, and grow.
• Comfortable and experience bringing structure to ambiguity.
• Possesses a spirit of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and innovation.
• Integrity: Supporting teams in tough times, taking responsibility for issues under their purview and helping others without expecting something in return.

Physical Requirements/Work Environment

• Must be able to sit and/or stand for long periods of time and work on a computer for extended periods. Lifting may be required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.
• Travel