Sr. Demand Planner

What You’ll Do

The Senior Demand Planner is responsible for maximizing service levels, sales, profitability, and inventory productivity by accurately and responsively forecasting time-phased demand by Business Unit, key customer, distribution segment, product, and other attributes as needed. This person applies exceptional quantitative and analytical skills, along with knowledge of retail and forecasting, to deliver actionable insights to Management and key cross‑functional stakeholders including Supply Planning, Logistics, Account Support, Finance, Sales and Merchandising.

• Collaborates with Sales, Merchandising and customers to develop pre‑season assortment plans and demand forecasts by business unit, customer, _label, by month.
• Creates and maintains demand forecasts submitted monthly to Supply Planning and Finance which extends out months into the future with a cascading level of product granularity, ultimately down to SKU for purchasing. These forecasts are used for long‑range supply chain network capacity planning; materials planning; volume and cost negotiations; product range rationalization and life‑cycle management; inventory management and liquidation cadence; and purchasing finished goods.
• Documents forecast methodology, inputs, assumptions and submission‑to‑submission change drivers. Provides indicators with forecast submission as to levels of demand risk, inventory risk, and confidence level.
• Monitors and measures forecast accuracy and volatility. Diagnoses, categorizes, quantifies and summarizes root causes of inaccuracy, poor service levels, and higher‑than‑expected excess and obsolete inventory. Leverages the results of this analysis in future forecasting process improvement.
• Assists in auditing and cleansing the customer sales order/demand pool by analyzing order backlogs, cancelations, supply allocation inside lead‑time, and forecast and bulk order consumption. Alerts Supply Planning as to demand inaccuracy risks and suggests corrective action to the Account Support Team.
• Provides standardized and ad‑hoc analysis including Customer Point Of Sale Data;
  Third‑party Market Research and Market Share Data;
  Shipments;
  At‑once Orders;
  Cancelation Rates;
  Order Expectation Curves;
  Size Analysis and Curves;
  Customer Adoption Patterns;
  Price Sensitivity;
  New Product Launches;
  Life Cycle Analysis;
  Pareto Curves;
  Assortment Optimization / Diminishing Returns of Assortment Adds;
  Profitability;
  Replacement/Cannibalization;
  Promotions/Events;
  Allowance Risk Monitoring and Mitigation;
  Marketing Styles;
  Hot and Slow Seller Early Warning Indicators;
  Lost Demand Due to Out‑of‑Stocks;
  Logistics Route to Customer;
  Measuring Specific Tests;
  Market, Trends;
  Formal Seasonal Hindsight;
  Seasonality Curves;
  Customer Fill Rates;
  Service Levels;
  Return Rates; etc.
• Supports Vendor Managed Inventory and customer planning/merchandising activities as needed, such as replenishment and allocation.
• Assists in preparing demand inputs for a Monthly Executive S&OP Meeting. Attends and provides inputs into regular cross‑functional meetings such as Buy Meetings, Inventory Meetings, Business Reviews, etc. Prepares to provide insight and propose actions to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities.
• Collaborates cross‑functionally on go‑to‑market preparation including aligning Buying/Stocking Strategies with Supply Planning;
  Customer and market distribution business planning with Sales;
  Product life cycle and marketing strategies with Merchandising.

• Requires experience working for or selling to Amazon or similar e‑commerce customer. Must be extremely strong Amazon / e‑commerce business understanding and relative forecasting methodologies.
• Must have outstanding computer analytical skills working with large datasets, advanced Excel; MS Access or other database management tools; reporting/analysis, data mining and manipulation tools such as Tableau, Business Objects, Crystal Reports, Micro Strategy, SQL, etc. Must be able to learn new systems and tools quickly.
• Minimum of undergraduate degree or equivalent, preferably in Supply Chain, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, or other…