Demand Planning Manager - Gauteng at Mars

Job Overview

• To own, create, and deliver accurate sales forecasting and demand management for local market in collaboration with extended VCO and Sales Pillar teams.
• Accountability for developing the base line demand plan.
• Deploy planning standards based on global/ regional guidelines.
• Drive Continuous Improvement in collaboration with Regional E2E Demand Planner and/or S&OP+ Managers.
• Generating insights to support business decisions from forecasting tools and yearly category/market case studies.
• Maintain relationships with the sales, marketing, finance and supply chain teams to incorporate assumptions relative to the demand plan each month.
• Validate the inclusion of forecasts from the sales teams backed with data driven insights.
• Improve the forecasts accuracy (statistical models) with coordinated actions and updates of FM planning tool

What are we looking for?

• Minimum 5-8 years’ experience in a Demand Planning/S&OP/Supply Planning role in a FMCG company .
• Minimum 2 years’ Proven track record in demand planning processes, S&OP and business strategy
• Prefer to have more than 2 years working experience at multinational companies
• Knowledge of inventory and Supply Planning
• Advantage to have experience in premium or nutritional product industry
• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, logistics, or related fields
• Excellent communication (both written & oral) in English
• Expert data analytics capabilities, including strong EXCEL capabilities.

Key Functional Skills

• Supply chain planning and Demand Planning management
• Analytical capability
• Business Process application
• Project management
• Strategic thinking
• Planning
• Problem solving
• Time Management

What will be your key responsibilities?

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Demand Planning - Develop a accurate and aligned demand plan across minimum 2 Year+ horizon, for a set of defined markets, including promotion and launches, and perform ongoing analysis of demand variability, assess risk and take corrective action to close gaps
• Lead Demand Management Review (DMR) and Pre-DMR, generating statistical baseline forecast, supported with demand assumption from the business, to fuel the conversation with the forum stakeholders, to have an aligned outcome.
• Facilitate demand consensus meetings with Sales, Marketing and VCO Teams
• Challenge and integrate within the demand plan the assumptions communicated by the Pillars and work with Finance to deliver ‘1 number’ converting and aligning Volume through to NSV with relevant Teams each S&OP+ cycle
• Perform ongoing analysis of demand variability and scenarios to understand potential business impact
• Secure the execution of all Promotions and new product deployment plan in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders by incorporating demand: Marketing, Sales, Finance & Supply Chain
• Align the baseline to stakeholders for agreement (Pillars, marketing and VCO)
• Utilize KPIS (over and undersell, new product sell-through,SFA & BIAS) through understanding of root causes and implementing improvement processes with the broader teams
• Develop the base demand plan using the most appropriate statistical forecasting tools and make adjustments where necessary.
• Be Representative in S&OP+ Step 1,2 & 3 – PMR/DMR/SMR to share supply and inventory update, review baseline numbers and assumptions with cross-functional teams
• Flag inventory concerns, collaborate with Sales and Marketing to resolve ad-hoc requests, inventory phasing (short-dated/high inventory products and SLOBs)
• Establish and continuously review the supply chain standard operation procedures with relation to promotional management ensuring that it is being followed 
• Participate in activity management projects to ensure product availability for South Africa market on time as per project plan and highlight concerns and build plans to mitigate with relevant teams
• Maintain product master data in the Futurmaster tool
• Generate the new product forecast using the historical substitution and like modelling/scenario planning techniques agreed with Marketing and Pillars
• Develop and maintain database of previous promotional activity performance
• Build up deck to share on Risk and Opportunity captured during meetings
• Periodic reporting to internal stakeholders and to the regional teams in prescribed templates
• Support market initiatives in improving the quality of their demand plan by assessing the effectiveness of their process, offering guidance and sharing best practices.

DIMENSION:

• Support Forecast System & Data
• Owns the Demand Planning process and data enrichment via FuturMaster (RC forecasting software)
• Gate keeps the forecast inputs with the Sales and Marketing teams, integrating and communicating to the broader S&OP+ stakeholders
• User of SA4 (BW/BI software)
• Update and support system data quality (using 1Navision)
• Lead projects to enhance process efficiencies through improved functionalities.
• Continuous improvement of Forecasting and Supply planning tools (maintaining master tool and optimizing parameters)