Customer Demand Planner

Ferrero•Parsippany, NJ

16d•$80,931 - $107,908

About The Position

We have a current opening for a Customer Demand Planner and are actively reviewing applications. As a Customer Demand planner, you will be responsible for the bottom-up customer/channel-level demand forecast for the current Fiscal Year, ensuring a reliable roll-up total country the feeds supply execution. You will act as the primary Supply Chain interface to Sales and Trade Marketing for short-to-mid-term demand, safeguarding Forecast Accuracy and Service Level at customer/channel/SKU level. You will represent customer/channel reality in the S&OP cycle and drive the weekly demand Management (S&OE) routine to translate latest actuals, promo performance and customer signals into timely forecast updates. The goal of this position is to continuously improve service levels and simultaneously reduce finished goods inventory through accurate forecasting. Key to this role will be anticipate and understand the needs of different stakeholders across the company relative to forecasting, turning assumptions into actionable plans and providing insight into demand drivers to leadership. In this role, you will report to the Demand Planning Director.

Requirements

Thorough understanding of demand management, robust analytical skills, strong communication and influencing skills to bring diverse teams to consensus.
Minimum 7 years of Supply Chain work experience, with at least 4 of those with a focus on Demand Planning, preferably in the food & beverage or fast-moving consumer goods industries
Demonstrated success in driving continuous improvement initiatives in customer service levels and waste reduction
Skilled in relationship management within your team, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, and most important our customers to drive a continuous improvement mindset across the supply chain and the entire organization.
Strong knowledge of advanced analysis techniques and forecasting models
Proficient in Microsoft Office Excel (vlookup, pivot tables, macros), power point.
Bachelor’s Degree in logistics or business

Nice To Haves

Proficiency with SAP APO and familiarity with Blue Yonder (JDA) is preferred

Responsibilities

Act as the S&OP BPO (Business Process Owner)
Facilitate, prepare, enable, and support the S&OP meetings defining the agenda, main topics, and participants.
Ensure reflections of the decisions are in the Demand Plan
Support the yearly budget process by assessing demand assumptions and validating into the budget cycle
Collect, consolidate, clean, and prepare historical sales data and event drivers (price changes, promo uplift, distribution changes, ect.) to ensure accuracy for statistical forecasting
Coordinate with Sales, Marketing, Trade Marketing, and Supply Planning to validate historical assumptions
Provide support to Area DP HUB to generate the statistical baseline (Total customer/Channel levels)
Facilitate the integration of: Market trend & other marketing non-commercial inputs (innovations, marketing activities), non-commercial factors (pricing changes impact), commercial enrichments (Permanent)-(distribution changes, customer trends), and supply chain factors
Collaborate with Area DP HUB, local sales, Trade Marketing and Marketing to derive Combined Enriched baseline
Uplift Development – ensure proper governance on how customer uplifts are captured and validated
Own the consolidation of Enriched baseline and Customer uplifts into the Total Forecast at all required levels (customer, channel, SKU, market)
Facilitate alignment across key business references to achieve a single consensus demand plan
Support Sales and Marketing departments with development of the demand plan for new products by analyzing similar products trends/seasonality, other product launches curve (pipeline building) ect.
Lead forecasting performance analysis, including accuracy and bias reporting at Region Board
Conduct structured Root Cause Analyses (RCA) for Forecast deviations vs Actuals
Make recommendations to enhance business processes and identify opportunities to improve operational efficiencies