Senior Manager, Demand Planning (Drunk Elephant)

Job Summary:

This position is responsible for leading the Global Demand Planning Team for Drunk Elephant & Fragrance Brands and overseeing the development of the demand planning team.

As one of the central pillars of the global S&OP function within Shiseido Americas, this role is responsible for driving continuous improvement of global demand planning (Drunk Elephant and Fragrance Brands) across all Shiseido group regions and affiliates, with a focus on the US domestic business unit. This role is responsible for leading best-in-class demand consensus processes with key US leadership and worldwide to ensure the demand plan is aligned to each market’s business ambition and financial targets, while ensuring key supply chain metrics are met (service, inventory, excess & obsolete reduction and forecast accuracy). Further, this role will be instrumental in driving close team collaboration with our key US commercial team, our key retail partners, and E-comm through new and existing demand processes.

 

In this role, the ideal candidate is expected to have effectively led teams of demand planners, and possess management skills to ensure segmentation of demand planning duties across the team is efficient and relevant to the broader US demand consensus process. Also the candidate should have demonstrated ability to utilize and deploy the full functionality of SAP IBP’s demand planning module, leveraging its capability to improve collaboration across teams both in the US and globally, to further unlock value within SAC operations and continue to fuel the brand’s growth.  

 

The candidate should have expertise in demand planning business process and a proven track record of successfully deploying and implementing improvements to existing demand processes and ways of working within an established business unit or market. In addition, the candidate should possess an understanding of statistical forecasting methods, with prior experience in historical data cleansing and applying best-fit models to optimize forecast accuracy across varying demand seasonality and volatility.

 

 In addition to the core business, the candidate must have direct experience creating innovation forecasts at granular sku retailer combinations in monthly buckets, aligning and managing the input assumptions during the entire course of launch planning from initial feasibility assessment through to shipment.  This is a core requirement and input into the new product development process, which is critical to deliver innovation to market.

 

Experience working with the supply organization to understand the risks to future supply is also a key consideration, as this role will work closely with the supply teams to ensure supply risks are appropriately mitigated.

 

Primary Duties & Responsibilities: 

• Oversee and review monthly saleable forecasts with related analysis. The accuracy of the unit forecast has a direct impact on company inventory and customer service levels. Reconcile forecasted units to Gross Sales financial forecasts to ensure reasonableness.
• Oversee new launch forecast process.  Align with Marketing/Sales on retail projections and initial pipe allocation.
• Collaborate with key US retailers and sales teams to gain alignment with retailer forecasts and specific programs and events
• Lead sku rationalization and recommend skus to be deleted from portfolio.
• Prepare and lead Monthly Consensus meeting with Marketing, Sales and Finance.
• Development and management of all S&OP content and presentation
• Attend incoming supply review meetings to understand and communicate risks to demand and orders 
• Lead the E&O process to minimize inventory liabilities and drive Root Cause Problem Solving and action planning/execution to reduce E&O. 
• Oversee POSM forecasting process
• Leverage and coach the demand planning team in creating & updating item level forecasts for brand portfolio                                                                  

Working Relationships/Key Stakeholders:

• US brand sales & marketing teams
• Brand global marketing teams
• Region & Affiliate operations teams
• Global brandholder and US finance teams
• SAC supply chain team
  • S&OP supply team
  • NPD, New Product Development
  • Affiliate Customer Service
  • Master Data Management (MDM)

Financial Accountability

• Forecast planning and accuracy
• Support marketing and sales teams with insights on business trends and opportunity areas
• Demand Plan vs Plan/LE alignment
• Total Inventory $ and DOH
• Service Fill-Rate (Missed $)
• Excess & Obsolete inventory in-flow (E&O prevention)

Qualification