Location
London

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Negotiable

About the Role
As a Demand Planner, you will play a crucial role in ensuring market leading product availability, driving sales growth, and optimising our inventory levels and cost to serve. You will analyse and validate demand forecasts and collaborate with various stakeholders to develop and execute effective demand planning strategies. Your role is key in maintaining our commitment to customer obsession, ensuring exceptional service and value to our customers. Your efforts will directly contribute to enhancing profitability and overall business performance.

Cross functional collaboration: Build and sustain strong relationships with commercial teams, including Buyers, Range Planners, Technical, and Product Development. Hold stakeholders accountable to ensure process compliance, balancing product availability and P&L performance.

Supplier Partnerships: Proactively drive the supplier agenda by fostering trust-based strategic partnerships and developing joint business plans. Focus on enhancing network operations, optimizing stock holding, improving working capital, and achieving supplier targets.

Data optimisation: Use data analytics, market trends, performance metrics, and customer behaviour insights to solve complex problems, ensure data integrity and optimise supply chain systems for exceptional customer availability.

Category Management: Ensure comprehensive management over category profiles, validate and communicate the impacts of future events and seasonal trade patterns to ensure success for both suppliers and retail teams.

Supply Chain and Logistics is the engine room that gets thousands of products from farms and factories, through the business and to millions of customers every day. We plan around everything from barbecue weekends to Sunday roasts, supporting those who want oven-ready cauliflower cheese and those who prefer to make it from scratch. Insight and data are everything, but so is judgement — when there’s an issue or ambiguity anywhere, we’re often the first to spot it. There’s a big transformation underway that calls for people who champion change, bring others with them, and collaborate and communicate effectively.

Experience
Minimum of 3-5 years of experience in demand planning, inventory management, or a related role within the retail industry.

About you
Deep understanding of supply chain dynamics, inventory management, and distribution strategies specific to the sector. Strong knowledge of best-in-class commercial forecasting methods and tools in the FMCG industry. Ability to apply a customer focus across all KPIs and in decision making. Demonstrates end to end thinking to drive performance improvement in both processes and across all KPIs, delivering efficiencies and improvements to the P&L. Ability to develop strong business partnering relationships, stakeholder management, and cross-functional working at all levels. Strong communication skills with the ability to tell stories and provide answers to ensure effective communication.

Qualifications
Experience using complex analytics, data interrogation and root cause analysis to solve complex problems and drive better outputs from demand planning software (e.g., SAP, Oracle, JDA, Blue Yonder). Commitment to continuous improvement and a customer centric mindset.

Benefits
Colleague discount of 10% on shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, with regular increases to 15%. Pension scheme and life cover. Eligibility for a performance-related bonus of up to 10% of salary depending on company performance. Annual holiday allowance with option to buy additional holiday. Additional benefits include season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance, and access to a wide range of retailer discounts. Employee assistance programme available. Generous maternity, adoption, and paternity leave pay.