Senior Planning Manager

About Heroes

Heroes buys, operates, and scales baby and juvenile brands.

We are ambitious multi-brand developers combining operational excellence with customer-centricity to support parents and children through every milestone of their journey. Built by a team with a background in investment banking, venture capital, and D2C eCommerce, we have the right experience to nurture and grow brands and develop products that simplify, support, and enrich everyday family experiences.

At Heroes, we leave our egos behind, get our hands dirty, and push through obstacles to get things over the finish line. If this sounds like you, you should join us.

About the role

Heroes is looking for a talented Senior Planning Manager. This role sits within the Supply Chain Department and reports to the Head of S&OP.

The candidate will lead all planning elements for defined segments of Heroes business, managing demand planning and supply planning, as well as material requirement planning for some components for finished goods assembly.

The Senior Planning Manager is responsible for maintaining the forecast and for managing supply of finished goods & material requirements.

They will also take a lead in driving the integration of planning processes from acquired businesses into Heroe’s

Responsibilities

• Demand planning

- Capture inputs from the other business areas, consumer & competitor information, other external / internal trends and influences to incorporate them into the forecast.

- Lead the monthly process for Demand Alignment and Consensus, ensuring full process adherence by key stakeholders.

- Managing the demand planning of new products and new market launches, transitions and discontinuations through liaison with Supply Chain Internal teams, Wholesale Team, and the New Product Development / Expansion Team.

• Supply Planning & MRP

- Monthly Analysis of the stock coverage with the forecast and key information and alerts from other teams. Calculating and raising the PO needed to ensure healthy stock coverage across finished goods and the materials/ components required for finished goods assembly.

- Manage review meetings with brand management, and senior stakeholders to ensure alignment on stock projections and agreed target cover and reporting.

- Manage the safety stock per finished goods product & component, in order to protect availability but keeping in mind flexibility.

- Collaborating with the Sourcing Team to place POs with suppliers.

• General Planning

- Taking ownership when a planning issue arises, communicating to the relevant stakeholders to resolve.

- Relationship and stakeholder management of key business areas such as retail, logistic, freight, sourcing and the investment team.

- Providing a weekly warehouse and freight capacity forecast.

• Integration Planning

- Taking ownership of the planning process of newly acquired businesses.

- Assessing the planning specifics (process, people, systems), identifying best practices and developments required.

- Leading the integration of the planning process into Heroes’ preferred methodology.

About you

• Previous Planning Experience is essential (FMCG, or similar)
  
• Experience with planning software (SAP, APO, etc)
  
• Highly methodical and organised, with a high attention to detail
  
• Advanced Excel Knowledge
  
• Familiarity with GSuite
  
• Ability to quickly grasp complex concepts and draw conclusions from large sets of data
  
• Very analytical and data driven
  
• Strong ability to leverage data and analyses to communicate and “tell stories”
  
• Excellent problem solving skills
  
• Strong self-learner mentality with a pragmatic approach to researching solutions before requesting help
  
• Comfortable with ambiguity

Location: we are open for this role to be based in the United Kingdom, or in Cape Town, South Africa.

Our benefits

Hybrid working (UK)

Hybrid working - 3 days per week in office (SA)

25 days holiday (UK, South Africa)

Public holidays (UK, South Africa)

Friday afternoons off in August (UK, South Africa)

Brand discounts (UK)

Pension Plan (UK)

Health Insurance (UK)

Nursery Benefits (UK)

Cycle to Work scheme (UK)

Enchanced parental leave (UK)