Demand Planner

THE ROLE

As a Demand Planner, you own the demand plan for an assigned portfolio of customers and SKUs, and you own the assumptions behind it. You will build and publish the monthly forecast in Anaplan, quantify risk and opportunity ahead of the cycle, and bring your portfolio and your reasoning into consensus and S&OP. You are the company’s expert on order behavior for the accounts you carry, and the first person to know when something in your portfolio is moving.

This role sits inside an active transition from Excel-based planning to Anaplan. You will plan in the system, not around it, and you will help shape how the demand review cycle runs as functionality comes online. That means comfort with a process that is still being built, and a point of view on how it should work. The role carries real ownership of a forecast and real exposure to Sales, Revenue Growth Management, and Finance. It is the level where a planner stops producing a number and starts defending a position. The Senior Manager is your escalation path on complex or high-dollar changes, not an approval gate on routine cycles.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Forecast Ownership

• Build, validate, and publish the monthly demand forecast in Anaplan for an assigned portfolio of customers and SKUs, including baseline, promotional lift, new item ramp, and phase-out, and stand behind the assumptions you set.
• Review the statistical baseline in Anaplan each cycle, apply overrides at the appropriate level with documented reasoning, and maintain override discipline rather than defaulting to manual entry.
• Build and compare scenario versions in Anaplan for risk and opportunity, promotional plans, supply constraints, and pricing changes, so the business sees the range before it commits to a number.
• Hold forecast accuracy and bias to target for your portfolio, review results every cycle, and come to the review with root cause on misses and a corrective action, not only the variance.
• Build launch forecasts for new items using historical analogs, planned marketing support, and account-level merchandising plans, then track performance against the ramp and adjust.

Business Partnership

• Represent your portfolio in consensus and S&OP, presenting forecast changes, the drivers behind them, and the risk and opportunity attached, to Sales, Revenue Growth Management, and Finance.
• Collect and challenge assumptions covering promotional activity, launches and discontinuations, distribution changes, pricing, and customer-specific plans, and reflect them in the plan with a documented rationale.
• Quantify and communicate risk and opportunity early enough for the business to make a decision rather than react to a result.
• Partner with Supply Planning on inventory position, weeks of supply, fill rate risk, and allocation decisions, and flag supply and demand imbalance before it reaches the customer.
• Become the company expert on retailer and channel trends for your accounts using internal, POS, and syndicated data, and communicate what customer order behavior is telling us.
• Support the annual operating plan and long-range planning cycles with portfolio-level demand inputs and scenario analysis in partnership with Finance and Commercial.

Systems and Process

• Participate in the Anaplan implementation for your portfolio, including user acceptance testing, data validation against source systems, and migration of your accounts off Excel.
• Partner with the Demand Planning Analyst on master data accuracy, reporting needs, and analysis, and escalate data breaks that affect the forecast.
• Adhere to the demand review calendar and forecast lock dates, and keep your portfolio current between cycles as conditions change.
• Identify where the cycle is slow, manual, or unreliable, and help fix it.

QUALIFICATIONS:

REQUIRED:

• Planning Platform: Proficiency in Anaplan
• ERP System: Experience with NetSuite for managing order, shipment, and inventory history
• Data Analysis: Advanced Excel skills, including pivot tables, XLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH, and the ability to handle large data sets
• Presentation Skills: PowerPoint proficiency, with the ability to build materials suitable for driving consensus and presenting to leadership

PREFERRED:

• Syndicated and POS Data: Familiarity with NielsenIQ, Circana, or SPINS, as well as retailer portals such as Retail Link or Vendor Central
• BI and Visualization Tools: Experience with Sigma, Power BI, or Tableau

IDEAL CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE:

• 3-5 years of professional supply chain experience, with at least one to two years at the demand planner or demand planning analyst level or equivalent.
• Experience owning a customer or category portfolio through a full monthly forecast cycle.
• Hands-on experience forecasting in Anaplan or a comparable integrated business planning platform.
• Advanced Excel proficiency and experience working in an ERP.
• Working knowledge of statistical forecasting fundamentals, along with the judgment to recognize when the statistical answer needs a commercial override and the discipline to document why.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to explain an analysis to a non-analytical audience.
• Strong written and verbal communication, with a collaborative and influencing approach across Sales, Finance, Supply Planning, and Commercialization.
• Experience in a CPG, beverage, or manufacturing environment.

Nice-to-Have
• Experience through an Anaplan or comparable planning platform implementation, including user acceptance testing, data validation, or migration off spreadsheet-based planning.
• Anaplan Level 1 certification or equivalent platform training.
• Experience with syndicated and POS data sources and retailer portals.
• Exposure to annual operating plan or budget cycles alongside Finance.