Demand Planner

At Lindt, we are a global fast-growing consumer goods company, enchanting the world with premium chocolate. We are driven by our passion for excellence and go the extra mile ensuring that every Lindt experience is nothing short of exceptional. Our collective efforts are geared towards making a positive impact, not only in the world of premium chocolate but also in the lives of our employees, customers, and communities. Our company embraces a culture defined by the core values of Excellence, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Responsibility, and Collaboration, fostering a dynamic and collaborative environment where these principles drive our success.

Position Purpose:

The individual in this position is responsible for creating and maintaining a customer level forecast utilizing sales assumptions, historical analysis, market trends, and through collaboration & consensus across assigned account teams. The focus will be on maximizing product availability, supporting Lindt & Sprungli's growth initiatives, and help to achieve financial goals while minimizing destructions & discounts. Attention to detail and strong customer service orientation is required. To be effective in this customer-facing role, the individual must be comfortable working cross functionally with sales, operations, production planning, marketing and customer service as well as presenting and communicating across various levels of the organization.

This is a hybrid role that requires three days per week in our Stratham, NH corporate office.

Customer Forecasting

• Partner with the sales team to build item level forecasts, providing recommendations & supporting analysis based on turns, cannibalization, etc.
• Maintain awareness & create documented transparency of key customer dates, deadlines, promotional activity, store counts & other relevant information
• Liaise with sales on new item introductions & planogram updates, recommend volume & Gross Sales (GTS) for pipeline assumptions, turns & phasing, aligning with sales manager to drive appropriate supply signals
• For Item distribution changes or discontinuations, proactively ensure customer timing & multi-level supply are aligned to reduce destruction risk, managing customer level forecast to reflect shifts in timing & volume. Incorporate customer level inventory liability into the analysis
• Own monthly forecast to actuals variance analysis by customer. Review & communicate root cause & lead charge on supply risk mitigation & necessary forecast adjustments
• Work cross functionally with internal departments to incorporate cuts, POS, market data, IRI & other factors for forecast & future projections
• Manage and communicate the total risks and opportunities for assigned accounts, ensure the organization is aware of potential volume impacts to the operational plan

Collaboration, Reporting & Review

• Provide analysis, reasoning and relevant forecast suggestions during Customer calls, Category Meetings, Demand Consensus, and throughout the S&OP process.
• Conduct monthly metrics reporting covering topic such as net forecast change, forecast accuracy the resulting operational impact & decisions needed.
• Provide Customer level forecasting support to the Brand planning team as needed
• Support and drive item segmentation needs, ensuring systematic accuracy for precise reporting and analytics
• Provide summary KPI reports to drive forecasting accuracy, organizational awareness and continuous improvement
• Generate ad-hoc reporting as pertinent to current objectives for long term success
• initiatives