Demand Planner Central Eastern Europe

Role purpose

Leadership

• Lead demand planning and forecasting processes for Central Eastern Europe CU ensuring alignment with global standards and driving continuous improvement.
• This role ensures accurate demand planning to optimize inventory levels, support revenue growth, and enable strategic decision-making across Central Eastern Europe.

Demand planning & forecasting

• Directly drive forecasting and demand planning best practice across Central Eastern Europe Commercial Unit.
• Lead the deployment of the forecasting and demand planning / management processes and capabilities within the Central Eastern Europe, in line with the global target operating model and agreed ways of working, and lead associated change management initiatives.
• Establish and maintain a robust and efficient Commercial Unit S&OP decision making platform, in line with global guidelines in alignment with Supply Operations Lead.
• Report and monitor defined regional demand planning / forecasting KPIs and metrics, and proactively recommend and drive improvement initiatives.
• Actively align the Commercial, Marketing and P&S functions in developing and signing off robust regional 5-year demand plans, in line with the global calendar and strategic goals.
• Facilitate and support relevant demand / forecasting and S&OP platform activities, providing analytical support to guide decision-making and securing timely input to the global S&OP platform.

Scope

• All Syngenta Vegetable Seed crops in Central Easter Europe CU, covering a planning horizon of 3–48 months.

Accountabilities

Forecast and demand plan development: Monthly (Current Year) and Annual (5 Year)

• Lead the monthly Central Eastern Europe demand review process:
• Coordinate and ensure sales forecasting and demand planning process adherence (timelines, ownership) to the global process and guidelines,
• Coordinate and manage within Central Eastern Europe CU the monthly and annual forecasting cycles in line with demand planning timelines,
• Ensure timely submission of Central Eastern Europe CU demand plans in SAP, monitor forecast accuracy, and drive improvement initiatives through variance analysis and KPI reporting,
• Perform forecast variance analysis and reporting on latest forecast and demand uncertainty (Sales forecast vs SPP Forecast, Last Plan vs SPP Forecast, Previous Last Plan vs Last Plan, etc.),
• Classify and analyze demand change drivers and assumptions for review and discussion in the commercial unit demand reviews and S&OP; summarize the output to feed the monthly regional demand review process,
• Manage Commercial Unit demand review process output (minutes and actions) for distribution to commercial unit teams and follow up/close out,
• Provide reporting and analytics support to the Commercial and Marketing teams for the pre-SPP demand review and monthly S&OP cycle, and any other ad-hoc requests.

Critical success factors & key challenges

• Proven leadership ability
• Excellent communication skills
• Influencing skills
• Stakeholder management
• Change leadership
• Advanced skills in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook
• Advanced analytical skills
• Operate statistical analysis tools