Manager - Business Planning (S&OP)

Function: Business Planning

Reports to: Chief Business Officer

Direct reports: Demand & Supply Planning Analysts

Location: Bangalore

ROLE SUMMARY:

Lead monthly S&OP cycle across all channels (EBO, Trade - Distribution, Modern Trade, Franchise, E-commerce marketplace and D2C). The role is accountable for building and institutionalising the demand planning process, running a strong finished-goods and raw material supply plan, keeping inventory healthy on coverage and SLOB, and leading a planning team through the monthly cadence. It combines process ownership and people leadership with hands-on analytics.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Demand Planning - process ownership:

- Design, document and continuously improve the end-to-end demand planning process: data inputs, statistical - ML baseline, consensus review, override governance and accuracy tracking.

- Set accuracy and bias targets by channel and horizon; establish the review rhythm with Sales and Category and drive Forecast Value Add over a naive baseline.

- Own primary (sell-in) vs. secondary (sell-out) reconciliation as a standing process, closing channel gaps and mis-tagging.

Supply Planning:

- Convert the consensus demand plan into finished-goods requirements, replenishment and production signals; manage capacity constraints and build-vs-hold decisions.

- Plan raw-material and packing-material consumption from BOM - PR data; tie out to actuals and feed MRP and procurement.

- Balance service and working capital: fill rate, weeks-of-cover and inbound-feed reliability.

Inventory & SLOB:

- Own FG inventory health: ABC x ageing, SLOB classification and provisioning, active vs. dropped SKUs, seasonal lifecycle and location-level cover.

- Drive the liquidation, buy-stop and markdown agenda with Sales and Finance; report SLOB movement month-on-month.

- Maintain the landed-cost - COGS MoM view and support sourcing with should-cost and negotiation inputs.

Team Management:

- Lead, coach and develop a team of planners; allocate ownership by channel - category and manage the monthly calendar to deadline.

- Set standards for analytical rigour - correct totals, explicit period tags, documented data lineage - and review the team's output.

- Build bench strength and cross-training so the cycle is not single-person dependent.

Cross-functional:

- Run the S&OP - consensus meeting; align Sales, Category, Production, Sourcing and Finance on one number.

- Represent planning in new-launch, range-review, capacity and budget-vs-actual discussions.

- Partner with Data - IT on the planning platform, pipelines and dashboards.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:

- 7 - 10+ years in demand - supply planning and S&OP, with process-building and team-management experience; consumer products - apparel - footwear - gear preferred.

- Proven inventory management depth: ABC, ageing, SLOB, coverage and working-capital trade-offs.

- Strong cross-functional influence; able to run consensus meetings and align senior stakeholders on one plan.

- Analytically hands-on: SQL and Python, time-series - ML forecasting concepts, MRP - BOM logic; able to own data pipelines and BI dashboards, not just consume them.

- Tools: Postgres, Python (pandas), Excel, Git; FastAPI - React exposure a plus.