Job Description | In-Stock Manager

JOB DESCRIPTION

Role - In-Stock Manager

Location - Bangalore

About the Role:

As an Instock Manager, you will be responsible for ensuring the right products are available at the right time and in the right quantity for customers. You will combine demand planning, inventory management, vendor engagement, operational excellence, and data-driven problem solving to improve product availability, inventory health, and supply chain efficiency.

Key Responsibilities:

- Demand Planning & Ordering: Determine order quantities by considering forecasts, historical trends, seasonality, price elasticity, and inventory targets.

- Inventory Management: Manage optimal inventory availability and ensure effective inventory replication closer to end customers.

- Define Operational Strategy: Define operational strategy and manage day-to-day operational relationships with vendors to improve efficiency, reduce leakages, improve fill rates, and reduce vendor lead times.

- Partner for Brand Growth: Analyze category and brand inputs to support selection, business growth, and brand development strategies.

- Deep Dive to Improve Metrics: Leverage existing tools and mechanisms to identify root causes of deviations in vendor supply chain metrics and engage vendors to drive measurable improvements.

- Drive Efficiency & Inventory Health: Improve efficiency across inventory replenishment and operational processes. Manage overstock and SLOB inventory, design and execute exit strategies for unproductive inventory, conduct RCA on unhealthy inventory generation, and drive corrective action plans.

- Manage Brand Relationships: Independently manage small to medium-sized brands and manage large brands under the guidance of the manager. Build strong vendor relationships and drive performance improvement through regular communication, training sessions, purchase order tracking, investigation of late deliveries, resolution of order rejections, and collaboration on PO automation.

- Vendor Engagement: Engage regularly with vendor supply chain leadership through weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews to discuss scorecards, instock metrics, common goals, and vendor pain points.

- Automation & Operations Excellence: Identify and drive automation and operations excellence initiatives, including Automated Buying, HOTW initiatives, and Inbound Excellence initiatives.

What Will Help You Succeed:

- Automation Champion: Identify opportunities to improve automation by leveraging relevant buying, forecasting, and data tools.

- Communication: Communicate effectively with high-performing internal and external teams and build alignment across stakeholders.

- Stakeholder Management: Build and manage relationships with vendor KAMs and supply chain leaders, regularly review vendor metrics, and identify incremental opportunities to improve instock performance.

- Organizational Skills: Demonstrate strong prioritization, scheduling, time management, and execution skills while meeting deadlines.

- Mechanism Building: Build mechanisms that help teams navigate a demanding and often ambiguous operating environment.

- Business & Vendor Understanding: Develop a deep understanding of vendor vision and plans, align internal strategy accordingly, balance vendor needs with competing business and instock priorities, and drive mutually beneficial outcomes.

Required Skills & Experience:

- Professional experience in operations, inventory planning, demand forecasting, supply chain, and/or product life cycles.

- Self-starter with a high level of flexibility, ownership, and commitment.

- Proactive attitude and willingness to roll up your sleeves and dive deep to achieve goals.

- Ability to think, prioritize, and react effectively in a high-energy, fast-paced environment.

- Strong attention to detail with the ability to analyze and work with large volumes of data.

- Strong problem-solving, project management, and analytical skills.

- Ability to translate data and insights into actionable business recommendations.

Education & Work Experience:

- Full-time MBA or Engineering degree from a premier institution.

- 3+ years of professional experience with a proven track record of managing and executing large projects from start to finish.

- Experience in project management, data gathering and modeling, problem solving, and communicating recommendations.

- Experience in FMCG, Retail, E-commerce, Supply Chain, or related industries is preferred.

Abilities That Will Help You Shine:

- Walk in our customers' shoes and grow our vendor partners' businesses by anticipating their unexpressed needs.

- Anticipate roadblocks and develop mid- and long-term solutions before they occur.

- Keep experimenting and run pilot programs to evaluate what works best.

- Make timely, data-backed decisions.

- Strive for continuous improvement in processes, mechanisms, and business outcomes.

- Be action-oriented and demonstrate a strong bias for execution.

- Be vocally self-critical and continuously challenge existing approaches to arrive at better solutions.

Success in This Role:

Success in this role will be measured by your ability to improve product availability, strengthen inventory health, improve vendor performance, reduce operational leakages, drive automation, and build scalable mechanisms that improve the customer and vendor experience.