Demand Specialist

Role overview

Forecasting and consensus planning

• Analyze historical sales, promotions, macroeconomic indicators, competitor activity, market trends, new-product forecasts, and customer feedback.
• Develop and refine statistical forecast models, baseline forecasts, and advanced forecasting approaches.
• Integrate cross-functional business intelligence into consensus forecasts and analyze forecast variance, root causes, and bias.
• Assess demand risks and opportunities through best-case, worst-case, and most-likely scenarios.
• Lead demand reviews, challenge forecasts with data, resolve conflicts, and communicate the agreed plan.
• Coordinate forecasting for new product launches and end-of-life transitions to reduce obsolescence and stock-out risks.

Inventory, reporting, and process improvement

• Support supply planning with production schedules, inventory strategies, and capacity plans that balance service and cost.
• Monitor inventory against targets, identify stock-out and excess risks, and recommend corrective or preventive actions.
• Develop strategies to reduce slow-moving and obsolete inventory, including lifecycle management and disposition plans.
• Design and automate reports and dashboards for forecast accuracy, bias, variability, service levels, and other KPIs.
• Present demand insights and recommendations to management and improve forecasting, data integration, planning processes, and systems.
• Lead or participate in SIOP continuous-improvement initiatives, applying Lean or Six Sigma principles where applicable.

Systems and data governance

• Serve as a demand-planning software super-user and subject matter expert, including systems such as ERP/MRP, Kinaxis, IBP, or Anaplan.
• Develop and enforce data-governance practices to maintain planning-system data integrity, accuracy, and consistency.
• Contribute to evaluating and selecting planning technologies and tools.

Operating cadence

• Daily and weekly work includes monitoring demand signals, analyzing short-term deviations, communicating significant shifts, and addressing urgent planning exceptions.
• Monthly work includes refreshing and validating planning inputs, running statistical forecasts, and applying post-processing adjustments.
• Monthly work also includes facilitating demand reviews, analyzing forecast accuracy and bias, reporting KPIs, and communicating emerging risks and opportunities.

Requirements

• Ability to analyze complex historical sales data and identify trends, causal factors, and market drivers.
• Ability to develop and refine statistical forecast models; advanced techniques such as machine learning, predictive analytics, and hierarchical forecasting are examples to explore and implement.
• Ability to integrate qualitative input from sales, marketing, and product management into consensus forecasts.
• Ability to analyze forecast variances, identify root causes, and recommend corrective and preventive measures.
• Ability to quantify demand risks and opportunities and develop scenario analyses.
• Ability to lead cross-functional demand reviews, resolve conflicts, and build stakeholder commitment.
• Ability to support inventory, production, capacity, and supply-planning decisions.
• Experience with demand planning software such as ERP/MRP, Kinaxis, IBP, or Anaplan is referenced as system expertise; no individual system is mandated.
• Lean or Six Sigma principles may be applied where applicable.