Planning and S&OP Manager, EMEA

Benefits: Excellent UK benefits including Health and Wellbeing Allowance

The Skills You'll Need: Planning, S&OP, Team Management, Analytics

Your New Salary: £60k

Location: Staines/ hybrid - 2 days/week in office

Job status: Permanent

Start date: ASAP

Working hours: 8.30am - 5.30pm Monday-Friday, 40h per week

Who You'll Be Working for: Leading IT accessories business.

Planning and S&OP Manager, EMEA - What You'll be Doing Each Day:

Demand Planning

  • Lead consensus forecasting in collaboration with Product Management and Sales.
  • Maintain and improve forecasting tools and methodologies.
  • Identify and report demand risks, opportunities, and gaps to plan.

Supply Planning

  • Oversee the purchase order placement process, ensuring alignment with forecast, lead times, and inventory policy without directly placing the POs.
  • Define and manage inventory strategies, including safety stock levels and segmentation by product category or channel.
  • Manage planning for product launches and end-of-life inventory transitions.
  • Collaborate with Global Sourcing on order execution and issue resolution.

S&OP Leadership

  • Lead the monthly S&OP cycle, facilitating executive-level alignment and accountability.
  • Maintain and improve S&OP data and reporting tools, ensuring a "one-number" approach.
  • Drive process maturity, cross-functional discipline, and outcome-focused meetings.
  • Influence cross-functional decision-making through clear, data-driven insights that support broader business strategy.

Analytics & Reporting

  • Own planning KPIs, including forecast accuracy, bias, inventory turns, and service levels.
  • Conduct root cause analysis and present insights to drive improvements.
  • Support Finance, Commercial, and Executive reporting with accurate, timely data.

Continuous Improvement

  • Drive improvements in forecast accuracy and supply planning efficiency.
  • Optimise inventory levels to balance availability, working capital, and obsolescence.
  • Identify automation opportunities and lead tool/process enhancements.
  • Work closely with IT and global teams to improve planning systems (e.g., Netstock, D365).
  • Support the evolution of analytics and reporting capabilities across the team.

Team Leadership & Development

  • Lead, coach and develop a high-performing team of three supply chain planners and one operations analyst.
  • Build scalable and repeatable processes to support regional growth.
  • Ensure structured training, skills development, and performance management to strengthen the planning function.
  • Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous learning.

Planning and S&OP Manager, EMEA - The Skills You'll Need to Succeed:

  • Experience in demand and supply planning roles in a consumer product business.
  • Experience leading S&OP processes and engaging with executive stakeholders.
  • Proven success managing and developing teams.
  • Experience with long-lead planning, forecasting tools, and inventory optimisation.
  • Familiarity with ERP and planning systems (Netstock, D365 preferred).
  • Advanced Excel skills required, including Power Query and Power BI.
  • Analytical, with a strong eye for detail and data accuracy.
  • Influential communicator who can engage senior stakeholders.
  • Strategic thinker with strong execution capability.
  • Proactive, improvement-focused mindset.
  • Comfortable managing complexity and ambiguity.
  • Experience working with systems teams and influencing tool development and use.
  • Commercially aware and able to evaluate trade-offs between service, cost, and inventory.

Please follow us on Linkedin: people-first-supply-chain

We would be grateful if you could send your CV as a Word document. If your application is successful, you will be contacted within 7 days. We regret that due to the high volume of applications we receive we cannot provide feedback on individual CVs. Please note that we can only consider candidates who are eligible to work in the UK and are able to provide relevant supporting documentation.

People First is committed to increasing diversity, and maintaining an inclusive workplace culture. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, year of birth, relationship status or whether or not they have a disability.

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Company
People First
Location
Staines-upon-Thames, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Hybrid / WFH Options
Employment Type
Full-Time
Salary
£45,000 - £60,000 per annum
Posted
Company
People First
Location
Staines-upon-Thames, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Hybrid / WFH Options
Employment Type
Full-Time
Salary
£45,000 - £60,000 per annum
Posted