Senior Demand Lead

Job Purpose

The Senior Demand Lead is the focal point of franchise management in markets for IBP (Integrated Business Planning) topics, to support the business in achieving sales performance and growth ambitions by maximizing product availability and minimizing product expiry. Lead the market level IBP process to align stakeholders on one strategic business plan containing various assumptions/scenarios and work closely with Demand Leads and Demand Planners to ensure accurate data to reflect business needs and constraints. The position includes a wide range of tasks related to the planning activities in the market such as product launches, regulatory, and commercial topics. The Senior Demand Lead is accountable for ensuring that these elements are properly coordinated locally and reflected in planning tools.

Main Responsibilities

• Lead the execution of an efficient market-level IBP process for selected franchises, driving continuous improvement.
• Accountable for the Supply Chain product supply and inventory related to specific franchises.
• Partner with Demand Leads, Demand Planners, Business Units (BUs), Finance, Regulatory, Quality and upstream production planners, other stakeholders to align market needs and trends under one set of data with scenarios and opportunities.
• Work closely with Demand Planners and other Demand Leads to ensure a lean effective planning cycle.
• Lead, engage and align the key stakeholders along all the steps of the monthly IBP process to ensure that product demand is properly forecasted in an aligned business plan as a basis for manufacturing and supply planning.
• Oversee changes in the product portfolio, such as divestment, pruning, code and sourcing changes, launches; periodically review planning master data to ensure accuracy.
• Ensure demand review meetings assumptions are properly recorded such as gaps, close-the-gap actions and escalations.
• Ensure awareness of supply constraints that impact the market and share this with key stakeholders; ensure proper escalation of issues.
• Align with Finance on the operational vs financial forecasts and work together to understand and find the best realistic action plan to meet business performance objectives.
• Orchestrate the Management Business Review meeting, including risk & opportunities; prepare the minutes, define & follow-up the actions.
• Effectively reduce the existed or potential risks of goods in shortage, return and write-off.
• Act as IBP Ambassador, participating in the IBP Community of Practice lead by CoE which promotes continuous improvement in IBP processes, systems, and tools.
• Deliver KPI targets (Sales performance, OTIF, MAPE & SPA, Inventory targets, destructions and write-off) through real action.
• Analyse key performance metrics and KPIs related to IBP, identifying opportunities for improvement and action them.
• Analyse IBP dashboards and reporting tools to track performance against targets and take action to improve.
• Review periodically the coherence of the Inventory target, Lead times, E2E physical flows to optimize the cash flow.
• Drive and implement supply chain initiatives of sales execution for continuous forecast accuracy improvement.
• Lead the ODR (obsolescence/destructions/returns) discussion inside IBP, identify actions with BU stakeholders to mitigate the inventory provisions.
• Participate in Global Product Reviews, follow-up with Product Leaders major demand & supply variations.
• Accountability for New Product Launches, line extension, network change etc. projects, ensuring a flawless and on-time implementation without supply interruption.
• Establish close working relationships with Global Supply Chain IBP leads and other global/central functions with the aim to ensure an effective 2-way communication, action planning and execution.
• Manage within Sanofi Compliance standards for all processes and activities.
• Engage when needed in the Sales & Operations Execution (S&OE) process to deliver insights into demand planning changes and ensure with stakeholders in the short-term supply chain process is linking well to the IBP planning horizon and stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience in the supply chain / manufacturing industry.
• English language skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong negotiation and communication skills.
• Ability to think and work strategically throughout the organization.
• Experience working in pharmaceutical industry.
• Demonstrated ability to anticipate future consequences of scenarios and identify mission critical issues.
• Knowledge of pharmaceutical primary and secondary manufacturing processes.
• Understanding of manufacturing finances and processes and ability to apply to supply chain management and changes and improvement projects.
• Basic knowledge of regulatory processes and requirements.
• Skilled in scenario planning, risk / benefit analysis, contingency planning and problem solving.
• Strong willingness to drive change as well as good internal marketing and communication skills.
• Ability to motivate and influence resources that do not report directly to incumbent.
• Excellent systems (SAP and Kinaxis preferred) and project management skills and basic understanding of financial function.
• Demonstrated high standards of integrity, professionalism, and commitment.
• Strong team facilitation and relationship building skills.
• Experience in understanding and managing the US, Canada and Puerto Rico Demand Market.
• Experience launching new products from a Supply Chain lens to support North America Markets.

Competency Requirements

• A high level of accountability and attention to details required.
• Demonstrated high standards of integrity, professionalism, and commitment.
• Good team facilitation and relationship building skills.