About this role
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Job Description: Role Overview: The S&OP COE Analyst is a critical role within the Planning Center of Excellence, responsible for elevating the company’s Sales & Operations Planning capabilities across a complex, multi-vendor technology portfolio. Operating in a high-SKU, fast-moving distribution environment, this role blends statistical planning, inventory optimization, and category performance analytics with structured S&OP process governance. The analyst ensures demand, supply, inventory, and financial plans are fully integrated — enabling improved service levels, working capital efficiency, and executive decision-making. This position supports a global business managing thousands of SKUs across multiple OEM partners, lifecycle stages, and regional markets.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Enterprise S&OP Governance:
• Support global standardization of the monthly S&OP cycle across regions and business units • Ensure alignment between Demand Planning, Supply Planning, Category Management, Finance, and Sales • Drive meeting readiness, executive reporting, and structured decision support • Maintain KPI governance including forecast accuracy, bias, service level, inventory turns, and working capital • Identify process gaps and lead continuous improvement initiatives to mature S&OP toward Integrated Business Planning (IBP)
2. Statistical Forecasting & Demand Segmentation:
• Develop and enhance statistical baseline forecasting models across high-SKU portfolios • Segment SKUs by demand pattern (smooth, intermittent, erratic, lifecycle) to apply differentiated planning strategies • Partner with Demand Planning to improve forecast accuracy at SKU, vendor, and category levels • Conduct forecast error and bias root cause analysis • Automate performance dashboards and exception reporting • Support parameter optimization and model tuning in planning systems
3. Inventory Optimization & Working Capital Strategy:
• Analyze inventory positioning across distribution centers and regions • Support multi-echelon inventory analysis and safety stock optimization • Develop segmentation frameworks across thousands of SKUs • Drive long-tail SKU strategies (low/no-touch planning, rationalization, order frequency optimization) • Monitor excess & obsolete exposure, lifecycle risk, and vendor transition impacts • Quantify working capital impact of planning decisions and provide executive-level insights
4. Category & Vendor Portfolio Analytics:
• Partner with Category Management and Vendor Management teams to assess portfolio performance • Build vendor and subcategory scorecards integrating revenue, margin, inventory, and service metrics • Support SKU rationalization and vendor mix optimization initiatives • Conduct lifecycle analytics (new product introduction, refresh cycles, end-of-life risk) • Model assortment and allocation scenarios across regions
5. Advanced Analytics & Decision Support:
• Build scalable data models to support forecasting, inventory analytics, and KPI reporting • Develop and maintain executive dashboards using BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, or similar) • Automate recurring reporting through SQL-driven data pipelines • Conduct scenario modeling and what-if analysis to evaluate demand shocks, supply constraints, and margin impact • Partner with IT and data engineering teams to enhance planning data architecture and governance • Improve master data accuracy and standardize KPI definitions across regions
6. Systems & Data Governance:
• Partner with IT and system owners to enhance ERP and advanced planning tools • Improve data integrity and master data governance • Support system enhancements, reporting automation, and KPI standardization • Drive scalable analytics solutions across global regions
Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Finance, Statistics, or Business • 5–10 years of experience in S&OP, demand planning, supply planning, or supply chain analytics within a distribution or technology environment • Experience managing large SKU portfolios (10,000+ SKUs preferred) • Strong knowledge of statistical forecasting methods and inventory optimization principles • Advanced Excel skills; experience with BI platforms (Power BI, Tableau, etc.) • Strong hands-on SQL capability (data extraction, joins, aggregations, performance optimization) • Experience with ERP and planning systems (Blue Yonder, SAP, Oracle, Kinaxis, Anaplan, or similar) • Strong quantitative modeling and financial acumen • Ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders in a matrixed global organization