Senior Manager Jobs in Ridgefield, CT (NOW HIRING)

The Senior Manager, Demand Planning is a critical leader within BIC USA's Supply Chain organization, responsible for leading the demand planning function across a ~$1B U.S. business spanning three categories and more than 1,400 SKUs.

This role owns the end-to-end demand planning process and is accountable for creating a single, forward-looking view of demand that enables the business to make better commercial, financial, supply, and inventory decisions. The Senior Manager translates market intelligence, commercial strategy, customer dynamics, promotional activity, innovation, and external trends into actionable demand plans across multiple planning horizons.

As a strategic business partner to Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Planning, Operations, and Customer teams, this leader will challenge assumptions, surface risks and opportunities, and ensure demand plans reflect both the ambition of the business and the realities of the marketplace. The role plays a critical part in driving IBP/S&OP maturity, improving forecast accuracy and bias, optimizing inventory, and enabling superior customer service.

Beyond the planning process, the Senior Manager will build and develop a high-performing team, strengthen planning capabilities, drive digital and analytical transformation, and establish best-in-class demand planning practices across the organization.

The ideal candidate brings a business leader mindset to demand planning - balancing analytical rigor with commercial acumen, challenging the status quo, and connecting demand decisions to revenue, profitability, customer experience, inventory, and operational performance.

What You'll Do:

Demand Planning Leadership

• Lead the end-to-end monthly demand planning process across all U.S. categories, ensuring a robust and disciplined approach to forecasting and demand management.
• Own the demand plan across multiple planning horizons, including near-term execution, 0-24 month planning, Annual Operating Plan (AOP), Latest Estimate (LE), and Long-Range Planning (LRP).
• Establish and continuously improve demand planning methodologies, including statistical forecasting, historical analysis, market intelligence, commercial inputs, and scenario-based planning.
• Drive improvements in forecast accuracy, forecast bias, forecast value add, and overall demand plan quality.
• Establish clear planning governance, standards, roles, and accountability across the demand planning organization and broader business.
• Lead preparation, consolidation, and presentation of demand inputs for IBP/S&OP and executive planning forums.
• Ensure the demand plan provides a clear and actionable view of the most likely business outcome while appropriately reflecting upside, downside, and uncertainty.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and improve planning processes, eliminate non-value-added activities, and increase the speed and quality of decision-making.

Commercial & Business Partnership

• Serve as a strategic thought partner to Sales, Marketing, Category Management, Business Development, Finance, and other commercial stakeholders.
• Translate commercial strategies, customer plans, promotions, innovation, pricing, distribution changes, competitive activity, and market trends into the demand plan.
• Challenge commercial assumptions using data, insights, and external market intelligence to ensure forecasts are ambitious yet grounded in evidence.
• Create constructive tension when appropriate, ensuring the organization distinguishes between commercial ambition and statistically supported demand.
• Partner with Sales and Marketing leadership to understand the demand drivers behind revenue plans and identify gaps, risks, and opportunities.
• Provide forward-looking insights that help leaders understand what is changing, why it is changing, and what the business should do about it.
• Support launch planning and demand forecasting for new products, line extensions, discontinuations, and portfolio changes.
• Improve alignment between revenue plans, demand plans, operational capabilities, and financial expectations.

IBP / S&OP Leadership & Governance

• Serve as the Demand Planning leader within the North America IBP/S&OP process, while benchmarking and sharing best practices with global partners.
• Own the demand review process, ensuring accurate, insightful, and decision-oriented materials are prepared for senior leadership.
• Consolidate inputs from Commercial, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, and other functions into a single aligned demand view.
• Identify and communicate material demand risks, opportunities, gaps, and emerging trends.
• Lead scenario planning and sensitivity analysis to evaluate potential impacts of market, customer, and supply-related changes.
• Facilitate cross-functional discussions to drive alignment and resolution of demand-related issues.
• Ensure clear handoffs and alignment between demand, supply, inventory, and financial plans.
• Continuously evolve the IBP/S&OP process to increase business value, decision quality, and executive engagement.

Analytics, Insights & Planning Excellence

• Establish a fact-based, data-driven approach to demand planning and business decision-making.
• Leverage Blue Yonder, JDE, Power BI, Excel, and other analytical tools to improve visibility, forecasting, and decision support.
• Develop and monitor demand planning KPIs, dashboards, and performance reporting.
• Lead root-cause analysis of significant forecast variances, bias, and demand performance gaps.
• Distinguish between forecast error caused by planning performance versus true changes in market or customer behavior.
• Develop actionable insights from large and complex data sets and translate analytics into clear business recommendations.
• Drive continuous improvement in forecasting methodologies, processes, tools, and capabilities.
• Partner with Supply Chain, IT, and other stakeholders on digital transformation and future-state planning technology.
• Promote best-in-class demand planning practices aligned with APICS/ASCM principles and leading CPG practices.

Team Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Demand Planning professionals responsible for category-level demand planning.
• Establish clear objectives, performance expectations, and accountability across the team.
• Build organizational capability in forecasting, analytics, commercial acumen, scenario planning, and business partnering.
• Develop succession plans and strengthen the talent pipeline for critical planning capabilities.
• Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and fact-based decision-making.
• Encourage the team to operate as proactive business partners rather than transactional planners.
• Provide coaching and development that strengthens both technical planning expertise and broader business leadership capabilities.
• Recognize and develop high potential talent while addressing performance gaps with clarity and consistency.

Supply Chain & Business Transformation

• Partner closely with Supply Planning, Customer Service, Operations, Procurement, Finance, and Commercial teams to optimize end-to-end business performance.
• Identify opportunities to improve the balance between customer service, inventory, working capital, and forecast performance.
• Support initiatives that improve inventory health, reduce slow-moving and obsolete inventory, and increase supply chain responsiveness.
• Participate in cross-functional transformation initiatives that strengthen end-to-end planning capabilities.
• Challenge existing processes and ways of working to identify opportunities for simplification, automation, and greater business impact.
• Champion a continuous improvement mindset and promote adoption of new tools, processes, and planning capabilities.
• Bring an enterprise mindset to decision-making, balancing category-level objectives with total business performance.

Key Performance Indicators

Forecast & Demand Performance

• Forecast Accuracy (MAPE/WAPE)
• Forecast Bias
• Forecast Value Add (FVA)
• Promotional Forecast Accuracy
• New Product Forecast Accuracy
• Forecast Adoption / Demand Plan Stability

Business & Supply Chain Performance

• Service Level / OTIF
• Inventory Days of Coverage (DOC)
• Inventory Health / SLOB
• Revenue Attainment vs. Forecast
• Working Capital / Inventory Performance
• Supply-Demand Alignment

Process & Planning Excellence

• IBP/S&OP Adherence
• Demand Review Completion
• Planning Cycle Time
• Planning Process Compliance
• Scenario Planning & Risk Management Effectiveness
• Continuous Improvement / Productivity

What You'll Need:

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Business, Engineering, Finance, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• APICS/ASCM certification or equivalent supply chain certification preferred.

Experience

• 8-10 years of progressive experience in Demand Planning, Supply Chain, Forecasting, IBP/S&OP, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 3 years of experience leading and developing teams.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex CPG/FMCG portfolios with high SKU, customer, promotional, and seasonal complexity.
• Proven experience partnering with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Supply Chain leadership.
• Experience supporting businesses with $500M+ in revenue preferred.
• Demonstrated experience with promotional, seasonal, innovation, and lifecycle-driven demand environments.
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to IBP/S&OP transformation and process improvement.
• Demonstrated experience using data and analytics to influence business decisions and challenge assumptions.
• Lean Six Sigma experience or certification preferred.

Technical & Functional Skills

• Required
  • Demand Planning & Forecasting
  • Statistical Forecasting & Modeling
  • IBP / S&OP
  • Supply Chain Analytics
  • Commercial & Market Analysis
  • Scenario Planning
  • Advanced Microsoft Excel
  • Power BI
  • ERP Systems, including JDE, SAP, or Oracle

• Preferred
  • Blue Yonder or other advanced demand planning platforms
  • JDE
  • SQL / Data Analytics
  • Advanced forecasting and machine learning applications
  • APICS/ASCM methodologies

Leadership Competencies

Strategic & Business Leadership

• Strategic Thinking: Connects demand planning decisions to broader business strategy, financial performance, customer needs, and long-term growth.
• Business Acumen: Understands the commercial and financial drivers of the business and uses that understanding to improve planning decisions.
• Enterprise Mindset: Optimizes for total business performance rather than individual functions, categories, or metrics.
• Challenger Mindset: Constructively challenges assumptions, established processes, and conventional thinking to improve business outcomes.
• Decision Quality: Uses data, insights, and sound judgment to make timely, practical decisions in an environment of uncertainty.

Influence & Collaboration

• Influencing Without Authority: Builds alignment and drives action across functions and levels of the organization.
• Executive Communication: Communicates complex data and insights clearly, concisely, and with a strong point of view.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Creates effective partnerships across Commercial, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Operations, and Customer teams.
• Customer Focus: Understands customer needs and incorporates customer and market dynamics into planning decisions.

People Leadership

• Talent Development: Builds capability, develops future leaders, and creates a strong succession pipeline.
• Accountability: Establishes clear expectations and creates a culture of ownership and performance.
• Change Leadership: Successfully leads teams through new processes, systems, organizational changes, and evolving business requirements.
• Continuous Improvement: Consistently looks for ways to simplify, improve, automate, and increase the value delivered by the planning organization.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 12-18 months, the Senior Manager, Demand Planning will have:

• Established a highly disciplined, transparent, and commercially aligned demand planning process.
• Improved forecast accuracy, bias, and forecast value add across the U.S. portfolio.
• Strengthened the quality and business impact of the IBP/S&OP demand review.
• Built strong credibility and trusted partnerships within Commercial, Finance, Supply Chain, and senior leadership.
• Increased the organization's ability to identify demand risks and opportunities earlier and respond proactively.
• Developed a high-performing demand planning team with clear accountability, strong analytical capabilities, and a strong business-partner mindset.
• Identified and implemented meaningful opportunities to simplify, automate, and improve planning processes.
• Strengthened the connection between ...