Demand Planner II [214255]
Skill• Job Title: Demand Planner II (Internal/JD title: Senior Demand & Inventory Planner)
• Engagement Type: Temporary (3 months + potential extensions)
• Pay Rate: $28.36/hr W2
• Schedule: Full-time, 40 hours/week (flexible down to 32 hours / 4 days if requested); standard 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM (core collaboration window: 8:30 AM – 3:30 PM)
• Work Arrangement: Onsite 4 days/week (Monday – Thursday), Port
...
land, OR
Join a forward-thinking leader in its industry, a company dedicated to innovation and excellence in product delivery. As a valued partner, SKILL is seeking exceptional talent to drive critical supply chain initiatives. This is an incredible opportunity to make a tangible impact, ensuring product availability and optimizing inventory strategies across diverse channels, including a rapidly growing ecommerce presence. Your expertise will directly shape customer satisfaction and financial performance, playing a pivotal role in the company’s continued success.
About the Role
Step into a pivotal role where you will own the end-to-end demand plan and inventory strategy for a dynamic product portfolio. This position is central to balancing customer service with efficient inventory management, directly influencing key business outcomes. You will be the subject-matter expert, translating complex data into actionable insights and proactive solutions. This is your chance to lead critical cross-functional discussions, drive strategic decisions, and continuously improve planning processes, contributing significantly to both financial health and customer experience.
What You’ll Do
Demand Planning Excellence
• Own the comprehensive demand forecast across all stocked product categories and sales channels.
• Integrate historical demand, seasonality, sales trends, project activity, new product launches, transitions, discontinuations, and market intelligence into robust forecasts.
• Develop and refine incremental demand assumptions specifically for ecommerce channels.
• Review planning system exceptions and apply expert judgment at the category level.
• Rigorously measure forecast accuracy, identify forecast bias, and analyze demand volatility.
• Conduct in-depth root-cause analysis when forecasts deviate materially from actual demand.
• Facilitate crucial cross-functional demand reviews with sales, product, finance, operations, and ecommerce stakeholders.
Strategic Inventory Management
• Translate approved demand forecasts into precise inventory requirements.
• Establish and recommend optimal safety-stock targets, reorder strategies, service-level expectations, and inventory policies.
• Proactively monitor weeks of supply, projected stockout dates, backorders, inventory investment levels, and identify excess or slow-moving inventory.
• Identify potential inventory gaps well in advance, allowing for timely business responses.
• Provide clear recommendations on buy quantities and required receipt timing to the supply planning team.
• Develop comprehensive inventory plans for new product launches, ecommerce expansion, samples, product transitions, and discontinuations.
• Strategically balance product availability against working-capital efficiency and the risk of excess inventory.
Ecommerce Readiness and Optimization
• Develop varied demand scenarios (conservative, expected, higher-growth) to support ecommerce performance.
• Compare ecommerce-adjusted demand against available inventory and confirmed incoming supply.
• Proactively identify ecommerce-enabled products at risk of stockout.
• Monitor early ecommerce selling behavior and dynamically adjust assumptions as actual demand materializes.
• Recommend initial inventory investments and ongoing replenishment actions for ecommerce assortments.
• Maintain a robust dashboard tracking ecommerce launch status and inventory risks.
Driving Business Insights
• Lead recurring reviews of category performance and inventory health.
• Present clear insights on inventory risks, gaps, opportunities, and st