Sales and Operations Planning Manager

The sales & Operations Planning Manager drives and supports Front Line planning activities across NBS (New Business Solutions) and MOD (Modernization), resulting in the agreed and aligned sales plan, installation resource plan, materials plan, and financial forecast. The S&OP Manager is accountable for S&OP process performance in terms of plan accuracy, cross-functional participation and proactive decision making by all stakeholders.

Is the expert go-to person for FL/Area/Global staff for all S&OP content, process, data, and tools. Acts as business partner for FL (Front Line) Operations Director.

Key Responsibilities:

• Accountable for implementing and maintaining the S&OP process by training, coaching, influencing and supporting all participants.
• Leads, directs, supports, assists, evaluates, educates, and develops Front Line staff involved in the S&OP process (such as S&OP Specialist and Delivery Operations Managers) to ensure that FL planning activities meet pre-established targets (predominantly delivery planning accuracy and bias).
• Ensures the Portfolio Reviews and Demand Meetings are performed and effective, while bringing a strong focus on Plan Accuracy and utilizing analysis of trends and order book to challenge timing and volume where appropriate.
• Supports Business Controller in preparing meaningful, decision-making material for monthly Executive Meeting (incl. regional demand plan consolidation, mix/trend analysis, risk and opportunity identification, financial scenario analysis, explanation of historical variation to plan).
• Drives alignment of units/revenue/margin in sales, material, labor and financial plan.
• Prepares volume, revenue and margin projections for beyond 6 months horizon (before which order book and management judgement is the sole explicit source of the demand plan).
• Accountable for rolling 18 months planning MLO (Most Likely Outcome) updates and quality for all business lines and communicate significant changes to relevant stakeholders.
• Collaborates with sales and delivery operations teams to incorporate seasonal activities, major projects, and new product launches into demand plans.
• Monitors plan consumption and acts with Delivery Operations Managers if orderbook scheduling is causing excessive overconsumption (i.e. high bow wave, peaks in particular weeks, or high risk of slippage).
• Drive overall order book quality with Delivery Operations Managers, Installation Supervisors and Project Managers through effective collaboration.
• Pro-actively solves prioritization issues with Delivery Operations Managers and/or Supervisors in periods where quota is lower than required number of deliveries.
• Collaborate with relevant functions to resolve planning related SAP master data inaccuracies.
• Coordinate with Supply Line as the main Front-Line Operations contact on delays, postponements, deliveries, prioritizations, escalations.
• Fulfils Frontline key user role for planning related tools.
• Monitors inventory levels to ensure they are in line with target levels and financial objectives.
• Implements strategies to optimize inventory turnover, reduce excess and obsolete stock, and improve service levels.
• Tracks and reports key S&OP performance metrics, such as forecast accuracy, service levels, inventory turns, and plan adherence.
• Analyses data to identify trends, variances, and opportunities for improvement.
• Serves as a key liaison between delivery operations, customer engineering, sales, finance, and supply chain planning teams, ensuring alignment with global strategies and objectives.
• Fosters strong relationships with stakeholders across different functions to support a collaborative planning process.
• Assesses volume scenarios (high/low) reflecting the risks and opportunities in the operative plan.
• Identifies risks and implements mitigation strategies to ensure achieving business volume targets.

Key Skills & Experiences:

• Understands Sales, Project Management, and/or Supply Chain Management, specifically S&OP.
• Commercially astute – having an end-to-end view at all times while considering margin impact.
• Analytical and process minded.
• Risk management experience.
• SAP knowledge is essential.
• Excel and PowerBI.

What KONE can offer:

We offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday and additional Bank Holidays, 1 paid Volunteering Day, Company Pension Scheme, Bonus, Car/Car Allowance, Private Medical Insurance, PDI, Development opportunities and development reviews to help you achieve your professional goals. Endless support from experienced leaders within the lifts industry, Kone Discounts, 24/7 GP Support & Wellbeing Access, Hybrid Working.