Demand Planner

Are you an experienced Demand Planner who is a true expert in your field, with the capability to utilise market intelligence to optimise stock availability and the inventory profile for a large range of products? In this Demand Planner role, you’ll be recognised as an expert within our business, shaping the flow of around 2,500 SKUs sourced from approximately 100 diverse vendors who you’ll foster excellent relationships with. Your product portfolio will deliver circa £70m of annual revenue, and you’ll be working on a 12-month rolling plan to ensure exceptional levels of service are delivered consistently, ensuring Arco maintain our position as the UK’s leading health and safety experts!

The Demand Planner role is a hybrid position, with a mix of 2/3 days working from home and our Head Office in Hull.

• Using and maintaining the Arco forecast and supply tools to ensure their optimal usage to develop robust demand and supply plans for own products to feed the overall plan.
• Developing a demand forecast for respective categories and customers at both a detailed level and multiple levels of aggregation.
• Ensuring demand forecasts are informed by statistical forecasts, historical sales trends and business, brand and category insight, ensuring the forecast is robust and reflective of latest market intelligence.
• Analysing and evaluating historical sales trends and utilise a collaborative approach to reconcile forecast variances and refine forecast models to reflect assumptions to drive improved accuracy of forecasts.
• Liaising with key stakeholders to monitor NPI forecast and assumptions reflecting changes where required and ensure the smooth introduction and exit of products.
• Optimising inventory to achieve budget targets, whilst maintaining customer service.
• Creating and managing a rolling supplier forecast taking into consideration the sales forecast and understand impact of vendor’s ability to supply against the forecast.
• Sharing risks and/or applying adjustments to the demand or supply plan, performing what if scenarios to resolve Demand/Supply imbalances.
• Co-ordinating the resolution to demand/supply imbalances with supply chain, category management, sales and operations.
• Collaborating with key suppliers to drive improvements to supplier performance to deliver best in class service.
• Building relationships with key functions (sales, category and supply chain) to become a recognised expert demonstrating solution focussed customer centric behaviours.

On top of working for the UK’s leading integrated health and safety experts, you’ll also receive:

• A competitive starting salary plus bonus.
• 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays which rises with service, plus the option to purchase up to 5 more days each calendar year.
• 2 fully paid Community Volunteering days every year.
• An excellent pension (up to 8% Arco contribution) and x4 Life Assurance scheme.
• A huge range of discounts to help with cost of living via Perkbox plus Employee Discount on Arco products.
• Free, 24-hour access to our Employee Assistance Programme.
• Health Cash Plan where we’ll reimburse up to 100% of everyday healthcare costs.
• Access to our Learning Management System, to support your personal and career development.
• Long-term service awards – we’re proud to have employees who have worked for us for 40 years.

• Excellent knowledge of supply chain processes and systems.
• Good knowledge of inventory management and forecasting principles & logic.
• Comfortable working with and analysing large data sets.
• Large volume SKU management within a distribution environment.
• Experience of working within a multi-site business environment and Supply Planning to support both a B2B and B2C customer environments.
• Good understanding of UK domestic, European and Rest of World Supply Chains.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• Commercial awareness and market trends.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office tools (Excel, Word, PowerPoint).

With a 140-year legacy, Arco are recognised as the UK's leading safety experts. As the only integrated safety products and services business, our size, scale and reputation in the sector are why we have such an impressive portfolio of accounts and customers. We’re the expert safety partner with a unique mix of specialist expertise and practical real-life industry knowledge.

We are now on a transformation journey to become more profitable and sustainable, with investment into our growing business to help achieve this. This is an exciting and demanding time for the business. There is opportunity to shape and challenge the transformation journey and future growth, while balancing the pressure to deliver sales growth and financial targets that are necessary to support the future growth.

Our behaviours; Care, Collaborate, Perform and Deliver, are embedded within our culture, to drive performance and ensure we succeed together and are rewarded for that shared success. Because It’s on us. To deliver. Together.

Diversity and Inclusion at Arco means understanding everyone's views and giving colleagues a sense of belonging. We respect and value individuals for their unique skills, experiences and ideas; to ensure we can be at our best. By creating a supportive and inclusive environment we will be an organisation able to drive our strategic goals, attracting and developing great people to be a more profitable and sustainable business for generations to come.