Customer Planning & Demand Lead in Blackburn

Science In Sport Group is a world leader in sports and performance nutrition.

The Customer Planning & Demand Lead acts as the bridge between commercial ambition and operational execution, ensuring customer demand is translated into accurate forecasts, robust supply plans and high service levels. The role drives visibility, accountability and planning discipline across the customer journey, enabling profitable and scalable growth.

Contract: Permanent

Salary: Up to £50,000 per annum

Working Hours: 09:00 - 17:30

Location: Blackburn

Benefits:

• On-site gym
• Cycle to work scheme
• Product discount
• Birthday day off
• Pension scheme, employer contribution at 4%

The Work – Your 4 Most Important Responsibilities

• Forecasting & Demand Coordination: You will coordinate customer forecasting and demand planning activity across multiple regions, channels, and internal stakeholders. This includes consolidating customer forecasts, aligning promotional and launch activity, identifying risks and variances, and ensuring demand signals are clearly communicated across Supply Chain, Production, Logistics, and CX teams.
• Promotional & Launch Planning: You will oversee the operational planning and readiness of promotional campaigns, product launches, and seasonal activity. This includes ensuring stock availability, operational alignment, and execution readiness across internal teams to support successful delivery against commercial plans.
• Inventory & Supply Visibility: You will maintain clear visibility of customer demand, stock requirements, and inventory flow across the operational network. Your role will support improved planning accuracy, reduced operational disruption, and stronger alignment between customer requirements and supply capability.
• Customer Planning & Supply Chain Coordination: You will provide visibility of customer demand signals, supply constraints, and service risks across the customer portfolio. Your role will facilitate cross‑functional collaboration to support informed decision making, improve customer experience, and ensure alignment between customer requirements and operational delivery.

Accountability – What You Are Responsible For

• Delivering Forecast accuracy & demand alignment: You will be accountable for improving the accuracy, visibility, and alignment of customer forecasts across the business, reducing operational risk and improving planning effectiveness.
• Promotional & launch readiness: You will ensure operational readiness for launches, promotional campaigns, and seasonal activity through effective planning, coordination, and inventory visibility.
• Inventory visibility & planning accuracy: You will support improved inventory planning and operational visibility across key products, channels, and markets, helping minimise supply disruption and improve service performance.
• Cross‑functional planning alignment: You will ensure clear alignment between Commercial, Logistics, Production, and CX teams, creating consistent operational planning routines and improving execution standards.

Capability – the skills and behaviours required to do this job well

• Planning & organisational capability: This role requires exceptional planning and organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams, timelines, and operational priorities simultaneously. You will be highly detail‑oriented while maintaining visibility of wider business priorities and dependencies.
• Analytical & data‑driven thinking: You will demonstrate strong analytical capability, using forecast trends, operational data, and planning insight to support informed decision‑making and improve business performance.
• Cross‑functional collaboration: Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills are essential in this role. You will work closely across Commercial, Supply Chain, Production, Logistics, Demand Planning, and CX functions to ensure alignment and operational clarity, using influencing skills to drive positive outcomes and support business decision‑making.
• Operational awareness: Demonstrates strong experience within FMCG and manufacturing environments, with an understanding of the pace, complexity, and operational demands of these sectors. Experience working across multi‑channel operations, supporting multiple sites and territories to ensure consistency and alignment. You will bring strong operational understanding and awareness of supply chain dependencies, enabling you to proactively identify risks, resolve planning gaps, and support smooth operational execution.

Performance – how you will know you are doing a great job

• Forecast accuracy improvement: Improved forecast accuracy and reduced demand variance will demonstrate strong planning coordination and operational alignment.
• Launch & promotional execution: Successful execution of launches, promotional activity, and seasonal plans will reflect strong operational planning and readiness.
• Inventory & supply stability: Improved inventory visibility, reduced supply disruption, and stronger stock alignment will demonstrate effective demand and planning management.
• Planning process improvement: Enhanced reporting, improved planning routines, and stronger cross‑functional coordination will demonstrate the positive impact of the role on operational efficiency and business performance.
• S&OP contribution & customer representation: Represent the voice of the customer within the S&OP (sales and operations) process by providing demand insights, customer intelligence, service risks, and emerging market trends. Support timely and effective decision making through accurate and actionable customer focused inputs.

Attributes – experience and mindset that will enable you to do well in this role

• One Team 'approach': works individually and with others to deliver the best result for our business.
• Operationally minded: you naturally think in terms of process, structure, and execution, with a strong understanding of how operational planning impacts wider business performance.
• Commercial awareness: you understand the relationship between demand planning, stock availability, promotional activity, and customer outcomes, balancing operational capability with commercial priorities.
• Collaborative approach: you build strong working relationships across teams and functions, creating alignment and clarity within complex operational environments and influencing those around you to the best business outcome.
• Continuous improvement mindset: you are motivated by improving processes, increasing visibility, and building scalable ways of working that support operational excellence and future growth.
• Data & analytics: uses data and analytics to inform decisions, identify trends, and provide actionable insight to stakeholders. Translates complex data into clear, meaningful narratives that support business priorities and performance improvement.

Science in Sport Group is an equal opportunity employer; we value diversity and strive to cultivate an inclusive workplace. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind in regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We fully support reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, to provide an inclusive and welcoming recruitment experience.