Demand Planner

Retail; Greater London; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 62,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Colleague discount

Pensions scheme

Life cover

Bonus up to 10% of salary

Annual holiday allowance

Cycle to work scheme

Salary advance

Employee assistance programme

Job summary

Sainsbury's is seeking a Demand Planner in London to help ensure market-leading product availability, optimise inventory and cost to serve, and drive sales growth. You will analyse forecasts, validate demand plans, and collaborate with Buyers, Category Managers, and Supply Chain teams to deliver value.

You should have 3–5 years of demand planning or inventory management experience in FMCG, with strong analytics and proficiency in SAP/Oracle/JDA/Blue Yonder.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 3-5 years of experience in demand planning or inventory management within retail.
• Deep understanding of supply chain dynamics and distribution strategies in FMCG.
• Strong analytics and data interrogation to improve demand planning outputs.
• Experience with SAP, Oracle, JDA or Blue Yonder for forecasting.

Responsibilities

• Analyse and validate demand forecasts and develop demand planning strategies.
• Collaborate with Buyers, Range Planners, and Product Development to balance availability and P&L.
• Drive supplier partnerships, optimize stock, and improve working capital.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Supplier partnerships

Data optimisation

Category management

Forecasting & analytics

Stakeholder management

Commercial forecasting methods

Tools

SAP

Oracle

JDA

Blue Yonder

Job description

As a Demand Planner, you will play a crucial role in ensuring market leading product availability, driving sales growth, and optimising our inventory levels and cost to serve. In this role, you will analyse and validate demand forecasts and collaborate with various stakeholders to develop and execute effective demand planning strategies. Your role is key in maintaining our commitment to customer obsession, ensuring that we continue to deliver exceptional service and value to our customers. Your efforts will directly contribute to enhancing our bottom line, making a tangible impact on our profitability and overall business performance.

• Cross functional collaboration: Build and sustain strong relationships with commercial teams, including Buyers, Range Planners, Technical, and Product Development. Hold stakeholders accountable to ensure process compliance, balancing product availability and P&L performance.

• Supplier Partnerships: Proactively drive the supplier agenda by fostering trust-based strategic partnerships and developing joint business plans. Focus on enhancing network operations, optimizing stock holding, improving working capital, and achieving supplier targets.

• Data optimisation: Use data analytics, market trends, performance metrics, and customer behaviour insights to solve complex problems, ensure data integrity and optimise supply chain systems for exceptional customer availability.

• Category Management: Ensure comprehensive management over category profiles, validate and communicate the impacts of future events and seasonal trade patterns to ensure success for both suppliers and retail teams.

Essential

• Experience: Minimum of 3-5 years of experience in demand planning, inventory management, or a related role within the retail industry.

• Supply Chain knowledge: Deep understanding of supply chain dynamics, inventory management, and distribution strategies specific to the sector. Strong knowledge of best-in-class commercial forecasting methods and tools in FMCG industry.

• Technical & analytical skills: Experience using complex analytics, data interrogation and root cause analysis to solve complex problems and drive better outputs from demand planning software (e.g., SAP, Oracle, JDA, Blue Yonder).

• Customer centric mindset: Ability to apply a customer focus across all KPIs and in decision making.

• Continuous improvement: Demonstrates end to end thinking to drive performance improvement in both processes and across all KPIs, delivering efficiencies and improvements to the P&L.

• Stakeholder management and collaboration: Ability to develop strong business partnering relationships, stakeholder management, and cross-functional working at all levels. Ability to tell stories and provide answers to ensure effective communication.

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work/life balance. That’s waiting for you right here. Supply Chain and Logistics is the engine room that gets thousands of products from farms and factories, through the business and to millions of customers every day. We plan around everything from barbecue weekends to Sunday roasts, supporting those who want oven-ready cauliflower cheese and those who prefer to make it from scratch. Insight and data are everything. But so is judgement — when there’s an issue or ambiguity anywhere, we’re often the first to spot it. There’s a big transformation underway. It calls for people who champion change, bring others with them, and collaborate and communicate. Because those people can go a very long way here.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).