Demand Planner

About the Role

This critical supply chain position involves aligning commercial strategies, customer demand, historical sales data, market trends, inventory exposure, and procurement needs. The Demand Planner is responsible for generating and maintaining accurate demand forecasts at the SKU level across New Country Healthcare’s diverse portfolio, which spans healthcare, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, food, FMCG, and digital commerce sectors.

This role includes transforming sales plans, promotional events, product launches, tender opportunities, customer data, and market insights into dependable demand signals. The planner works collaboratively with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Planning, Key Accounts, and Digital Commerce teams to enhance forecast accuracy, safeguard product availability, minimize excess and aged inventory, and optimize working capital management.

Key Responsibilities

• Create and sustain rolling SKU-level demand forecasts that address short-, medium-, and long-term forecasting horizons.
• Aggregate demand inputs from multiple sources including brands, business units, customers, domestic trade, e-commerce, exports, and tenders.
• Drive the monthly demand review process and support the broader Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) activities.
• Integrate historical sales patterns, seasonality, market tendencies, commercial initiatives, promotions, and customer activities into credible demand assumptions.
• Collaborate with Sales and Marketing teams to evaluate new product launches, campaigns, distribution gains, pricing strategies, and customer opportunities.
• Track and analyze forecast accuracy, bias, and deviations between forecast and actual demand, alongside identifying significant demand fluctuations.
• Detect potential stockouts, surplus inventory, slow-moving items, and products nearing expiry to prevent customer impact or financial loss.
• Supply Planning with the timely and accurate demand data needed for replenishment and procurement decision-making.
• Develop demand scenarios to accommodate tenders, new product introductions, promotions, customer opportunities, and market condition shifts.
• Create dashboards and reports that effectively communicate forecasting performance, risks, opportunities, and necessary interventions.
• Continuously enhance demand planning processes by improving systems usage, data quality, forecast assumptions, and planning discipline across the organization.

Qualifications and Fit

• Comprehensive understanding of how demand planning impacts sales, product availability, customer satisfaction, inventory levels, expiry risk, and working capital.
• Ability to balance quantitative data analysis with commercial insight and practical judgement.
• Confidence in challenging sales forecasts and commercial assumptions through data-driven evidence.
• Skill in differentiating true customer demand from anomalies such as exceptional orders, stock-outs, promotions, tenders, and isolated activities.
• Facility to convert large datasets into clear actionable insights, risk assessments, and recommendations.
• Experience collaborating across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Digital Commerce, and senior management stakeholders.
• Proactive ownership of forecast performance with a focus on addressing discrepancies beyond mere reporting.

Essential Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business Administration, Engineering, Economics, Statistics, Data Analytics, or a related discipline.
• 3 to 5 years of pertinent experience in demand planning, sales forecasting, supply chain planning, or a related analytical function.
• Demonstrated expertise in developing and managing SKU-level demand forecasts within a multi-product environment.
• Practical experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 applied to demand planning and forecasting tasks.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel capabilities including Power Query, PivotTables, lookup functions, data cleaning, and analytical modeling.
• Strong knowledge of forecast accuracy metrics, bias assessment, seasonality, trend evaluation, demand segmentation, and exception management.
• Participation in or support for monthly demand reviews and Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) or Integrated Business Planning processes.
• Excellent analytical, communication, stakeholder engagement, and problem-solving skills.

Desirable Qualifications

• Experience within pharmaceutical, healthcare, nutraceutical, FMCG, food, consumer goods, or other industries sensitive to product expiry.
• Previous demand planning exposure within the UAE or GCC markets, handling multiple customers, channels, or business units.
• Experience forecasting demand related to tenders, promotional activities, new product rollouts, export markets, or e-commerce platforms.
• Familiarity with Power BI or similar business intelligence and data visualization tools.
• Understanding of inventory management areas such as coverage levels, service targets, overstock, slow-moving stock, and near-expiry mitigation.
• Experience operating in environments with distributors, principal-led structures, or multi-brand portfolios.