Planning Coordinator at mPharma

At mPharma, we start and end our day thinking about how we can enable patients to afford their medications. We’re a small but growing team of 500+ members, headquartered in Accra, Ghana, backed by mission-driven investors. We’ve joined hands with third-party payers, drug manufacturers, and healthcare providers to develop products and services that directly reduce the costs of prescription drugs for patients. In only a few years, we’ve managed to provide low-cost, high-quality medicines to hundreds of thousands of patients across 10 African countries.

Position Description 

This role sits within the Supply Chain function. As the Demand & Supply Planning Coordinator, you will create and maintain forecast models for our customers, incorporating business intelligence and forecast information gathered from sales, marketing, finance, retailer data, and other sources (i.e. Nielsen or other syndicated consumer data).

The Demand & Supply Planning Coordinator is the integration point into the sales and commercial organization. This position leads the dialogue each month for their respective customers and products with key counterparts in the Sales and Marketing teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop long-term sales forecast as part of the M process used by the business for short and long-term capacity planning, materials planning and third-party supplier forecasts.
• Work closely and will build close relationships with customers and supply chain contacts to deliver optimum product availability.
• Develop demand forecasts (operational forecasts) at multiple levels of aggregation for multiple time horizons as part of a demand planning function.
• Review historical sales trends, research demand drivers, prepare forecast data, develop statistical forecast models, and evaluate forecast results.
• Coordinate cross-functional research activities to reconcile significant variances and refine the forecast model to reflect updated sales and marketing assumptions.
• Ensure that risks to business are escalated within business-wide category planning forums with Root cause analysis and recommendations for mitigation.
• Map out demand drivers assumed in the forecast & validate them against statistical and historical events.
• Interact with provider engagements, operations and finance to understand demand forecast drivers.
• Lead forecast bias and forecast error corrective action within the categories.
• Utilize a collaborative and consensus approach by working with provider engagement and Customer Finance to obtain and ensure that current and accurate information is used for demand forecasts.
• Use and maintain the Demand Planning software as the primary forecasting system tool and support projects around forecasting.
• Provide input for Supply Planning in developing inventory strategies on existing items, new products, and product phase-outs.
• Closely coordinate and communicate customer action plans with supply planning.
• Monitor and communicate any imbalance or potential KPI miss with options to mitigate on a weekly and monthly basis.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 2 years of experience in the supply chain, planning, logistics, or related fields is required.
• Knowledge of Integrated Commercial Planning, S&OP and the demand planning process is required.
• A degree in Supply Chain, Logistics or any related discipline is preferred.
• Experience of working in the FMCG industry with a proven track record in the supply chain, demand planning and customer collaboration.
• Demonstrated proficiency in statistics, forecasting and forecasting methods with an understanding of their financial and operational impacts.
• Working knowledge of software related to demand planning is preferred.

Our Ideal Candidate

• Possesses strong analytical and IT skills.
• Demonstrated strong time management and organizational skills.
• Demonstrated communication and problem-solving skills to interact with people at all levels and proactively and resourcefully solve problems in dynamic environments.
• Good team player with the ability to support and lead to achieve common goals.
• Experience managing internal communications, and working cross-functionally to deliver results.
• Strong interpersonal and quality decision-making skills based on analysis, facts, wisdom and experience even under time pressure.