Business Planning Specialist

Job purpose

At the market level, following HQ guidelines, she/he will support all Business Planning activities for both Commercial and Consumer product groups, with a primary focus on Commercial while ensuring business continuity and backup support for Consumer.

The role contributes to accurate sales forecasting, structured governance and data-driven decision-making by coordinating planning inputs, consolidating results and preparing performance materials for management reviews.

The local function is centrally driven and operates within a collaborative model that integrates local market insights and customer value. This role reports to the Sales Operations Manager and works closely with two Sales Directors with a functional reporting line to central Business Planning.

Responsibilities

• Sales Planning / Landing Point Alignment / DP input
  • Prepare weekly Landing Point (LP) and Sales Planning in coordination with the LSCM team, ensuring customer delivery reliability and enabling performance management to support the achievement of company targets.
  • Ensure monthly input to Central Demand Planning team to secure demand signal quality, facilitating accurate supply planning. Ensure coordination and alignment across pricing strategy, marketing, logistics & supply chain (LSCM) and Go-To-Market (GTM) plans.

• Gap Analysis & Action Planning
  • Identify gaps in performance and convert insights into concrete action plans to support sales target achievement together with Sales Directors.
  • Monitor sales performance, proactively identify deviations from plan and conduct root-cause analyses to initiate corrective actions

• Streamlined Management Reporting
  • In alignment with HQ’s guidelines coordinate and support the preparation of Sales Performance Business Reviews, Executive Review meetings and handle ad-hoc requests from VPs, central teams or local Sales Directors.
  • Consolidate market performance results and trends, highlighting key drivers, risks & opportunities.
  • Ensure alignment of all business performance materials with HQ templates and standards.

• Budgeting (OB, Field budget and Customer Targets)
  • Coordinate and prepare Budget (OB) and Latest Forecast (LF) processes at the local level, granting B4P inputs.
  • Consolidate high-level DUMS input for OB and contribute to financial simulations and what-if scenarios in alignment with HQ demand planning, Business Planning and Sales team.
  • Coordinate the preparation and maintenance of the field sales budget in alignment with HQ guidelines and local Sales team, which underpins the Sales Incentive Plan (SIP).
  • Coordinate and manage customer targets in collaboration with the local organization to support performance goals, following HQ policies, granting follow-up and alignment with Pricing team.

• Sales Enablement & Cross Functional Collaboration
  • Promote strong engagement with local Sales teams through kick-off meetings, alignment sessions and interactions with key customers.
  • Contribute to sales enablement and execution efforts through close contact with the Sales teams, ensure continuous market feedback, explain the guidelines and provide operational tools and presentations to effectively activate and support the Sales force.
  • Ensure regional coordination and execute company’s priorities incorporating local market insight into overall sales GTM plans to ensure customer centricity and market needs.
  • Collaborate closely with Sales Leaders, Finance, Marketing and LSCM to ensure aligned assumptions, realistic targets and timely information flow.
  • Support coordination between Consumer and Commercial planning activities to ensure continuity, standardization and mutual backup when required.

• Process Optimization & Standardization
  • Contribute to simplification and standardization of planning and reporting processes in line with HQ guidance.
  • Support automation and digitalization initiatives aimed at improving forecasting accuracy and operational efficiency