As Commercial Planning Manager, you will lead the planning cycle across Trade Marketing, collaborating with Strategy & Planning to ensure robust processes, clear timelines and successful delivery of key business milestones.
You will own the Sales Planning process, building and implementing planning timetables, ensuring deadlines are met, and challenging commercial assumptions through insights gathered from Category Development, Customer Category and Commercial Strategy teams.
Working closely with Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing and Sales, you will contribute to the development of Budget, SAF and S&OP plans, providing meaningful analysis on performance, future opportunities and areas of risk. You will confidently challenge plans where required to ensure the business delivers against its ambitions.
A key focus of the role will be managing the 0–18 month rolling forecast across your assigned brands and categories. You will analyse performance drivers and risks, lead monthly brand and account review meetings, and ensure forward forecasts remain accurate and aligned with business objectives.
You will also oversee seasonal SKU planning, NPD launches and product changes, ensuring demand is accurately forecasted and commercial plans are fully aligned with category ambitions and supply timelines. Working closely with Sales, Marketing, Category and Supply Chain teams, you will identify and resolve challenges that could impact performance.
The role is responsible for balancing demand and supply by developing commercial scenarios, managing surplus stock risks, and supporting cross-functional decision-making to maximise profitability and product availability.
You will lead the weekly short-term forecasting process, coordinating inputs from Sales, Finance and Supply Chain teams to create an aligned volume outlook. This includes presenting weekly updates to UK&I regional leadership, providing clear commentary on performance, forecast changes and variance against budget and prior year results.
You will continuously seek opportunities to enhance planning effectiveness and challenge existing ways of working through innovation and best practice.
