Principal Officer Inventory Management & Planning at Safaricom Kenya

Role Purpose:

This role manages the Company’s Revenue Stream to meet company objectives through the integration of inventory plans into the sales and promotion by forecasting activities associated with customers and products; create and maintain forecast models for the customers; incorporate business intelligence into planning; plan for stock replenishments for new and existing products, manage inventory levels, & eliminate obsolescence and meet or exceed customer order fill rates.

Key responsibilities

• Develop & implement inventory systems capable of management of decentralized stock management with multi-hub, stock receipt, transfer & order processing portability.
• Inventory planning through demand forecasting based on past sales trends, promotion activities & new product launches.
• Ensure optimum use of warehouse space through robust inventory management practices & effective product replenishments.
• Manage decentralized inventory planning across all the hubs in liaison with hub manager to ensure company inventory policy is complied with.
• Identify and resolve supply exceptions by expediting stock replenishment orders, re-allocating existing inventory and establishing safety stock parameters.
• Work closely with the Operations and customer service to ensure target order fill rates are being met for daily customer orders.
• Monitor receipts and transfers ensuring timely delivery and availability of product as well as in accordance with the inventory plan.
• Planning for any grouping of product, customer, geography or channel to market to meet demand plans. Plan in units, sales values, or costs
• Improve business performance through lower supply chain and operating costs, faster cash-to-cash cycle times, and higher customer service levels.
• Improve planning and scheduling and resolve potential long-range capacity issues before they become crises.
• Continuous assess warehouse requirements & advice management when to plan for expansion or reduction in line with business growth strategy. Align demand to performance to avoid wastage.
• Quickly simulate impact of demand and supply changes on profit, service levels, and deployment strategies
• Develop business processes that include practices and procedures for demand planning, supply planning, reconciliation and integration of demand, supply financial, and new product plans.

Job Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years working experience in Supply Chain environment, of which 3 years should be in Supervisory Role.
• Experience with the distribution/inventory management.
• Excellent analytical and communications skills.
• Prior experience applying supply chain principles including procurement, sourcing, inventory management and logistics.
• Must possess strong leadership skills and be well organized, self-motivated, focused on meeting deadlines and able to multitask within a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrated ability to support and interact effectively with other core business functions (Sales, Product Development, Distribution and logistics).