Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:
As a Senior Manager Operations Planning at adidas, you will play a pivotal role in shaping data-driven decisions that directly impact our eCommerce operations across Europe. You’ll lead the development and execution of advanced forecasting models that support supply chain efficiency, campaign planning, and customer satisfaction. Your insights will empower cross-functional teams to plan with precision, optimize performance, and deliver exceptional consumer experiences.
Key Responsibilities: Scope: Accountable for providing units/orders/returns forecasts to Supply Chain and Operations Teams for Europe eCommerce, generating sales forecasts for Mega Commercial Moments and giving business planning support on other critical business issues.
Forecasting:
Operational Forecast:
- Manage and own the end-to-end lifecycle of development of Operational Forecast processes and implementations for Europe eCommerce business.
- Provide timely and accurate units, returns and orders forecasts to Supply Chain and Operations teams to set the ground for capacity and workforce planning processes.
- Build long-range predictive systems that use statistical models and business rules to enhance Operational Forecast results and therefore increase efficiency in Supply Chain operations.
- Develop strong relationships with business partners to understand their goals and objectives, outline analytic requirements, provide solutions to business needs, and join forces in driving business improvement and optimization.
- React to changes in fulfillment channels and newly introduced fulfilment methods and lead restructuring of forecasting models based on these changes.
- Master a deep understanding of adidas data assets, business drivers and stakeholder processes to communicate, assess and prioritize requests.
Campaign Forecasts and Targets:
- Provide daily campaign targets based on the latest activation plans per market, per day for promotional sales buckets.
- When the business requires, create scenarios on different campaign plans, durations, mechanisms, markdown levels and simulate their impact on KPIs such as demand, net sales and standard margin.
- Actively participate in campaign related discussions, make sure the decisions taken are supporting the latest financial ambitions. Also participate in identifying opportunities to determine the close the gap actions and priorities to reach the business goals.
- React to ever-changing campaign plans ensure the forecasts are updated within a reasonable time window.
Reporting and Data Quality:
eCom Commercial Calendar:
- Develop and constantly innovate a centralized knowledge database of all events that have impacted and that might impact the business performance.
Data Visualization:
- Make sure all reporting and tracking systems are set up and continuously innovated to enable stakeholders track sales predictions, potential shortfalls and uplifts for the future (forecast result/ accuracy dashboards, commercial calendar etc.).
- Outline insights requirements for various stakeholder groups and optimize data delivery and visualization for key stakeholders.
Data Quality:
- Ensure data accuracy and quality across the results provided.
- Manage naming convention for mapping the sales under correct categories and proper campaigns.
General Business Planning Responsibilities:
- Provide business planning services to stakeholders within eCom EU. Provide ad-hoc analyses and build business cases to facilitate insight into the business when needed.
- Where possible, further integrate automated models to the processes to reduce dependability of the forecasts to the manual inputs.
- Drive the implementation and use of data driven decision processes, in line with a fact-based decision culture.
Key Relationships:
- Supply Chain Management
- eCom Operations
- eCom Brand Activation
- eCom Omnichannel Team
- eCom Finance
- eCom Sales Planning & Analytics teams
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Soft-Skills:
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities. Ability to understand and analyze complex systems and transform them into simpler structures.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with shifting priorities.
- Strong collaboration and influencing skills across diverse teams.
- High attention to detail and a passion for data accuracy and quality.
Hard-Skills:
- Advanced proficiency in forecasting tools, ETL tools and statistical modelling (e.g., Alteryx, SQL, Excel).
- Experience with data visualization platforms (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).
- Strong understanding of eCommerce operations, supply chain dynamics, and campaign planning.
Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in business, Data Science, Supply Chain, Economics, or a related field.
- 7+ years of experience in forecasting, business planning, or analytics, preferably in eCommerce, retail, or supply chain environments.
- Proven track record of leading cross-functional projects and delivering measurable business impact.
- Fluent English both verbally and written
adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. We are an equal opportunity employer.