Hybrid Bridgewater, NJ or Hybrid NYC

The VP of Enterprise Planning Solutions will be responsible for developing the planning solutions strategy and coordination of delivery across the e2e Planning technologies portfolio aligned to business strategies.

This role sets the vision and strategy for the company’s approach to transformative e2e planning opportunities, including leading edge advanced cognitive planning & machine learning capabilities. S/he enables cognitive intelligence in all aspects of planning across regions, channels, and brands.

This position will strategize and deliver the global planning technologies framework at the company. This is a pivotal role that will have huge impact on changing the role planning plays, advancing business and technology strategies and tactics. The role collaborates with architecture leadership, and has responsibility for sourcing, leading, and presenting forward-thinking, high impact e2e planning technology capabilities focused on key strategic initiatives for company. The scope of this role includes (not limited to) Integrated Business Planning, Merchandise Financial Planning, Demand & Supply Planning. This role will lead cross functional teams including business and TPG, in an exciting and engaging environment, where s/he will be encouraged to leverage their skills and work closely with businesses across the company to share new ideas and deliver on their projects.

The company operates in a fast-paced environment and the incumbent takes initiative and is excited about being part of a cultural and business transformation.

This role is critical in changing the internal ways of working to enable company to leverage the dynamic advances in the Planning capabilities and this individual must have proven experience in driving transformational change, global scale and positioning the company to incorporate emerging technologies around enterprise planning technologies and strategies. The role holder requires a strong ability to build a network and influence e senior, cross-functional leaders to resolve issues that may arise to deliver a consistently high service to our data consumers.

The VP, Enterprise Planning Solutions is passionate about applying leadership, organizational discipline, and technology to transform the retail apparel industry. A senior leader within the company who owns the strategic portfolio, oversees its governance, sponsor& leads technical development, and influence adoption through cross-functional teams.

Primary Responsibilities/Accountabilities of the Job

• Create, manage & develop enterprise Planning programs & products from scoping and road mapping to future state solutions in a cross-business capability dedicated to using advanced planning capabilities to solve complex business problems.
• Develop and maintain relationships with senior leadership through TPG and business lines. Build in-depth knowledge of the business success drivers, industry trends, regulatory issues, and competitive marketplace to develop and deliver value added business solutions that have a measurable impact on results.
• Drive pragmatic approaches to solving key complex business problems through advanced planning, predictive modeling, and machine learning techniques.
• The VP is responsible for defining, changing, and adapting TPG’s ways of working to optimize the accelerated delivery of next generation planning solutions.
• Evolve ways of working into agile and capability driven operating model with business and technology partners
• Evolve a best-in-class team driving planning and analytic capabilities to Modernize the solution set with best-in-class solutions, architecture into a scalable & global capabilities
• Lead verbal and written communications with colleagues and business partners at all levels to clearly articulate the approach and the findings of interpretable forecasting & planning models and assist in driving solutions.
• Rearchitect and grow the planning and technical environment by bringing new technologies and techniques to create efficient process around forecasting and planning that meet the governance and security standards of the company and reduce time to insights for the business.
• Create strong partnerships with various teams across company and be a thought partner on concepts that will lead to evolving data & analytics maturity and grow the respective portfolio through potential projects for prioritization by the business.
• Initiate and manage strategic external partnerships to supplement internal advanced forecasting & planning technology capabilities, as desired.
• Collaborate with the TPG enterprise architects on an architecture defining our new data driven forecasting & planning strategy.
• Partner with architects and engineering teams to design and build scalable planning platforms to ingest, store and maximize the leverage of very large amounts of data (structured, semi-structured and unstructured)
• The VP is responsible to understand and set direction regarding the strategic position of the next generation of forecasting & planning related technologies, including ensuring the company has the required expertise in-house or external, to support it.
• Staying current with new technologies in their area as driven by company initiatives, vendor capabilities or industry best practices & trends, and informing their peers as necessary.
• The position will be based out of our New Jersey office, with travel to all offices globally, as required.

Qualifications & Experience

Experience

• 15 years or more experience, in forecasting & planning technologies, data architecture/leverage, engineering and implementation (Plus of operating within a global retail industry)
• Experience leading development/engineering teams to deliver, deploy and maintain advanced forecasting & planning architectures, platforms, tools, and technologies
• Broad understanding of multiple technologies –These include:
• Blue Yonder suite of products/architectures
• ERP (SAP) & ERP Data warehouses (SAP BW)
• Cloud-based data & analytics frameworks (e.g., Azure, Databricks, Snowflake)
• Data science & advanced analytical techniques and technologies (e.g., R, Python, Databricks)
• Strong knowledge of retail data models, ideally within a retail environment.
• Possesses comprehensive retail business, forecasting & planning knowledge, and the organizational skills to oversee highly complex projects with high visibility / high impact on the business.
• Proven experience in developing, presenting, and executing plans, meeting deadlines, and operating under tight time constraints within a global scope.
• Demonstrated sense of urgency, thoroughness, and quality towards assigned tasks/goals
• Experience managing and mentoring teams, while challenging and influencing team leads as well as providing constant direction and feedback
• Demonstrated ability of working with and integrating multiple internal and/or external teams including outside technology and consulting agencies.
• Experience in enterprise/global advanced forecasting & planning architecture & system design as well as providing guidance on all aspects of project management and change management across tech delivery methodologies (e.g., Agile, Waterfall, WAgile, as well as Product Mindset)
• Expertise in designing and building foundational and advanced forecasting & planning solutions that scale within a global environment.

Education

• Degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or other related fields

Skills

• Superior communication, persuasion & facilitation skills; talent for storytelling, visualization and creating insights from data to deliver practical recommendations for business action.
• Uses innovative problem solving and critical thinking approaches to proactively solve a broad range of problems across data technologies.
• Demonstrated leadership through product driven mindset, agile software development managing scrum practices and building for business outcomes
• Consultative style in relationship building and collaboration aligned to actionable business goals; ability to influence and drive outcomes in large, global, and complex organizations.
• Accustomed to managing multiple teams on different projects. Experience managing complex data portfolios, projects, budgets, and schedules to successful completion.
• The ability to build custom statistical models, analyze unstructured data, and/or machine learning is highly desirable.
• Strong knowledge with advanced forecasting & planning technologies
• Strong knowledge of planning technologies and tools including:
• Forecasting
• Supply Planning & Inventory optimization.
• Control Tower visualization capabilities
• Excellent problem-solving skills, particularly regarding anticipating and solving issues or concerns before they occur or become critical
• Strong track record of portfolio & project delivery, while continuously managing expectations, schedules, resources, budgets, and risk.
• Ability to operate within structured and unstructured portfolio governance models
• Strong knowledge of data architecture and master data management
• Anticipates, identifies & escalates issues that may prevent deliverables or introduce risk; enforces root-cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Must be flexible, yet detail oriented and highly organized

Environment

• Enterprise planning model across commercial, consumer & supply subject matter domains
• Structured & Non-Structured Data sources
• On-Premise, Cloud, SaaS & 3rd Party Data Sources
• Transitioning set of multiple ERP core platforms (e.g., consolidating to SAP)
• New emerging technology environments (e.g., Snowflake)
• Major technologies include:
• Blue Yonder suite
• Global ERP environments (e.g., SAP HANA)
• Platforms & frameworks (e.g., Snowflake, Synapse)