Recently I was asked to explain what I do to our new ‘HR Partner’ who was meeting everyone in the division to gain an understanding. Seems easy.
I have written many job descriptions, including my own, and re-written many times, as have we all. But what we submit for HR, for job openings, for Monster or LinkedIn postings, is that what we DO?
Planning is the forward-looking financial arm of Buying. We look at historical info, re-seasonalize, smooth out anomalies, and project (and re-project) We work in season, pre- season, and post season, all at the same time. We determine the best course of action to flow inventory- when (timing), how much, method (DSD, Whse, drop ship)
Planning uses analytics, planning sometimes creates the analytics.
Planning interfaces with DC, Stores, managment, buying, leadership, and each other.
We determine markdown plans, exit strategy, replenishment and allocation algorithms.
And now we drive pricing decisions using elasticity and demand signals.
But what do we do? A course I once took said you should be able to boil your job description down to a few words, fewer the better:
Planning: We give data-driven advice.
-That Planning Guy