Forecast Operations Manager

Job Title: Forecast Operations Manager

Location: Bengaluru

ABOUT UNILEVER:

Be part of the world’s most successful, purpose-led business. Work with brands that are well-loved around the world, that improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We promote innovation, big and small, to make our business win and grow; and we believe in business as a force for good. Unleash your curiosity, challenge ideas and disrupt processes; use your energy to make this happen. Our brilliant business leaders and colleagues provide mentorship and inspiration, so you can be at your best. Every day, nine out of ten Indian households use our products to feel good, look good and get more out of life – giving us a unique opportunity to build a brighter future.

Every individual here can bring their purpose to life through their work. Join us and you’ll be surrounded by inspiring leaders and supportive peers. Among them, you’ll channel your purpose, bring fresh ideas to the table, and simply be you. As you work to make a real impact on the business and the world, we’ll work to help you become a better you.

ABOUT UNIOPS:

Unilever Operations (UniOps) is the global technology and operations engine of Unilever offering business services, technology, and enterprise solutions. UniOps serves over 190 locations and through a network of specialized service lines and partners delivers insights and innovations, user experiences and end-to-end seamless delivery making Unilever Purpose Led and Future Fit.

The Commercial Experience (ComEx) Purpose is to protect value and provide fuel for growth through excellent execution and continuous optimization of finance and supplier processes. Its strategic focus is to deliver full scale and edge to edge Finance and Supplier experience through upscaling of Operations Capabilities and Transformations. 

The Commercial Experience Vision is to become a Best-in-Class solutions organization recognized both externally and internally. Within this context, balancing priorities around cost, experience, discipline, and compliance becomes critical and requires capable leaders at the helm who can steer and balance both, challenge and support the stakeholders in Finance and Procurement organizations.

Purpose of the role

Unilever Procurement globally buys all raw and packaging materials that go into Unilever products. There are more than 1300 Procurement FTEs working with ~50,000 suppliers and managing a direct spend close to €23 billion annually. This comprises the largest cost element in our P&L and accurate forecasting and reporting of future spends in essential for all unilever markets globally.

The Forecasting Operations manager role is based out of ComEx (UniOps) and partners the Procurement Central Finance Excellence Team (CFET) to deliver the material price forecasting in time to markets to enable faster pricing and investment decisions affecting their P&Ls.

The Forecast Operations teams currently comprises of 3 managers and an assistant manager who together own the entire forecasting systems, dashboards, and reports. It is also responsible for the governance of the 3PSP team (~20 people) who support the end-to-end process.

Along with BAU operations, the Forecast Operations manager is heavily involved in a transformation journey to reimagine the price forecasting process. For this, the team works along with Procurement, CFETs, UniOps IT and D&A teams to deliver solutions aimed at higher accuracy, speed, and user experience of the forecasting process wholistically.  

Main Accountabilities

• Systems Management: Ensuring systems availability, master data integrity and process efficiency with a strong interface with internal business partners (UniOps IT & D&A) and external resources (3PSPs, consultants). Develop a strong understanding of systems.

• 100% OTIF delivery of Forecast cycle: Managing the quarterly full cycle & monthly light cycle forecast activities in coordination with 3PSPs to ensure that all the systems, dashboards/reports are made available accurately and on time.

• Reporting: Maintaining and developing cutting edge Power BI dashboards and visuals to support Business Partners globally. These dashboards are referenced by top leadership teams in Procurement, Procurement Finance, Supply Chain Finance, other Finance teams globally within Unilever.

• Simulations: Managing the What-If Scenario analysis for simulating impacts on key Materials due to volatility in Commodities prices, exchange rates and Inflation

• Process Improvement: Continuously leading change initiatives aimed at improvement of current systems to drive efficiencies, dashboards through automation of all manual processes with the aim to enable higher speed, accuracy, and experience for our stakeholders.

Initiate stakeholder surveys post every full cycle to understand concerns of stakeholders leading to improvement in processes and experience.

• Process control: Review and update changes to Global Process Models (GPMs)

• Business Partnering: Partnering closely with Procurement transformation team (Joy of Forecasting pillar) to enable a smooth implementation of change initiatives in our systems.

• Business Integration: Participating in various M&A initiatives impacting integration/spin off from/to systems, processes, outputs (e.g., Tea separation, Nutrition business integrations) and changes to compass organization.

• Leading the 3PSP teams: Leading and Managing the 3PSP team including governance and monitoring of SLAs, driving solutions to budgets, and driving continuous efficiencies as per targets.

Competencies

• Strategic thinking

• Strong communication, influencing and interpersonal skills.

• Problem solving

• Analytical and solution-orientated

•  Stakeholder Management

• Teamwork

• Fair understanding of the Procurement function

• Ability to work under pressure and take decisions at speed.

Requirements

• Chartered Accountant, Engineer, MBA, or equivalent degree with minimum 10 years overall experience in Procurement or Finance functions

• Fluent in spoken and written English

• Experience in managing major complex projects along with multiple stakeholders.

• Experience interfacing with senior stakeholders.

• Team Leadership

• Possesses the necessary experience and cultural awareness to work with a geographically, culturally diverse, and global team.

• Prior experience in SAP, Anaplan, PBI will be preferable.