Sales Planning Manager - Premium Chocolate, Fannie May & Innovation
Job Location: Parsippany
Company description
Ferrero is a family-owned company with a truly progressive and global outlook and iconic brands such as Nutella®, Tic Tac®, Ferrero Rocher®, Raffaello®, Kinder Bueno® and Kinder Surprise®. As the love for our brands continues to grow, so too does our global reach. Represented in more than 50 countries, with products sold in more than 170, the Ferrero Group is loved by generations around the world. The secret to our global success? 40,000 dedicated employees who celebrate care and quality to craft a business, careers and brands we are proud of. Join us, and you could be one of them.
About the Role:
Are you ready to be part of something deliciously extraordinary?
As the Sales Planning Manager for Premium Chocolate, Fannie May & Innovation, you’ll partner with Field Sales teams, refine forecasts, tackle supply challenges, and bring big-picture insights to life through powerful data analysis. Your efforts will ensure productivity, profitability, and flawless execution of exciting seasonal and promotional initiatives. This isn’t just a role – it’s an opportunity to craft strategy, drive growth, and create synergy across teams while working with some of the most iconic and innovative products in the Fannie May and premium chocolate categories.
The Sales Planning Manager for Premium Chocolate, Fannie May & Innovation role is hybrid and based in our HQ Parsippany, NJ office.
Main Responsibilities:
- Develop sales planning inputs at the topline as well as at multiple sales channel levels using SAP BI/BW, Advanced Excel, IRI databases and PowerBI to ensure the organization meets financial and sales budgets for fiscal year period
- Review historical sales trends and research demand drivers using Power BI and IRI reporting to improve forecast accuracy
- Leverage ship-to-consumption scenario analysis to identify quantitative relationships between past and future consumption trend, inventory status, and order pacing
- Partner with Trade Marketing and Field Sales teams to analyze promotional plans, features, and innovation to influence demand
- Analyze forecast trends – positive/negative bias to identify patterns and potential signals to adjust demand.
- Reviewing customer forecasts, base and incremental, to understand deviations from base due to merchandising, promotional activity, cannibalization, flowback, and distribution changes
- Lead calls across key accounts to review consumption and shipment trends as compared to field forecast and provide recommendations on forecast adjustments where applicable
- Secure the customer level point of view inclusive of drivers and drainers bridging from last year to current forecast
- Anticipate demand fluctuations as they impact the supply plan – distribution changes, consumption trends, promotions, and customer inventory position
- Partnership with Customer Logistics for hand off allocation for systemic SAP implementation of quota
- Reconciliation of Trade Marketing Top Down Innovation estimates with Field Forecast to understand changes in assumptions (Customer, Distribution, ACV, etc.)
Who we are looking for:
- Bachelor's Degree in Business, Supply Chain, or a related field required
- 5+ years of progressive experience in Sales Planning, Consumption Forecasting, or Demand Planning; CPG Preferred
- Advanced Excel skills – raw data manipulation across multiple sources and reporting development
- Ability to influence leveraging strong storytelling skills
- Comfort navigating interactions with Senior Internal Leaders and Customer Leadership
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to develop and maintain cross-functional relationships
How to be successful in the role and at Ferrero:
Consumers, quality and care are at the heart of everything we do. So, to be successful at Ferrero, you’ll need to be just as consumer and product centric as we are - dedicated to crafting brilliant results for consumers around the world.
#FNA
Diversity Statement
Ferrero is committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture in which all employees feel welcomed and appreciated and have the same opportunities. We believe all of our people are equally talented in their own way. In nurturing the curiosity and natural abilities of our employees, we provide them, generation after generation, the means to succeed personally and professionally, enabling them to craft their journey at Ferrero. The diversity of our talents is what makes our work environment multicultural, innovative and highly rewarding.
Ferrero N.A. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics.