Demand Planner

About The Team

PetSmart’s Canada Home Office (CHO) is home to approximately 50+ associates who work in departments such as Merchandising, Marketing, Demand Planning, Pricing, Space Planning, Digital/e-Commerce, Human Resources, Legal, IT and more. The small but mighty team at the CHO supports the operations of 160+ PetSmart stores in Canada and works closely with counterparts at PetSmart’s global corporate headquarters located in Phoenix, Arizona. We also share the Canada Home Office with our colleagues at PetSmart Charities of Canada—an independent, registered charity. PetSmart Charities of Canada is committed to making the world a better place for pets and all who love them by connecting pets with loving homes through adoption, improving access to veterinary care and supporting families in times of crisis with access to pet food, shelter, and emergency relief.

About the Location

Hybrid Position:

This position may be considered Hybrid based on PetSmart’s FlexSmart policy and business needs. A Hybrid work arrangement is considered to be a blend of onsite and remote work activity. Associates with a Hybrid work arrangement have a workspace at the Canada Home Office and can be required to come onsite between 1-5 days a week as determined by leadership and based on business needs.

About The Job

As a Demand Planner you are directly responsible for the following within their book of business:

• Store Instocks and Fill Rate
• Purchase Order Creation and Management
• Purchase Order On Time Ship and Fill Rate
• Inventory Forecasting
• Inventory Turnover
  
  

Demand Planners own inventory from beginning at purchase order creation to end at point of sale. Inventory management spans across seasonal, inline, and one-time-buy programs. This position is responsible for ensuring correct inventory quantities are on hand at all distribution centers to support store sales demand and merchandising objectives. They are responsible for instore instocks, keeping all stores full and supporting presentation minimum requirements. Forecast accuracy at a sku/store level is critical and demand planners constantly utilize demand planning system to assess forecasts and other inventory levers.

A Demand Planner is an integral part of the merchandising cross functional team responsible for all key inventory management metrics. As a member of the cross functional team, collaboration with buying, planning, store operations, supply chain, and vendors is essential to achieving sales, margin, and inventory goals. Additionally, solid communication to the cross functional team and the Demand Planning manager is critical to ensure appropriate business decisions are made in a timely manner. Responsible for establishing and maintaining solid vendor relations and management of vendor order projections. Key contact for vendors and DC's in supporting smooth order flow and PO issue resolution.

A Demand Planner should be able to implement fundamental job responsibilities with strategy thought. The ability to dig in and find opportunities, articulate those opportunities, and then create strategies and action plans to address them is critical to personal success and long-term business growth.

Responsibility:

• Achieves Sales, Margin, Inventory Turnover, and other KPIs as outlined in Plan and Forecast
• Develop overall division strategy vision, policies, resources, and execution plans to align to the corporate strategy.
• Participates in the seasonal, annual, and long-range strategic and financial planning across a wide array of vendor (direct and external), customer, and merchandising segments.
• Use consumer insights and data combined with a structured test and learn approach to maximize growth opportunities.
• Leads, executes and measure performance against the business planning and product creation calendars to drive timely and informed decision making.
• Owns the end-to-end management of demand planning and allocation optimization, including in-stock and service levels for funded items and promotional product; set targets and achieves plans for inventory and space productivity required to support the sales, gross margin and in-stock plans, maintain high levels of promotional product availability during promotional periods while minimizing ad residue, and optimizing end-caps, drive aisle, and in-line story telling and integration consistent with consumer shopping patterns.
• Ensure department and sku level planning reflects unique store and merchandise assortments, including localization, that allows for sharp transition between selling periods.
• Leads the development and execution of demand planning, including information sharing and problem solving with vendors around purchase orders, capacities, forecasting, and network inventory flow and optimization.
• Responsible for the creation, accuracy, communication and management of vendor demand plans.
• Responsible for management and maintenance of order policy and all business metrics within.
• Actively create and lead special projects that drive growth opportunities.
• Integrate processes and systems to optimize accuracy, efficiency, inventory productivity, space utilization, and margin optimization.
• Coordinates the timely response to questions from the stores and management regarding product level availability.
  
  

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree from a 4 year college or university and/or 2+ years inventory demand planning experience (retail)
• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Excel, Microstrategy, Outlook, SAP and Relex Replenishment System
  
  

About The Culture

At PetSmart, we work hard to create a culture where every associate feels like they truly belong and we celebrate the unique stories, backgrounds, and experiences our associates share. These experiences not only bring new perspectives in shaping our Belonging culture but they’re core to PetSmart’s success.

Not sure if you meet 100% of the position requirements and whether you should apply? We’d still like to hear from you and encourage you to apply with us! You just may be the ideal candidate for this role, and if not this one, perhaps another position.

Our Canada Home Office offers outstanding amenities in a fun and rewarding workplace including:

• Bring your pup to work! We have lots of dogs that come each day as well as fish and aquatic pets that live at our office
• On-site Dog Park
• Café serving fresh lunch options
• In-building day care facility option
• Volunteer events with PetSmart Charities
• We have an active social committee that hosts fun-filled events including contests, bake-offs, off-site events, and volunteer efforts, and they are always trying to out-do the previous event! See what life is like at the Canada Home Office here: https://careers.petsmart.com/canada
• Learn more about here: https://www.lifeatpetsmart.com/life-at-petsmart/
• Check out Associate stories and share in some celebrations at PetSmart: https://www.blog.lifeatpetsmart.com/
• Explore PetSmart Benefits here: https://benefits.petsmart.com/
  
  

PetSmart provides an equal opportunity for all associates and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or other legally protected characteristics.