Primary Purpose
Reporting to the Vice President, Supply Chain APAC, the Regional Director, Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is accountable for the ownership, governance and continuous advancement of the APAC Integrated Business Planning framework across APAC, ensuring alignment with global IBP standards, financial planning, strategic priorities and regional business outcomes.
The role provides strategic leadership for demand planning, supply planning, inventory planning, replenishment planning, scenario planning and S&OP/IBP governance across the APAC region, with accountability for translating plans into executive decisions, risk trade-offs and measurable performance improvement.
The Director acts as the regional process owner for Integrated Business Planning and is responsible for aligning commercial operations, finance and supply chain functions to deliver superior customer and patient outcomes while optimizing inventory investment, working capital, service performance and business profitability.
The role leads planning transformation initiatives, drives planning standardization across APAC markets and serves as the primary regional advisor to senior leadership on supply-demand risks, growth opportunities and business planning decisions, including annual operating plan and long-range planning inputs where these are driven through IBP outputs.
This position is accountable for establishing world-class planning capabilities through organizational development, digital enablement, advanced analytics and continuous improvement, and for representing APAC in relevant Global IBP governance, process design and digital planning transformation forums.
Key Accountabilities
Regional IBP Strategy & Governance
- Own the APAC Integrated Business Planning roadmap and maturity strategy, including maturity targets, deployment milestones, adoption measures and executive governance cadence.
- Establish standardized planning governance across all APAC markets and supply chain organizations.
- Define regional planning policies, standards, KPIs and operating model, aligned with global IBP process design and regional business priorities.
- Ensure regional alignment with Global Supply Chain and Global IBP frameworks, and represent APAC requirements, constraints and improvement opportunities into global forums.
- Lead monthly executive IBP processes and decision-making forums, ensuring decisions are documented, accountable and converted into action plans.
- Conduct planning maturity assessments and improvement roadmaps
- Drive planning excellence through standardization and best-practice adoption
End-to-End Integrated Business Planning
- Lead the regional monthly IBP cycle, ensuring clear linkage from demand review, supply review, reconciliation and executive IBP decisions.
- Facilitate executive reviews and business decision forums with clear options, recommended decisions and quantified business impacts.
- Consolidate regional demand, supply, inventory and financial plans
- Drive consensus planning across commercial, operations and finance teams
- Ensure risks, opportunities and assumptions are identified and managed, with explicit ownership, due dates and escalation paths.
- Provide recommendations on inventory, capacity and service trade-offs, balancing revenue, customer service, working capital and patient impact.
- Deliver executive planning insights to APAC leadership and ensure IBP outputs inform annual operating plan, budget assumptions and long-range planning.
Inventory & Working Capital Optimization
- Establish regional inventory strategy and targets across inventory investment, stock health, availability and working capital.
- Drive inventory reduction programs while protecting customer outcomes and patient safety requirements.
- Govern excess, obsolete and slow-moving inventory management, including root-cause visibility and cross-functional mitigation plans.
- Lead inventory segmentation and policy development
- Optimize safety stock and replenishment settings
- Partner with Finance to improve working capital performance through agreed targets, governance cadence and financial impact tracking.
Supply-Demand Balancing & Scenario Planning
- Lead regional response to supply disruptions and demand volatility, including allocation, shortage management and regional escalation decisions.
- Conduct scenario planning and business simulations to quantify service, revenue, inventory and working capital trade-offs.
- Develop mitigation strategies for capacity, supply and inventory risks
Planning Analytics & Digital Transformation
- Own and sponsor the APAC planning technology roadmap, in partnership with Global IBP, IT, data and analytics teams.
- Champion advanced analytics, AI and digital planning capabilities that improve forecast quality, scenario visibility, automation and executive decision support.
- Drive adoption of SAP IBP, Power BI and future planning technologies
- Lead data quality governance across planning functions, including master data, planning assumptions, dashboard definitions and KPI consistency.
Cross Functional Leadership
- Serve as the primary planning interface between Supply Chain, Commercial and Finance leadership, with strong connection to Strategy, Quality, Regulatory, Service and Operations where required.
- Ensure alignment between financial plans and operational plans, including forecast, budget, inventory and service trade-offs.
- Influence executive decision-making through data-driven recommendations and clear decision choices.
- Partner with country leadership teams to improve planning outcomes
- Facilitate alignment across APAC markets while maintaining one regional IBP operating model.
Organisation Capability Development
- Build a best-in-class APAC planning organization with clear roles, accountabilities, capability standards and career pathways.
- Develop succession and capability plans for planning teams
- Establish planning competency frameworks aligned to global supply chain planning capabilities.
- Lead talent development and coaching activities across regional and country planning leads.
- Promote continuous improvement and innovation culture
- Establish and lead an APAC planning community of practice to improve adoption, consistency and knowledge sharing.
Inherent Requirements
Formal Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in business with a major in Supply Chain or similar; postgraduate qualification in supply chain, business, engineering or finance desirable.
Key Skills / Core Competencies
- Strong experience influencing senior executive stakeholders
- Strategic thinking and business acumen
- Influencing and stakeholder management
- Change leadership
- Executive IBP governance and decision facilitation
- Commercial and financial acumen, including ability to link operational plans to financial outcomes
- Advanced analytics and data interpretation
- ERP and planning system expertise
- Data governance
- Process design, adoption and maturity improvement
- Strong commercial mindset
- High resilience and adaptability
- Collaborative leadership style
- Continuous improvement mindset
- Results orientation
Experience
- 12+ years supply chain experience within multinational organizations
- 7+ years leadership experience in planning, supply chain or operations
- Demonstrated ownership of regional or global planning processes
- Proven success driving supply chain transformation programs
- Experience leading executive S&OP / IBP processes
- Experience building or maturing IBP in complex, matrixed, multi-country organizations
- Experience integrating demand, supply, inventory and financial planning
- Experience with planning analytics, ERP/planning platforms and executive performance reporting
We are deeply committed to fostering a respectful, fair, and welcoming workplace for all individuals, perspectives, and lifestyles. We believe in fostering a non-discriminatory, inclusive work environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging, in full compliance with legal standards. Empathy and unity are core to our company culture, empowering employees to contribute fully and flourish. We warmly encourage all who wish to bring their talents to Olympus to apply.
