The Head of Sales & Operations is responsible for designing, implementing, and leading Charles & Keith's Global S&OP / Integrated Business Planning process — establishing a recurring, cross-functional operating rhythm that aligns demand planning, merchandise planning, inventory/allocation, production, and logistics against a single shared plan, with clear decision rights, metrics, and escalation paths.
Job Responsibilities
1. Design & Lead the S&OP Operating Rhythm
- Design a monthly (or appropriate cadence) S&OP cycle — demand review, supply review, reconciliation, and executive/leadership review — fit for a fashion retail business with seasonal collections.
- Chair or co-chair a cross-functional forum bringing together Merchandise Planning, Logistics & Distribution, Ecommerce, Production/Sourcing, Finance, and Country/Franchise teams around one shared plan.
- Own the meeting cadence, agenda discipline, pre-read packs, and decision log for the forum.
2. Establish Decision Rights & Governance
- Map how planning decisions are made across HQ, regional/country teams, stores, allocators, and production, and design a clear, documented framework for who owns which decisions.
- Define escalation paths for demand-supply mismatches, allocation conflicts, and capacity constraints.
- Act as the facilitating voice when functions need to align on the plan, without owning any single function's day-to-day execution.
3. Integrate Demand & Supply Planning
- Build a single, reconciled view of demand (by market, channel, and SKU tier — repeat, seasonal-test, long-tail, high-risk fashion) against supply (production capacity, inbound lead times, inventory position).
- Partner with Merchandise Planning and Production/Sourcing to identify where production sequencing, batching, or cadence — alongside logistics — can improve lead time and availability.
- Own the inventory health view across the network — aging, classification accuracy, and working capital implications — in partnership with Finance.
4. Enable the Right Technology, in the Right Sequence
- Partner with IT/Digital and Finance so that planning technology decisions (including any new demand/supply planning platform) are guided by a clearly defined target operating model.
- Represent the planning process perspective in sequencing decisions relative to the SAP S/4HANA migration, ensuring planning requirements are designed into the wider technology roadmap.
- Identify where statistical/ML-based forecasting adds the most value, and where process and governance design matter more than the tool itself.
5. Build the Metrics & Reporting Framework
- Design and implement a KPI framework covering forecast accuracy, fill rate/OOS by cause (forecasting, allocation strategy, or replenishment execution), inventory aging, plan-vs-actual variance, and S&OP process health.
- Produce a recurring leadership reporting pack that gives the Executive Committee one trusted, consistent view of plan performance.
6. Drive Change & Build Capability
- Bring planners, allocators, and country/franchise teams along through the transition to a more integrated, system-informed planning process.
Job Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree in Supply Chain, Business, Engineering, or a related field; APICS/IBF certification (CPIM, CSCP) a plus.
- 10+ years in supply chain, demand/supply planning, or S&OP/IBP roles, with at least 3–5 years leading or building an S&OP process from the ground up.
- Proven experience operating across multiple functions (planning, logistics, finance, commercial) at a senior level, ideally in fashion, retail, or fast-moving consumer goods with seasonal/collection-driven demand.
- Experience partnering with IT/technology teams on planning system selection or ERP transitions
- Track record of designing governance frameworks and decision-rights models across multiple functions or business units.
- Experience with statistical/ML-based forecasting approaches, with sound judgment on where technology adds value versus where process and governance design matter more.
Key Competencies
1. Supply Chain & Planning Fundamentals
- End-to-end supply chain fluency: genuine working knowledge of demand planning, merchandise/inventory planning, allocation and replenishment logic, production/sourcing constraints, and logistics — enough to hold your own with specialists in each area, not just coordinate them.
- Systems thinking: able to see how a decision in one part of the network (e.g. production sequencing, a routing choice, an allocation rule) shows up as a cost, service, or inventory outcome somewhere else.
- Financial and inventory acumen: comfortable with the trade-offs between service level, working capital, and markdown/obsolescence risk, and able to speak that language credibly with Finance.
2. Analytical Mindset
- Data fluency: comfortable working directly with data — building or reviewing models in Excel, querying/interpreting data from planning and ERP systems, and spotting when a number doesn't reconcile before it reaches a leadership pack.
- Rigor with judgment: able to reconcile data from multiple, sometimes conflicting sources into one clear, defensible view of the plan, and to know when a directional estimate is good enough versus when it needs to be precise.
3. Program Leadership & Influence
- Convening authority: able to bring senior stakeholders from different functions into one room and one process, without formal line authority over most of them.
- Structured facilitation and program management: comfortable designing and running a recurring cross-functional forum end-to-end — cadence, agendas, pre-reads, decisions, and follow-through — not just attending one.
- Change leadership: able to bring teams along through a shift in how planning decisions are made, with empathy for existing ways of working.
- Comfortable building from the ground up: this is a first-of-its-kind role at Charles & Keith — the process, governance model, and eventually the team will be built here.
