Inventory & Business Analyst

THE CONTEXT & ENVIRONMENT

In this rapidly changing world, an agile supply chain (SC) makes the difference for our customers and consumers. Mars is continuously driving their supply chain to become more end-to-end connected, transparent, faster, agile, customer-focused, and digital. Mars believes that a human-centric and digitally connected planning team is key to unlocking this potential, as it is the glue for one end-to-end SC team.

The MW EU Supply Chain Center of Excellence (CoE) sits at the heart of this transformation. We are the digital catalyst to speed up and strengthen digital planning capabilities, sharing a common passion to bring the benefits of a digital way of working to our European planning teams.

Within the CoE, the Insights & Analytics team (I&A) helps define and solve business challenges and opportunities by strengthening the data-driven decision muscle. The team consists of business analysts who translate business needs and clarify real problem statements, and data scientists who work on digital prototyping and solutions.

THE ROLE

The Inventory & Business Analyst is directly engaged with the planning organization, supporting them to drive the right decision-making. The business analyst splits focus between inventory management and problem-solving within their domain.

For inventory management, this role enables the organization to use inventory as a leading KPI for delivering the right service, cost, and cash targets. The analyst facilitates meetings in the inventory review cycle, drives analytical tool development to empower the business to prepare and run inventory reviews, and supports in-depth analytics.

For problem-solving, the business analyst drives advanced analytics, thorough root cause analysis, and—if the business problem is recurring—is responsible for translating the business need into a trusted digital solution, driving continuous improvement. Key to this is not only delivering the digital solution but also driving adoption within the planning teams and ensuring the result is accepted and used.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

• High business acumen in planning and inventory management, with the ability to listen to feedback, evaluate analytical findings and improvements, provide business insights at different levels of aggregation, and clearly communicate to stakeholders in their language.
• Advanced analytical and strong technical skills to unlock the required data (e.g., DataBricks, Python, SQL), and the ability to make data swiftly accessible for the business (e.g., Power BI).
• Attention to detail and a passion for data accuracy.
• B.S. or B.A. in computer science, data science, mathematics, statistics, or a related natural science; or a technical degree such as industrial or business engineering. A master’s or advanced degree is preferred.
• 2-3 years of experience working in a technical or analytics role.
• Experience with ERP and Advanced Planning Systems (preferably E2Open or Rapid Response) is a plus.
• Fluency in English.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define focused, value-added planning problem statements for balancing service, stock, and cost for the business, based on use-cases, design thinking, and value stream analysis.
• Provide insights from data to support the organization in making increasingly data-driven decisions in areas such as forecasting, supply planning, risk analysis in supply and demand, and inventory setting.
• Present results in a compelling and clear manner to drive business decision-making.
• Drive the implementation of analytical solutions from problem understanding to solution release.