General Summary
The Vice President of Global Sales Operations & Forecasting leads teams of sales operations and sales forecasting employees tasked with planning, performance reporting, target setting, sales process optimization, field training, and market insights that continuously improves sales effectiveness and sales forecast accuracy. This critical function directly impacts inventory planning and financial controls in alignment with growth and scalability goals of the company, thus creating a top-down meets bottom-up view of our forecast. Reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), this role partners closely with global and regional merchandising, regional sales teams, supply chain, finance, as well as other internal stakeholders, to ensure our seasonal projections are robust, dynamic, yet realistic to support the business in driving topline growth, profits, and Long-Range Plan goals. This role provides subject-matter-expertise for globalizing and scaling the company’s sales operations activities worldwide. By providing guidelines and best practice input, this role helps to create global collaboration for improvements that continue to professionalize sales teams and provide needed technical and resource support.
Strategic Planning
Essential Responsibilities
- Drives the development of the LRP by region / division (Sales Plan)
- Develops and owns short- and long-term, top-down, sales forecasting strategies at the division, regions, and channel levels
- Works collaboratively and cross-functionally with other department executives and leadership teams to support company financial plans, brand strategies, initiatives, and long-range plans
- Seeks alignment with Merch and divisional leaders on regional and divisional opportunities
- Partners with merchandising leadership team(s) to strategize, develop, and help manage the seasonal product lines to enable more accurate sales forecasting
- Drives the development and alignment of FY Top down targets
- Aligns with the division and regional heads and gains senior leadership approval prior to seasonal buys to align on top down targets
- Deep market intelligence and key account immersion to ensure comprehensive view on macro landscape by geography
- Facilitates the flow of information between Demand Planning, Division Management, Marketing, Sales and Finance and helps with the development of integrated omni-channel business plans that guide the organization to maximize revenue, profitability, and inventory investment
- Development of sales targets (in collaboration with regional / divisional leaders) to achieve budget objectives
- Define Opportunity / Gaps and work with stakeholders to address through integrated plans
- Identifies global opportunities and risks in the sales forecast and the business caused by internal/external factors. Helps division, regions and category heads develop action plans to resolve problems and exploit opportunities.
- Monitors inventory levels across business channels and provides omni-channel guidance and actions to optimize inventory balances and inventory investments cross functionally
Forecasting
- Leads teams to build bottoms up data driven sales plans based on sell-through and key KPI’s
- Drives continuous improvement for sales forecasting accuracy that includes the establishment of process consistency. Provides data based foundation to offset bias. Measures performance through standardized reporting, metrics and KPI’s
- Provides guidance and training on best practice
- Champions the training of field sales people and other key stakeholders on the value of improved forecasting and methods to be used. Builds collaborative forecasting capabilities with key partners and customers
- Provides tools and reports that monitors individual sales people’s forecasting accuracy performance and improvement. Encourages remedial action plans where appropriate
- Leads reconciliation of top-down and bottom-up demand plans between cross functional partners throughout the planning and forecasting process
- Recommends plans at region / division to address gaps to Budget / RCP (in collaboration with regional / divisional leaders)
- Assess and optimize our overall forecasting processes, systems, and tools
Sales Operations, Performance & Analytics
- Assists regions with Sales Program development and assessment to achieve best practice results
- Assists regions with Sales Compensation and Incentives plans to achieve best practice results
- Develop and instrument modern CRM system and processes to drive global sales pipeline and communication management
- Helps coordinate global/cross border inventory reduction efforts where required
- Performance to sales and inventory targets at regional / divisional level
- Provides product sell through analysis and results vs. KPIs to the divisions, regions, and leadership to improve visibility of weekly and monthly performance
- Provides product sell in analysis and results vs. KPIs to the divisions, regions, and leadership to improve visibility of weekly and monthly performance
- Establish regional and divisional Market analytics to drive sales opportunities and lead generation (market penetration, account distribution, product breadth)
- Develop Sales Performance Tools (market analytics, competitive analytics, sell through data acquisition)
- Works closely with Sales teams, Supply and Demand Planning, and GBT leadership to develop integrated business planning tools and actionable reporting metrics to measure business performance. Introduces best practices into regional sales operations and sales/channel teams
- Process optimization and training
- Identifies and analyzes the needs of Sales and sales operations teams globally in order to help prioritize investments and resource allocation to continuously improve sales professionalism and effectiveness. Helps resolve issues in regions where appropriate
- Navigates and manages the complexities inherent in managing a portfolio of diverse divisions and regions that is constantly evolving at rapid speed
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Business or related field
- Twelve (12) years of experience in business management in a direct-to-consumer, retail, customer focused organization
- Field selling experience with key accounts and sales teams desired
- Inventory planning and management experience
- Expert level business, market, and global economy knowledge
- Expert level financial acumen and understanding of P&L components
- Proven leader, team builder and strategist with the ability to leverage business and consumer, economic data and insights to optimize inventory levels across regions while supporting current and future business needs
- Strong project management skills and experience managing cross functional internal and external teams
- Proven success in long range planning, forecasting, and driving profitable growth
- Outstanding data analytics and articulation skills
- Excellent presentation and communication skills with an ability to compel action at all levels of the organization
- Exceptional influencing skills, with experience engaging diverse set of cross-functional partners
- Proficient in MS Office Suite, particularly Excel and PowerPoint
- Ability to provide clear direction, set measurable goals and give insight on industry benchmarks
- Ability to inspire and motivate a team, both direct and non-direct reports and peers
- Ability to successfully supervise and lead a team of direct reports and influence a team of cross functional peers
Travel Required
Up to 10% of work time will involve travel
Status: Full-time, salaried
Why Work at KEEN: Driven by a passion for life outside, KEEN is a values-led, independently owned brand from Portland, Oregon, that’s on a mission to create original and versatile products, improve lives, and inspire outside adventure. Founded in 2003, KEEN launched a revolution in the footwear industry with the introduction of the Newport adventure sandal, and has donated more than $18 million to non-profit organizations and causes around the world to promote responsible outdoor recreation, including conservation efforts to protect open spaces. KEEN strives to show the world through its products and its actions that a business for good can actually be good for business. By giving back, reducing impact, and activating communities and individuals to protect the places where we work and play, KEEN puts its values in motion and takes action to leave the world a better place.
At KEEN, we believe in a more just and equitable future for all people. As a global brand, we acknowledge that our business, buildings, and daily lives exist within the traditional territories of indigenous peoples. We strive for a future that recognizes the knowledge, rights, and resilience of these peoples.
KEEN Footwear is an equal opportunity employer. We value an inclusive and diverse community. Qualified candidates of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability.
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