Forecast Planner
- Team
- Food
- Store
- London Support Office
- Location
- London, Greater London
- Contract type
- Permanent
- Position type
- Full Time
- Salary
- Competitive + Benefits
- Closing date: 2nd May 2025
How We Hire
Everyone is welcome at M&S. No exceptions. It’s your background, abilities and differences that make you, uniquely you. And when you’re part of M&S, that individuality has the potential to make waves.
About the role
This section tells you all you need to know about the position and its responsibilities, outlining everything we hope to see in a successful candidate.
Summary
M&S Food is changing, and fast! We are undergoing one of the biggest transformations in retailing today to build a bigger, better, fresher food business.
In this role you will be responsible for creating short- and long-term volume plans for chilled, Ambient and Frozen food, ensuring they are communicated effectively to our 3rd party and internal logistics partners and through excellent planning ensure our customers get the products they want when they want them.
Accurate volume plans are integral to the food business delivering great customer availability whilst at the same time managing costs and profit.
To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected. Please note that some weekend working will be required as part of this role.
In this role you will be responsible for creating short- and long-term volume plans for chilled, Ambient and Frozen food, ensuring they are communicated effectively to our 3rd party and internal logistics partners and through excellent planning ensure our customers get the products they want when they want them.
Accurate volume plans are integral to the food business delivering great customer availability whilst at the same time managing costs and profit.
To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected. Please note that some weekend working will be required as part of this role.
All the details
What’s in it for you
Being a part of M&S is exactly that – becoming a part and playing your part. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and always evolving business built on core values.
Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special…
- 20% Colleague discount on most things from furniture, fashion and food.
- A first-class welcome to M&S with a tailored induction and a wide range of training schemes to help with your learning and development. Having options to progress is something we’re proud of at M&S.
- Attractive annual bonus, based on company performance and personal goals.
- Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
- Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices website. Including GymSave – that offers up to 25% off Gym Memberships and the option to become an M&S Shareholder using our ShareSave & ShareBuy Schemes
- Charity Volunteer Day – A paid day away from work to support your chosen charity.
- A very generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance
- Every colleague at M&S has access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support – this includes access to our 24/7 Virtual GP, PAM Assist to support you & your family & free access to the UnMind App as well as many other schemes
Key Accountabilities
Your key accountabilities will include
- Responsible for all volume throughput forecasts across our network, building the volume/flow plans both for the immediate future, medium term and the full financial year
- Specific planning and co-ordination for peaks and events such as Christmas, Easter, Space change and summer working with forecasting teams to translate business estimates and trade plans into accurate volume predictions
- Clear and timely communication of the flow plans to the network teams to ensure they are set up to deliver the business requirements
- Highlighting the daily/weekly volume fluctuations across the week back to category teams and working with them to resolve issues
- Use data driven insights effectively to ensure volume flows efficiently through the network including volume smoothing and Units per tray analysis whilst driving implementation through the supply chain teams
Who you are
Your skills and experience will include
- Great communication and team working skills with ability to build strong relationships and influence wider business stakeholders
- Numerate with an analytical mindset backed up with excellent Excel/IT skills
- Organised and detailed approach
- Experience with PowerBI and report creation (full training provided within the flow team)
- Ability to use Excel reports to interpret and analyse data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities and communicate to key stakeholders
- Efficient problem-solving ability with ability to look for new and innovative solutions
Everyone’s welcome
We are ambitious about the future of retail. We’re disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We’re transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.
We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.
If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process
Being an in-person business
We're at our best when we're close to customers, and for many of us at M&S, that means working in store every day.
To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected. It also means we can solve problems as soon as they arise, learn and grow as a team, build trust, and get closer to our colleagues.
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Make Your Mark
Opportunities to be heard
Your voice matters here. You can share your ideas ‘Straight to Stuart’, our CEO, or get involved in our BIG (Business involvement Group). Our colleague networks are also great places to find support, listen to each other and encourage debate.
Experience the business
We’re passionate about our customers and colleagues. To get closer to our customers we work in our stores 7 days per year. That way we can see how operations run and look for ways to do better each day.
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Benefits
How to Apply
Here’s what to expect at each stage of the application process. This can change depending on the role you’ve applied to. If you need any reasonable adjustments made at any stage, let us know and we can help.
Send us your application
Fill in our short application form and hit submit.
Online assessment
We’ll invite you to take part in an online assessment. This could be before or after your interview.
In-person assessment centre
We’ll invite you to an in-person assessment centre for an interview. This process may differ depending on the role you’ve applied to.
Decision
After we’ve decided, we’ll be in touch. If you’ve been successful, we’ll officially invite you to join the team and let you know the next steps.
Forecast Planner
- Team
- Food
- Store
- London Support Office
- Location
- London, Greater London
- Contract type
- Permanent
- Position type
- Full Time
- Salary
- Competitive + Benefits
- Closing date: 2nd May 2025
- Reference: 94588