Careers at MGA Entertainment

MGA Entertainment is one of the largest and fastest growing privately held toy and entertainment companies in the world. Headquartered in Los Angeles, and with offices globally, the company creates innovative, proprietary, and licensed consumer products and entertainment properties, including toys, games, dolls, apparel, consumer electronics, home décor, stationery, sporting goods, movies, and television series. The MGA family includes award-winning brands such as L.O.L. Surprise!™, Little Tikes®, Rainbow High™, Shadow High™, Bratz®, MGA’s Miniverse™, Fluffie Stuffiez™ , Na! Na! Na! Surprise™, Micro Games of America™, Baby born® Surprise and Zapf Creation®. For more information, please visit us at www.mgae.com or check us out at LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

Mission: The Senior Demand Planner is responsible for creating and maintaining the demand plan and all forecasting activities associated with customers and products.  This position will ensure the demand plans use appropriate data models, incorporate business intelligence and forecast information from customer, sales, marketing, and other sources. Manage the account Demand Plan for entire portfolio across multiple seasons.

Position Requirements  

Minimum Requirements:
 

Years and Type of Experience:

• At least 5 years of work experience in Demand Planning, Supply Chain, Sales, or similar roles
• Knowledge of the supply chain and the impacts of forecasting on supply chain performance
• Consumer Packaged Goods experience desired

Required Skills 

• Ability to build strong relationships across the functions and levels
• Demonstrated strong aptitude in analysis, root causes identification, and problem solving
• Able to analyze data, draw reasonable conclusions, and formulate next steps
• Experienced in setting priorities and meeting deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Strong customer service orientation and interpersonal skills
• Exceptional communicator
• Ability to thrive in ambiguous situations

Preferred Skills 

• Supply Planning Experience (3+ Years)
• Advanced computer skills in Excel (pivot tables, macros, Vlookups, etc.)
• Experience with other statistical modeling programs

Education Level/Degree:
 BS/BA Degree or equivalent work experience

Key Result Areas and Activities
 

Create/Review/Validate Demand Planning: 

• Analyze and update SKU Level demand signal based on trends, alerts, models, assumption changes, inputs, etc.
• Establish and utilize best methods in creating forecasts at the item and brand level.
• Analyzes historical sales trends data, POS information and shipment trends to support baseline forecast assumptions.
• Use understanding of product life cycles to develop new item projections; adjust signal for New Products, Transitions, and/or Discontinued Products.
• Compile and analyze forecasts inputs at various demand segments, identifying and documenting performance gaps for review in monthly consensus meetings.
• Continuously improve forecasts through evaluation of promotional activity, inventory changes, consumptions trends, category trends, media and advertising plans or extended service level impacts.
• Ensure Business/Sales Team plans are supported through the Demand Forecast process.
• Proactively communicate critical changes to downstream supply chain partners.

Facilitate / Participate in S&OP process for assigned business unit 

• Own and continually improve the Demand Alignment meeting through a detailed time sensitive process that compliments the existing business team format and financial planning processes.
• Develop a sales forecast rollup by business from individual sku level forecasts to support discussions at the monthly meetings with Marketing, Sales and Finance. Provide insights on market and customer trends in order to complete a gap analysis.
• Gain consensus from all departments on key assumptions and changes to segment level volume.
• Provide monthly summaries to teams identifying key drivers, and clarity against segment/SKU level gaps.

Reporting 

• Prepare, monitor and publish forecast KPI's (on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis, taking corrective actions as necessary.
• Monitor orders vs. estimates on a monthly basis, responding to exceptions with collaborative discussions and addressing monthly plan revisions accordingly.
• Identify key issues which require immediate escalation to Sales and/or Operations as required.
• Establish annual forecast accuracy targets. Measure monthly forecast error results verses established targets and identify and report on root cause for forecast errors below target.
• Publish monthly forecast accuracy reports, with baseline and secondary pack trending by month.
• Create business reviews determining long term business health and trends.
• Create and publish building blocks used to generate topline forecast plans.
• Produces reports that facilitate a continuous analysis of actual sales and emerging trends in comparison to forecasts.

Change Management 

• Identify areas in need of improvement.
• Search for potential solutions both internally and externally.
• Create and present recommendations.
• Collaborate with team to implement process improvements.
• Adopt new tools to improve process and KPI results.