Overly Complicated Systems & Analysis Paralysis
Pros
The new Summit HQ is beautiful, with great food & coffee options (albeit a bit expensive).
Cons
This is the most unnecessarily complicated job I have ever had. The onboarding is abysmal - the worst I have ever seen. The training materials aren't being updated; so many links to important SOPs are wrong and outdated. Everyone is faking it when speaking to the changes in the forecast because no one truly understands the framework and jargon we use to discuss Financial Business Planning. You would not believe the amount of screens & clicks & saves we need to work through to simply...find the list price of an item. Or bridge the month over month changes to the forecast. It often feels like we never truly "close" the forecast month over month because we meet at 5 different points in the cycle to "review" the forecast but rarely make sweeping impactful changes to the outlook - we're constantly just looking back at the misses/overshipments and attempting to categorize them into buckets with titles like "Distribution" and "Media" that no one can ever seem to align on. And whose definitions change cycle over cycle. Each department operates as a Squad where Customer Strategy, Demand Planning, and Marketing are to work collaboratively on all the touchpoints of the forecast. All that means is too many cooks in the kitchen and every single department of business creating their forecast entirely differently. Skin Health does it different than Baby who does it different from Wound. The inconsistency in an IBP process that in theory should be the same company wide is ridiculous and inefficient. We're constantly finding errors in our reporting that make it impossible to accurately bridge the changes in our shipment forecasts month over month. None of our systems and processes "talk" to each other in a way that is productive. Finance quotes the forecast differently than Demand Planning, Demand Planning quotes it differently than Supply Planning. Demand and Supply teams have very little process or systemic overlap - which doesn't make sense for the business - particularly when talking lead-times by SKU. The communication from leadership with regard to the IBP process feels intentionally sabotaging. Demand Planning is always given in-month financial direction when it's too late to accurately capture in the system and we're left scrambling every month.
