Seipati Sharon Sello

• Reporting to Country Lead: Sales & Operations Manager
• Managing categories/major brands comprising of +/-247 SKUs. Sparkling soft drinks; Juice (Cappy Juice); Water (Bonaqua and Valpre); Energy (Monster; Play; Predator; Burn); Appletiser
• Region: South Africa Region (achieved in 2024 282 mil physical cases FY and R5, 564bil in NSR)
• Exports (14 Countries) and Sales to other Bottlers (Peninsula Beverages and McDonalds)
• Implemented a new KPI by providing the analytics on each step of the forecast process and how each input in the process influences the consensus number through mapping our value stream– Forecast Value Add. This led to an improvement of the consensus forecast accuracy from 68% ending 2022 to 78% closing 2024 close to our target of 80%
• Oversaw a seamless go-live of Blue Yonder, ensuring business continuity and user adoption.
• Drove post-implementation support and continuous improvement efforts by designing the operational adoption plan driving change management as well. This resulted in a 6% increase in planning efficiency and reduced forecast errors.
• Established efficient communication channels between supply chain partners, enhancing transparency and collaboration throughout the network.
• Part of the budgeting process by constructing volume bottom up considering business and industry trends; historical customer and consumer buying patterns; possible growth and decline due to market changes
• Leveraged data-driven insights to inform decision-making at various levels of the organization effectively by collaborating closely with sales and marketing, finance and supply chain partners.
• Designed custom reporting tools that provided actionable information for stakeholders across multiple departments efficiently.
• Maintained a comprehensive understanding of product portfolios and unique market dynamics, enabling tailored demand planning strategies for each category.
• Conducted root cause analyses to identify areas for improvement in forecasting accuracy and bias metrics systematically.
• Successfully navigated periods of rapid change at the competitor landscape by adapting planning strategies accordingly while maintaining operational stability.
• Mentoring and coaching my direct reporting planners, distributor planner and material planner, fostering a culture of learning and development within the team.

• Report to Country Lead: Sales & Operations Manager
• Managed executive calendars, scheduling meetings and appointments and coordinating travel arrangements to optimize time.
• Delivered exceptional organizational support enabling executive focus on high-level strategic initiatives fostering company growth by managing, coordinated and facilitated the Director's Strategy monthly meetings with external stakeholders such key strategic suppliers.
• Provided professional administrative support during monthly business review meetings meetings with directors and CCBA Executive Leadership, including agenda and documents preparation.
• Facilitated and coordinated the Executive S&OP for Monster Energy Company, Pensinsula Beverages and Southern Africa CCBA Bottlers across 6 countries
• Participated in Sales and Operations Planning meetings to review forecast results, discuss discrepancies, and align on corrective actions as needed.
• Participated in driving Continuous Improvement of World-Class Demand Planning and Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) processes to Class-A Integrated Business Planning being driven through Oliver Wight IBP Maturity Matrix
• Measure and track performance metrics and analysis to identify both opportunities and potential issues within S&OP processes and reporting as well as those across departments; provide insights and recommendations to help improve results
• Coordinated cross-functional teams to ensure seamless operations between sales, production, and shipping departments.
• Blue Yonder Implementation - With the continuous journey towards building rigorous and robust IBP process in the business, this required that we implement a business tool/system that would support and enhance transparency, information availability and increase collaboration in IBP):
• Responsible for gathering data requirements, participated in the system configuration and the design.
• Led the UAT and the operational adoption plan in the implementation of BlueYonder.
• Documenting improved processes and user functionality.

• Reported to Senior Demand Planning Lead
• Main categories/major brands comprising of +/-320 SKUs. Sparkling soft drinks; Juice (Cappy Juice); Water (Bonaqua and Valpre); Energy (Monster; Play; Predator; Burn); Appletiser for Gauteng and Inland Region
• Responsible to provide analytics for their business plans to make clear and concise decisions and drive business plan execution
• Actively participated in the S&OP process at Demand Review level looking at short to medium term range plans by closely collaborating with Commercial and Finance team to align on clear and concise plans and execution for 12 months rolling
• Aligned with Commercial on market intelligence such new customers; new distribution plans; promotions planned or cancelled; media campaigns; price adjustments; competitor activities etc
• Clearly outlined to Commercial team what were the exceptions (opportunity or risk) based on targeted budget and MRE by pack/brand to review and discuss for necessary forecast changes
• Develop scenario planning when faced with simultaneous challenges in the business to provide the business with alternatives for decision making
• Review post activity performance analysis versus plans to determine what worked and didn’t work
• Part of the budgeting process by constructing volume bottom up considering business and industry trends; historical customer and consumer buying patterns; possible growth and decline due to market changes
• Determined SKU/Pack level accuracy for 2 months for replenishment purposes at the short term; 3 months for raw material planning and 5 months for capacity planning
• Prepared demand plan for NPD sales and reviewed sales performance to provide insight to the business
• Making recommendations to the business for Portfolio Optimisation through the ABC analysis and collaborating with other functions to provide their key inputs for appropriate decision making
• Close collaboration with the supply planning team to review and align on possible constraints in production and capacity efficiencies, Supply Chain costs impact and distribution planning
• Reviewed inventory holding versus targets and close to expiry product
• Reviewed Out of stocks and the impact to business sales and determine corrective actions
• Reviewed of On Time In Full to determine customer service level impact on forecast accuracy/bias and determined corrective actions

• Reported to the Director of Customer Service & Logistics East West Africa
• Main categories/major brands comprising of +/-230 SKUs. Oral Care (Colgate base toothpaste; Colgate premium toothpaste range); Personal Care (Protex) and Home care (Sta Soft)
• Areas: South Central and South East Africa – Zambia; Zimbabwe; Malawi; Angola; Mozambique; DRC North; Madagascar

• Achieved consistent improvement in forecast accuracy with August YTD at 62% vs 49% in 2018 month on month with that seeing a reduction of +50% in excess inventory from $369K to $104 YTD and overall inventory reducing by 33% from $1 942 to $1 299. They improved the customer case fill rate from 79% to 87% closing 2019

Projects:

• 2017 - Facilitated the Product phase in/out and NPD project to analyse current process, isolated gaps and provided recommendations to business process changes

• 2017 - Collected, analysed and rolled up demand volumes for a new Dubai Distribution Centre that provided a service to 28 markets in East, South and West-Central Africa with the goal to establish if the markets will meet the centre volume budget, capacity planning, adequate container shipments on an annual basis, inventory balancing to meet targeted customer service level

• 2019 - Inventory right-sizing for Zambia Warehouse to understand and identify the right levels of inventory to drive improved efficiencies in meeting customer demands whilst obtaining the right mix of stock help logistics efficiencies in reducing warehouse costs

Owned and drove the demand collaboration meeting with the Commercial development team, Marketing, Finance and Supply Planning team in order to build a consensus demand plan 18 month rolling through the Colgate Business Planning forum (S&OP)

• Ensured that all promotional plans were reflected in the demand plan and were managed with Colgate and the customer through the Sell In, Sell Thru and Sell out approach
• Aligned with each of the customers of their sales activities and maintained healthy inventory across the different levels of customer distribution centers & Colgate warehouse
• Met with customers with the Customer Development Team to review sales plans (B2B) and challenged the number based historic and expected results
• Drove the outcomes of the weekly sales alignment meetings with the CDT and other stakeholders in order to ensure execution of sales and replenishment shipments in a timely manner; highlighted and escalated any risks that will impact future sales plans
• Reported the cluster performance YTD sales/YTG demand plan vs Budget and YTG demand plan vs Budget and highlighted where there were gaps/opportunities and possible risks to reaching business targets
• Participated and assisted with the Budget planning process
• Collaborated with the Demand Planning Analyst in cleansing historical sales and revised baseline forecast and statistical forecast going forward
• Drove the root cause analysis/diagnostics and ensured they got to the right corrective action and that it was executed through 6 months rolling bias and current month forecast accuracy result
• Managed new product launches and SKU transitions
• Collaborated with the Supply Planning team in demand and supply synchronisation meetings to align demand and supply/production planning and communicated possible supply constraints
• Drove inventory optimisation through revised inventory strategy with the inventory analyst

• Reported to Demand Planning Manager East West Africa
• Responsible for 325 SKU’s across 3 categories: Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care
• Leveraged systems and analytics to collaborate with all role players that impacted demand plan accuracy, drove improvements in DPA, Inventory and customer service
• Areas: East Africa and Sub-Saharan African
• Responsible for 325 SKU’s across 3 categories: Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care
• Leveraged systems and analytics to collaborate with all role players that impacted demand plan accuracy, drove improvements in DPA, Inventory and customer service
• Responsible for applying the best statistical model to each SKU per forecast location and plant to guide the commercial teams in deriving the most accurate demand plan
• Leveraged ABC-XYZ Segmentation to identify to each CDT which SKU’s required monthly collaboration as a forecast strategy implementation
• Produced monthly DP collaboration files per market and rolled the volumes back up into forecast location levels once received back from SCM - CDT
• Closed collaboration with Supply Chain Manager – CDT to ensure commercial plans were accurately represented in APO
• Shared APO volumes with CDT finance as well as SNP to ensure alignment
• Ensured that marketing and commercial activities in the SGC as well as on the ground were planned per forecast location, consolidated and used to adjust the promotional demand plan line in APO
• Ensured that all supply constraints were communicated to the CDTs and validated that those constraints were represented in APO
• Identified opportunities to leverage the APO system and any other CP system to improve DPA

• Reported to Supply Chain Manager
• Operated the volume forecasting process within the Supply Chain Operating Model and supporting the Core Commercial Cycle (CCC)/S&OP in order to improve customer service levels and reduce working capital
• Responsible for the calculation and reporting of demand forecasting KPI's to drive improvements in forecast accuracy, forecast bias (6 months rolling) and forecast completeness for 24 months
• Received the GSK Global Recognition Bronze Award in August 2015 for helping to decrease the backorder value from £ 1.3 million to £55 000 from January 2015 to August 2015 through the implementation and management of a robust and rigorous replenishment process ensuring increased customer service level
• Recognised for the implementation and management of the forecast process through facilitation of the Demand Review meetings and process, developing more effective analytical reports to help to identify root cause and apply corrective action. Assisted in developing training presentation for Sales and Marketing of the Demand review process entailing the objective, roles and responsibilities and timings
• Recognised for her contribution to an upward trend of forecast accuracy of 22.3% YTD (March 2016) vs the target of 35% towards reaching the targeted goal. Achieved bias of +12%/-9% YTD (March 2016) vs target of +15%/-10%. Made these achievements through understanding GSK’s supply chain complexities and business strategy and objectives
• Recognised for the implementation and managing stock expiry analysis report and identified stock close to expiry and reporting back to business and making recommendations. Part of the inventory strategy project with our partners on how to reduce inventory write-offs and ensuring end consumer (patient) receives uncompromised products

• Achieved a customer demand which incorporated historical and accurate market information that allowed the company to correctly predict customer demand and provided its Supply Chain with appropriate information to plan how to meet customer needs competitively

Achieved a customer demand which incorporated historical and accurate market information that allowed the company to correctly predict customer demand and provided its Supply Chain with appropriate information to plan how to meet customer needs competitively