Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE:RL) is a global leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products in five categories: apparel, accessories, home, fragrances, and hospitality. For more than 50 years, Ralph Lauren's reputation and distinctive image have been consistently developed across an expanding number of products, brands and international markets. The Company's brand names, which include Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren Collection, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Polo Ralph Lauren, Double RL, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren Children, Chaps, among others, constitute one of the world's most widely recognized families of consumer brands.
At Ralph Lauren, we unite and inspire the communities within our company as well as those in which we serve by amplifying voices and perspectives to create a culture of belonging, ensuring inclusion, and fairness for all. We foster a culture of inclusion through: Talent, Education & Communication, Employee Groups and Celebration.
Ralph Lauren (RL) has embarked on our next generation transformation focused on accelerating our strategy. This enterprise-wide transformation includes governance, implementation, and consolidation into a single global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), enhanced logistics automation across our warehouse management system (WMS), and enhanced connectivity across all planning functions through process and technology improvements to support integrated business planning (IBP). These initiatives will enable a fundamental transformation in our end-to-end processes as we become a more global DTC-oriented company, and greater efficiencies across demand planning, inventory buying, allocation and more.
The objective of the IBP Program is to transform planning through connectivity, automation and predictive analytics. Reporting to the Head of Integrated Business Planning Transformation, the successful candidate will provide oversight and deep expertise to build and develop the merchandising financial planning (MFP) and assortment planning (AP) capabilities over a multi-year horizon. The Global Capability Lead possesses expertise and decision-making authority across the end-to-end capability, owning process design, policy, reporting, data and technology requirements. The role coordinates requirements and change across global teams and regions to create, test, deploy and provide ongoing support and improvements.
Scope encompasses development and deployment of processes, tools, and systems to support the successful implementation of a consumer-centric merchandise model as it relates to merchandising financial planning and assortment planning. Key processes in scope for MFP include establishing financial strategy and targets, building top down and bottom-up plans, and reviewing business performance (open-to-buy); for AP processes include hindsighting, conceptual assortment planning, line planning, and receipt flow planning.
- Collaborate with business stakeholders to define business goals and objectives, facilitating cross-functional alignment.
- Provide thought partnership and challenge existing business processes during design workshops to standardize and harmonize processes across regions while preserving what makes Ralph Lauren special.
- Drive adherence and adoption of future state global processes, reports, tools and ways of working.
- Facilitate discussions and align on key decisions with Global Design Council on design deviations.
- Identify and incorporate dependencies within parallel Ralph Lauren initiatives.
- Collaborate to define and uphold program governance framework with IBP Program Leadership Team, consisting of identifying risks, issues, decision rights and escalation process.
- Collaborate with Value Realization Partner and Head of IBP Analytics to define, track and communicate key success measures / KPIs; ultimate accountability to ensure value realization for the capability.
- Ongoing review of metrics and behaviors to identify opportunities for process enhancements and adoption.
- Proactively drive and prioritize improvements, upgrades and innovations post go-live, build support case for the additional investment and ensure on-going process education / training.
- Partner with Change Management team to drive skills development and knowledge transfer.
- Accountable for ensuring successful testing, training and hyper care support with support from various project team members.
Salary range: $130,000 - $235,500 annually
Experience, Skills & Knowledge
- Experience with proven track record in related role; business consulting experience is a plus.
- Demonstrated expertise in retail merchandising, buying and planning industry best practices.
- Skilled in developing and deploying retail merchandising systems and capabilities, specifically with MFP/AP Software (e.g., Blue Yonder, o9, Oracle, etc.)
- Experienced in managing large, complex global change efforts and driving results through influence, operational tactics and relationships.
- Possesses a strong strategic vision but is also comfortable taking a hands-on approach to achieve results.
- Experience within a vertically integrated retail environment; fashion apparel experience is highly desirable.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to organize, conceptually interpret and clearly communicate material developed collaboratively via the input of multiple parties; translate complexity into the actionable.
- Bachelor’s degree in business, management, or related field; MBA preferred.
- Must be based in NY or Geneva.