My journey through this industry has been varied. My first job wanted a ‘personable geek’ who was good with numbers! I still enjoy getting stuck into a good chunk of data to glean patterns, insight and also enjoy working in community with others.Marketing taught me to see what I was supplying through the eyes of those who ultimately consumed the brand and those customers that sold it to them. It is often too easy to believe our own PR and make assumptions that make us very quickly out of touch.Creating strategies to take brands into channels and markets that were difficult to crack, agreeing executing and feeding back on the plans to growth the businesses. I gained insight into how a wide range of businesses worked, from global FMCG brand owners to entrepreneurs just getting up and running. It was necessary to understand those businesses and their needs just as well as I understood those shoppers and consumers.In all of the above there was always a huge amount of data to work my way through to turn into insight and especially forecasts. Anything can be forecasted as long as you know and understand the variables that will drive it. Even as we head into the future and more forecasts become AI generated, that knowledge and insight of what is behind those numbers will remain as important as ever.Eventually I made my way to supply chain. After all what is the use of all of this brand investment and product development if you cannot get the product to the consumer or shopper exactly when they want it. I developed my customer service teams to look ahead where they can, to spot where things are likely to go wrong and do something about it before it affects service levels or gives customers a nasty surprise. That forecasting ability and insight helped me to plan up the chain, working with my suppliers to plan ahead for increases and also decreases in demand. The same insight and analysis has also helped me to identify opportunities for savings and drive down the cost to service our customers.The last two years I have been running supplier groups of suppliers delivering into grocery retail, looking at a number of areas including forecasting best practice, reducing claims for short delivery and supplying into Amazon. I have also worked in a Head of Planning role leading to create a cohesive planning strategy to significantly improve customer service.If you need help or guidance around manufacturing planning, forecasting, customer service, delivering product to customers or importing from and exporting to the EU then please message me and we can talk.