Sr Product Assortment Optimization Manager

Device & Supply Chain is an enterprise function accountable for the end-to-end life-cycle of T-Mobile's consumer-facing hardware portfolio (phones, chipsets, accessories, IoT), device services portfolio (insurance, warranty, trade-ins, and financing), and supply chain operations (distribution centers, logistics, inventory, etc.).

At any given time, more than $1B of inventory is invested by T-Mobile to support sales of product and services. Balancing this inventory investment with sales and customer service has become more complex with broader portfolios that change rapidly, short life cycles, increasing cost of goods sold, and interactions between products.

This increased complexity creates problems and corresponding opportunities for the assortment of product. Furthermore, this complexity makes it difficult for general rules of thumb and experience alone to make decisions that yield consistent and sustained performance improvements. This can be addressed by using analytics and creative problem solving to optimize the assortment plan. These analytics and solutions need to be created, thus the need for this position.

What you'll do in your role.

This role will create formal, rigorous, data driven processes to identify where and for how long to place devices and accessories for sale throughout the retail network and other channels of distribution to optimize the effectiveness of inventory investment. This role will work with partners in procurement, fulfillment, product management and the sales organizations to execute the developed assortment plans. It will both help to establish and administer the strategy for managing the assortment of devices and accessories and applying them to appropriate customer and store segments in an analytically rigorous manner. A successful candidate will be one that exhibits curiosity, creative problem solving, a practical approach and a can-do attitude.

• Help create and support a formal, data driven assortment planning process for efficiently placing inventory in T-Mobiles over 5000 retail stores

• Develop rigorous analytical frameworks for evaluating and measuring assortment decisions

• Answer complex business questions using statistical and modeling techniques

• Design and evaluate tests for new assortment processes and concepts using quantitative methods

• Design and perform cluster analysis on stores, products and sales channels in support of assortment planning

• Determine analytical tools, systems and processes needed that will enhance our inventory capabilities and efficiencies across the supply chain

• Develop best in class approaches to measuring and tracking supply chain and sales performance. Measure the effectiveness of product assortments in retail environments

• Collaborate across supply chain, field sales, marketing and finance to identify potential attributes or patterns that can be used to improve the supply chain assortment, procurement and replenishment strategies

• Generate new ideas to enhance the assortment process to support corporate objectives.

• Assess the quality and risk of model methodologies, outputs, and processes

• Explain complex modeling approaches in simple terms

• Apply statistical analysis to detect outliers in metrics that can be used to improve processes or refine metrics

The experience you'll bring.

• Experience analyzing product assortments in multi-channel sales environments

• Experience designing, running and analyzing A/B tests

• Experience with customer segmentation, cluster analysis, and/or assortment planning

• Experience with statistical demand forecasting, inventory optimization, retail replenishment and/or procurement operations

• Experience in a planning discipline desired (Demand Planning, Inventory Planning, Replenishment Planning, Supplier Management)

• Demonstrated capability to efficiently present complicated and nuanced topics to executives. Must be able to present tradeoffs, risks and rewards in a fashion that drives decisions and alignment

• Must be conversant with the interactions between Merchandise Financial Planning, Assortment Planning, Procurement and Replenishment systems

• Bachelor's Degree; Masters Preferred

• Ability to learn quickly, reconsider assumptions, and adjust to new information.

• Aptitude for understanding and learning new systems and tools.

• Persuasive communication skills appropriately using appropriate written and verbal mediums

• Agile and adaptive

• Adept at listening to then understanding a variety of points of view

• Able to balance concerns from internal customers with data for better decision making

• Analytical problem solver; applies multiple technical solutions to operational problems

• Collaborative, yet influential

• Flexible, self-starter, and comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment

• Creative problem solver and solution provider

• Detail oriented and organized

• Proficient in communicating effectively with both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

• Strong data extraction, analytical and problem-solving skills

• Exceptional statistics and experimentation toolkit.