Planning and Dispatch Manager

Job Description

Job title: National Planning & Dispatch Manager
Function:

Laundry & Catering Customer Services
Location:

Ripponden
Reports to:

Head of Customer Service – Laundry & Catering
Responsible for staff:

2 Team Leaders and 18 Planning & Dispatch Coordinators

About our business

JLA is a mission critical infrastructure solutions business offering services Laundry, Catering, Heating, Fire Safety, Infection Control and Air Conditioning.

The company offers an end-to-end, on premise, machine supply and breakdown service proposition under the name Total Care, and additional products and services. JLA is driven by a world class Sales & Marketing engine, owns and maintains all assets, and has an efficient on-site operations team working with daily with customers.

Role overview

This is a critical role accountable for leading a Planning & Dispatch team within Laundry & Catering Customer Services.
Focusing on transformation and innovation, they will manage the operational performance of a team of Planning and Dispatch Co-ordinators, to ensure that our field engineers deliver on our promise to our customers. They will be responsible for optimising the efficiency of our engineer workforce, taking into account engineer skills and optimal travel time to achieve customer SLAs.

Key tasks

•

Develop, engage and lead an effective team that is driven to deliver the operational targets and business strategy and one that strives for continuous improvement.

• Instill a customer focused culture and a right first time approach.

• Responsible for effective planning of engineer shifts for reactive, contractual and compliance work that maximises workforce efficiency.

• Focus on strategic workforce planning processes which include capacity management, workload and revenue forecasting.

•

Drive innovation to optimise the systems and structural set up including geographic boundaries and skill mix.

• Focus on continuous improvement to identify and eliminate process waste and improve cost to serve
• Work closely with field operations to ensure adequate resources are in each geographic area to deliver business targets.

• Understand and challenge the variance from business performance, including root cause analysis and development of mitigation plans covering people, processes, systems and metrics.

• Liaise with commercial, finance and field operation teams to deliver multiple business targets.

• Effectively manage and deliver a financial budget for the team and customer workload.

• Engage in Industry networking to share best practice, to optimise opportunities to improve performance and drive efficiencies.

Knowledge and Skills

(what you know and what you can do)

Confident communicator with the ability to challenge the status quo
Highly Analytical and skilled in data tools
Strong organisational skills
Self-motivated with high attention to detail
Financial acumen to balance workloads in line with budgetary phasing.
Strong excel skills to build and maintain forecasting models
UK and Ireland Geographic knowledge essential

Experience

(what you have done)

Experience in field force optimisation and resource planning
Experience of managing workloads against competing priorities
Proven performance in KPI delivery and improvement
Proven performance in driving efficiency savings
Have worked in a commercially driven environment

Personal qualities

(the way you think and act)

Inspirational and Engaging People Leader
A commitment to delivering outstanding customer service
Able to work in a fast paced environment and be able to demonstrate strong resilience and decision making
The ability to work successfully in a target-based environment
Strong interpersonal skills and track record of effective stakeholder management
Team player with a can do attitude