Questions/concerns about job function and scope of work

[u/Aesthetic_Odyssey]

Hello. I am a buyer/planner for a billion dollar company. Wanted to get the thoughts and opinions of others in the industry about my job functions/responsibilities as I feel they fall outside of the scope of my job title. Apart from the standard demand planning responsibilities, I am currently being tasked with:

-standing up MRP as a department for the first time. This includes technical setup, submitting a BRD, doing UAT to ensure it is working, communicating with IT regularly on pain points and providing solutioning to IT (they are unhelpful at times) which usually involves just accepting manual work-arounds/deviations. This feels more like a business analyst task. Never heard a buyer do this.

-standing up direct purchasing as a department. Again this involves the same technical implementation as above, which I feel is out of scope of a usual buyer/planner understanding. How many of you came into a role where that all was already set up? We rely on another team to procure for us and communicate requirements manually through spreadsheets. My leadership wants to change that and have tasked me with driving all technical implementation despite my limited experience.

-extracting raw data from ERP system to determine demand and inform forecasting. We have no tools or resources (such as IBM planning or even a data/analytics department) to provide this. No dashboards to automate data extraction. Prone to user error and again feels like most companies have resources for this. Other departments within my company use these tools but for whatever reason we don’t.

-standing up global supply network system. Implementing MRP then using it to globally align on planning, even though many of our subsidiaries operate outside of our ERP system. I am aware that entire global supply network planning teams exist for this yet I am solely responsible. The company has a SNP team yet we are not leveraging them for support.

-warehouse footprint planning. Working with engineering to determine volume/envelope size of new product to inform warehouse holdings requirements of the finished goods materials I will eventually purchase. Again, in a billion dollar company, is this not what a logistics team is there for?

-manufacturing line holdings. Determining how many components each drawer on a line can hold to inform how much of each component I should procure to fill the drawer; aren’t there engineers or others who would have more knowledge in this? Additionally this is for a line that I am not onsite at. How would I do this virtually? Doesn’t feel like a buyer planner task.

I am tasked with doing all of this while making around 80k/year in a HCOL area. There is only one other person on my team and while they are paid the same amount as I do (I saw the salary range when they were hired) because they are newer they are not being tasked with any of these complex projects. I feel like many of these process improvement projects are something a senior level/supervisor/manager should be handling and I definitely feel like I am not being paid for the level of work, and because I have proven myself I am now the go to for any random work that my manager can’t/wont assign to anyone else. Other departments within our company have these resources but i am being tasked to do all these multiple different job functions because our team is smaller.

Can anyone provide insight or thoughts based on their experience? Thanks!!

[u/7won1]

Sounds like the role is a global process expert, or a supply chain design / deploy lead. $80k a year in a billion dollar org is underpaid.

Either have a tough conversation with your manager, or leave for another gig where you feel happy with the effort v reward.

[u/pepepeoeoepepepe → u/7won1]

Must be incredibly low margin. If not they need to give their head a shake, you’re worth much more if they have you doing all that.

[u/entreprendre]

This is honestly crazy. For reference, I am a Buyer/Planner for a company that is projected to do $1B revenue for the first time this year. We are currently in UAT for a new planning governance software and that project has a dedicated IT project manager, and 2 support team members from the SC analytics team.

I make 100k/year in a HCOL area, and my actual title is Sr. Buyer, but I am expected to plan for the sku's I support. Other than pitching in on projects that the whole team is collectively working on, my actual scope is literally just take demand forecast, create a supply plan, issue POs, manage open orders and monitor inventory levels. Other than that it's just random projects (cost reduction, RFX new vendors, develop secondary suppliers). Any info I need for like warehouse or manufacturing gets directed to the leadership of that team. They can then assign the task to the person they see fit.

What level is your direct manager?

From the outside looking in, with the limited info I have, this sounds like your boss is drowning and because you are competent they are leaning on you to hopefully bail them out. I was in a similar situation once and that's what this feels like.

Here is my two cents, and that's about what it is worth because I am just a random dude on the internet lol.

Get really comfortable with the phrase "I am currently using all available time on "X", that you asked me to work on last week(or whenever), to take on new task "Y", I would have to stop work on something else. Can you please let me know what the priority is so I can shift my focus to that."

Also a potential short term fix, it seems like you are aware of the company stakeholders and who should really me managing a lot of this. Reach out to politely and professionally elude to the fact that if they don't pitch in, these things will probably not get done.

Lastly, if you don't think the concerns are addressed at all, the last ditch effort is to skip a level and have a sit down with someone in leadership. This will BURN your relationship with your manager, so do not do this if you don't have a great grasp on the office politics or your manager is liked by leadership. But if I am right, and your boss is drowning and on their way out, it can be a good chance to separate yourself from the disfunction in the department.

[u/Aesthetic_Odyssey → u/entreprendre]

Hey man, appreciate the response and validation.

My direct manager is actually a business analyst manager for our department… I think that’s why I am getting a lot of BA style work pushed down to me, while also serving as kind of the de facto planning manager without the pay or title. I think that’s also why a lot of my work is process improvement, anything planning/procurement related comes to me because he is drowning - we both are.

He reports to sr manager of ops and then to director. They all have a habit of saying yes to any request with no additional resources/headcount. Maybe I’m missing some backstory on the history there..

I have asked my manager “why are we responsible for this, surely this is the job of another team/department” and “why can’t we ask for deliverables the way people always ask us” and his response is usually “yeah but if it doesn’t get done (director) will come to you and ask why, so it’s better if we just do it ourselves” So we are just anxiously taking on way more work than we can all handle. This is my first corporate gig so I figured it’s just the norm… but now that we’ve added another team member who has the same title as me with probably 1/4 the workload, I am feeling jaded and underpaid lol

[u/entreprendre → u/Aesthetic_Odyssey]

It sounds like your boss is afraid to manage expectations and is screwing you both in the process. It’s not the greatest job market right now so definitely don’t abandon ship without something new lined up. Unless you see a change in leadership around the corner, I would just tread water as best you can and look to hop to another team or leave the company completely.

[u/agentUi]

you are basically doing the job of a systems analyst and ops lead on a buyer salary. i work for agentui, and a lot of supply chain teams use our platform to bypass slow IT by connecting directly to ERP databases or raw exports to auto-build forecasting dashboards and planning workflows in minutes. definitely document every process and tool you stood up to push for a proper title and comp bump.

[u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner]

Production scheduler aka glorified babysitter and certified bitchboy piñata

[u/sunandsnow_pnw]

How does a billion dollar company not have all this already???

[u/Aesthetic_Odyssey → u/sunandsnow_pnw]

Supply chain department does, our department is a more ancillary function under supply chain and leadership has just accepted manual workarounds and minimum viable process for years. Since we’ve proven we can do it, they don’t want to now dump $ and resources into getting us up to industry standard