Human Resource Talent House

Logistics and Distribution Lead

About Apollo agriculture

Our client Apollo agriculture is a technology company with the aim of providing farmers with everything they need to become successful commercial farmers. The company looks to empower farmers, turning their farms into successful businesses and gateways to the middle class by providing them with the financing they need so they can better their products, increase their harvest, and turn their subsistence farming into commercial farming.

About the role:

Apollo agriculture is seeking an experienced Logistics and Distribution Lead to spearhead its growing logistics and distribution operations in Zambia. This is a senior management role reporting to the country head. The individual will be responsible for the on-time, cost-effective delivery of goods to their customers, via the company’s network of distribution partners. The role requires developing a local team of L&D staff and collaborating with the company’s Logistics experts to adapt to the best practices. The work includes the development of a strategy for the L&D function as the operation expands.

Key Responsibilities:

• Maintain and execute partnerships with key suppliers and distributors: Develop strong relationships with Distribution and Logistics partners, develop the strategy for future years and ensure effective execution of partnerships today.
• Ensure movement of goods from suppliers to their final destination: You will plan the movements of goods from the company’s suppliers to their final destination (warehouse, agro-dealer or farmer). You will be responsible for building processes and tools to manage all movements and plan the delivery in advance using sales projections and lead times. You will ensure efficient execution of the plans, together with your team, to ensure that they are always stocked at these.
• Agro Dealer Recruitment and Management: Oversee the recruitment, training and management of agro-dealers. Build processes and tools to manage risks and develop strategies to retain strong partners. You are charged with building monitoring tools, agreeing on SLAs with our partners and ensuring adherence to them.
• Build and grow your team and establish scaleable ways of working: You are responsible for building, managing and motivating your team. This includes identification of the needs of the L&D function in a growing organization, hiring required staff, and training and mentoring them effectively. This includes setting KPIs, providing feedback on a regular basis and managing the overall performance of your team.
• Propose innovations to the L&D function: Use your experience in Logistics and Distribution to propose new ideas, formulate process improvements or bring other innovations to the function.
  Will be in charge of delivering a seamless customer experience across all stages and touchpoints in the partner & customer input pick up journey and helping the company continually achieve greater efficiency, while driving higher customer satisfaction, NPS and customer retention

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in distribution/channel management
• Experience in supply chain management is an added advantage
• Previous experience in a fast paced environment, preferably in a startup context
• World-class interpersonal, networking and influencing skills. Success in this role will require you to nurture relationships internally within your team and with leaders of other teams, and to also deeply understand the perspectives and customers needs, external stakeholders, and channel partners
• Ability to build and maintain effective supplier relationships to ensure that supplier performance consistently meets and exceeds business expectations. This will include measuring supplier performance in terms of time / delivery of quality products
• Skilled at interpreting and leveraging insights from data to constantly enhance the customer experience. The ability to extract useful, actionable information from data, along with strong problem-solving skills, will be essential for success in this role
• Ability to understand business objectives and align team goals in service of these objectives
• Ability to build and manage a growing team efficiently and that represents the company’s values.
• Proactive and self driven to ensure the smooth running of daily operations and consistency of customer experience across the network
• Up to date with market changes and able to review and update supply chain practices in accordance with all relevant legislation
• Have an aptitude for technology, and can continuously review and improve the tools and technologies that help the business deliver, manage, measure and improve the customer experience across the distribution channels/partners
• Able to minimize inventory loss by incorporating best supply chain practices

Compensation:

The incumbent will receive a competitive salary commensurate with experience.