Inventory Controller

📋 Description

• • Own inventory governance end-to-end across Australia & New Zealand, ensuring every unit of hardware—from digital menu boards to drive-thru displays—is accounted for, compliant and positioned to delight millions of customers every day.
• • Translate Coates’ global inventory policy into day-to-day excellence: design, document and continuously refine procedures that keep stock accuracy above 99 % while slashing storage costs and eliminating write-offs.
• • Partner with Project, Account Management, Purchasing and Operations teams to forecast demand spikes for record-breaking rollouts (think 20,000-site hardware deployments) and orchestrate just-in-time inventory movements that hit go-live dates without fail.
• • Lead monthly cycle counts, wall-to-wall stock-takes and surprise spot-checks across 3PL warehouses, DCs and forward-staging hubs; reconcile variances within 24 hours and publish root-cause analyses that prevent repeat issues.
• • Drive daily, weekly and monthly inventory reconciliations with third-party logistics providers; own the 3PL billing validation process to ensure Coates only pays for space and services actually used.
• • Build and maintain master data integrity in the ERP—item set-up, ABC classifications, min-max parameters, shelf-life rules—so planners, finance and customer success teams operate from a single source of truth.
• • Design KPI dashboards (accuracy %, ageing inventory, slow-movers, obsolete stock) and present insights in S&OP forums; influence cross-functional leaders to release working capital tied up in excess inventory.
• • Propose and execute cost-reduction strategies for external warehousing—re-slotting, cross-docking, vendor-managed inventory—that directly improve gross margin on multi-million-dollar hardware programs.
• • Investigate discrepancies using forensic-level analysis (serial-level tracing, lot genealogy, freight audit trails) and implement corrective/preventive actions that become global best practice.
• • Collaborate with Finance to process count-in/outs, inventory write-off requests and month-end close journals; ensure SOX-compliant documentation and audit trails for internal and external auditors.
• • Coach warehouse teams, planners and project coordinators on inventory disciplines; deliver micro-training sessions that turn complex policy into simple, repeatable habits.
• • Champion continuous-improvement projects—barcode scanning, RFID pilots, automated cycle-count drones—that future-proof Coates’ inventory operations for the next 60 years of growth.