Ferns N Petals - Head - Operations - GCC

Objective: The Head of Operations GCC will lead the complete end-to-end operations function across GCC markets for a fast-growing gifting, flowers, cakes, and e-commerce business. This role is responsible for ensuring seamless execution across fresh production, fulfillment centers, warehousing, inventory planning, logistics, and last-mile delivery while maintaining high customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and profitability. The role will focus heavily on same-day delivery operations, festive peak readiness, fresh product production, perishables handling, service excellence, and scalable regional growth. Roles & Responsibility: - Lead end-to-end GCC operations strategy aligned with business growth, profitability, and customer experience goals. - Oversee operations across all GCC markets. - Build scalable operating models to support expansion into new cities and markets. - Drive standardization of SOPs while adapting to local market needs. Fresh Production & Fulfillment: - Oversee daily production operations for flowers, bouquets, cakes, hampers, gift assembly, and personalized products. - Ensure production planning aligns with demand forecasts and order cut-off timelines. - Maintain freshness standards, product quality, packaging excellence, and dispatch readiness. - Optimize production manpower productivity, wastage control, and turnaround times. Warehousing & Inventory Management: - Manage warehouses, fulfillment centers, dark stores, and regional hubs. - Lead inventory planning for flowers, cakes, gifts, packaging materials, and consumables. - Ensure optimum stock levels with minimal expiry, wastage, or stock-outs. - Improve inventory accuracy, replenishment cycles, and stock deployment across markets. Logistics & Last Mile Delivery: - Lead in-house fleet and third-party delivery partner performance across GCC. - Ensure same-day, express, scheduled, and peak-period deliveries are executed efficiently. - Optimize route planning, rider productivity, delivery cost, and SLA adherence. - Improve customer handover experience and reduce delivery failures. Peak Season & Event Readiness: - Own operational readiness for key occasions such as Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Eid, Ramadan, Diwali, National Days, Christmas, and other campaigns. - Develop capacity plans for manpower, inventory, fleet, vendor support, and production throughput. - Ensure zero service disruption during demand spikes. Cost Control & Profitability: - Manage operational budgets across warehousing, production, manpower, logistics, and fleet. - Drive cost per order reduction without compromising service quality. - Improve productivity metrics across hubs, warehouses, riders, and production teams. - Identify automation and efficiency opportunities. Customer Experience & Quality: - Ensure operations directly support customer promise and brand reputation. - Minimize cancellations, delays, substitutions, damages, and complaints. - Maintain service excellence across order journey from placement to delivery. Vendor & Stakeholder Management: - Manage relationships with logistics partners, manpower vendors, packaging suppliers, and operational service providers. - Partner with Procurement, Commercial, Finance, HR, Technology, and Country Heads. - Act as key operations stakeholder in regional leadership planning. Technology & Performance Management: - Drive use of ERP, OMS, WMS, routing tools, dashboards, and operational automation systems. - Monitor KPIs and drive performance through daily or weekly reviews. - Build a data-driven operations culture. Team Leadership: - Lead country operations heads and regional functional teams. - Build strong ownership culture, discipline, and execution excellence. - Coach and develop future leaders across GCC. Candidate Requirements: Experience: - 12+ years of progressive experience in Operations, Supply Chain, or Fulfillment. - Minimum 5 years in senior leadership role managing multi-city or multi-country operations. - Strong GCC experience preferred. - Experience in gifting, flowers, bakery, food delivery, e-commerce, retail, quick commerce, or perishable operations. Technical Expertise: - Fresh production operations management. - High-volume fulfillment and last-mile delivery. - Inventory planning for short shelf-life products. - Workforce planning and productivity management. - Budgeting and cost control. - SOP creation and process optimization. - Technology-led operations management. Leadership Skills: - Strong people leadership and team development. - Excellent problem-solving and decision-making ability. - Commercial mindset with strong ownership. - Ability to perform under pressure during peak seasons. - Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.