Senior Manager: Innovation, Commercialization & Growth Platforms – AMESA Foods Category – Johannesburg/Cape Town/Cairo or Gurgaon needed at PepsiCo

Responsibilities

• This is a critical Innovation & Commercialization leadership role, specifically accountable for the Foods Category Innovation agenda across the AMESA Sector. Underpinning the Category model, this role will focus on overall governance of the Hopper / Pipeline, ensuring multi-market leverage, rapid roll-out and winning execution of innovations to deliver the Innovation financial performance and broader KPIs. The role will also be responsible for leading key Growth Platform Innovations through program management excellence.

Key accountabilities are as follows:

Foods Category Innovation Commercialization:

• Core responsibility is to enable the growth agenda and underpin the operating model by supporting the commercialization of the AMESA Foods Category Innovation pipeline, ensuring operational excellence in the BUs (Egypt, Middle East, Pakistan, South Africa, WECA, India)

Provide unique, 3-Lens Innovation leadership expertise 

• across the Desirability, Feasibility & Viability lenses at Hopper, pipeline & project level. Identify the key tensions between a winning consumer proposition, the ability to make/move/sell and the financial viability for PEP, retailers from the outset to deliver a winning, sustainable proposition. This enables key trade-offs to be made early and ensures the Hopper is human centric, strategically sound & affordable and that project teams are set up for success from the start. Ensuring that pep+ is front & center of the 3-Lenses is also a key responsibility of the role.

Intentionally Scale Human Centric Solutions

• Identify winning innovations from across the enterprise that can be Lift & Scaled across the Sector by leveraging PepsiCo’s digitalized, always-on innovation Hopper, and connectivity with Global functional peers. Support the Desirability assessment of the innovations (category readiness, strategic brand fit, concept appeal) in partnership with Sector/BU marketing teams, drive the Feasibility & Viability assessments, and develop an E2E roll-out master plan and associated capability investments. Define the appropriate governance to ensure delivery to roadmap.

Drive Bold Choices & Winning Execution:

• Support the AMESA Foods Innovation & Commercialization Snr Director to define the role of innovation within the Sector Foods growth algorithm that is consistent with the portfolio & brand growth strategies. Embed & drive PepsiCo’s key innovation KPIs, including: incremental, profitable growth (incr NR & GM) ; Hopper/Pipeline sufficiency (Inc NR vs algo need) ; stickability (HH penetration, ROS, NR growth); Simplify to Grow (incr NR per project).

Creatively orchestrate the development of the Sector Foods Innovation Hopper

•  in partnership with Marketing, R&D & Supply Chain, with particular focus on ensuring innovation sufficiency, scalability, identifying critical platform capability investments and driving trade-offs / phasing.

Support the Foods Category Innovation governance to ensure an effective Category Innovation Board decision making forum 

• to ensure that all projects are cross-functionally aligned with appropriate trade-offs made between initiatives and brands and that critical risks and issues can be discussed, prior to final decisions being made.
• Own Foods Category Portfolio Analysis & Reporting, systematically assess & report Innovation health & performance including as part of monthly, quarterly and annual Innovation planning processes, ensuring flawless execution vs KPIs (business & process) to drive change and continuous improvement e.g. Speed to Market, on-time execution. Own Foods myInnovation data and Innovation forecasting and reporting as the ‘single version of truth’

Growth Platforms Innovation Commercialization:

Deliver best-in-class innovation Program Management expertise

•  for the Foods Growth Platforms to accelerate growth over the Strategic Plan horizon.  This involves partnering with the Sector Category Marketing team, specifically leading cross-functional teams to deliver projects, driving end-to-end unlocks and overcoming any challenges so that the innovations can be launched.
• Unite the 3-lenses (Desirability, Feasibility, Viability) to build viable, platformable commercial solutions that drive scale & balance risk – understand and manage gaps, risks, resources and trade-offs required for each roadmap and ensure cross-functional teams make the best business choices; Lead the program delivery through effective project management techniques
• Integrate E2E cross-functional interdependencies into front-end ideation to build program road-maps with smart execution. Manage the scope, milestone & critical path analysis, risks, stakeholder engagement and project budget & P&L. Bring together all elements across Marketing, Sales, R&D, Supply Chain & Finance to deliver projects to agreed scope, on budget, on time. Rapidly identify & course correct risks & opportunities both pre & post launch to maximize scale & success of the project.
• Integrate E2E governance with core business processes through clear success criteria – manage integrated, cross-functional engagement on a daily basis with stakeholders to secure commitments, ensure alignment and build detailed strategy and roadmaps for each of the solutions in development across these horizons; Lead the transition to local BU ownership for successful propositions, including the Stage-Gate integration process and other key business processes required locally

Qualifications

What will qualify you for the role:

• Minimum 12 years business experience, preferably in consumer (Marketing or Insights) or Supply Chain roles
• Minimum Bachelors Degree education, ideally in Business studies, Engineering or Finance
• High level of business acumen – must be commercially & organizationally savvy and financially astute. Understanding of the E2E innovation process, from idea to launch, including knowledge of P&L fundamentals, Supply Chain & GTM an advantage
• Results-oriented with a high degree of personal initiative and leadership – can operate well within a low resource, fast-paced cross-functional environment
• Exceptional leader with strong communication and collaboration skills, ability to influence at all levels and comfortable managing conflict
• Proven commercial project leadership/management skills, ability to manage complex functional interdependencies in project timelines
• Strong process thinker committed to driving process efficiency, strength in data analysis and interpretation in order to develop business recommendations and strong analytical thinking to comprehend potential challenges, and propose feasible solutions