Category Development Manager, TT & Convenience needed at Mondelez International

• You provide compelling insights and engage with customers and key account teams. You identify and track category opportunities that support growth or defend risk and apply your insights for category, shopper, and consumer metrics when analyzing and translating data sources.

How you will contribute

You will:

• Responsible for the development and execution of selling programs related to their assigned Category’s innovation, distribution, merchandising, and promotional plans
• Key linkage between the Customer Business Teams (CBTs) and the Category Innovation, Marketing and Equity teams to ensure that our strategies and tactics are aligned to the needs of our Customers
• Responsible for building category and customer plans for the assigned Category, working collaboratively with Category teams, Insights, and Customer Business Teams (CBTs)
• Be seen as the Category expert internally and create compelling, actionable & measurable category plans
• Provide thought leadership internally & externally around brand & category initiatives (promotional strategy / budget planning)
• Leading delivery of category dashboard / fundamentals and recommending corrective actions to ensure targets are met
• Ongoing assessment of critical baseline volume opportunities / risks and lead initiatives to optimize category performance

What you will bring

A desire to drive your future and accelerate your career and the following experience and knowledge:

• Category development, key accounts and market insight analysis and delivering growth through category leadership
• Having a future-focused mindset, demonstrating curiosity about industry trends, digital solutions and innovation for consumers and translating opportunities into business plans
• Delivering strategic plans, measuring and monitoring results, and making recommendations to achieve growth targets
• Influence stakeholders and interacting effectively with others, with the courage and resilience to hold an alternative point of view
• Analytical skills and business acumen
• Proven experience in the fast-moving consumer goods field is a distinct advantage

More about this role

What you need to know about this position:

• The Category Development Manager is responsible for leading, developing and implementing the category growth strategy both internally and with retailers, that supports the delivery of the financial and strategic imperatives across Chocolate in SA.
• The objective is to align long term brand and customer thinking behind a shopper centric, customer validated, mutually beneficial growth plan.  This role coordinates internal and external stakeholders to build and execute customer ready growth plans across channels and customers ensuring the portfolio has an integrated and aligned approach to Customer Category Strategies, Category and Shopper Development.

What extra ingredients you will bring:

In line with the job purpose, key accountabilities will entail the following:

Translate the category strategies into a sales strategy and cross-category customer plans and coordinate the building and implementation of the category growth strategy.

Owns:

• The assessment of Category opportunities across channels and customers.
• The development of Customer Growth Strategy to support customer negotiations / customer strategic plan (SP) and/or customer joint business plan (JBP).
• The identification of customer / shopper insights to feed customer strategic plan (SP) and/or customer joint business plan (JBP)

Define:

• Define activities to support Category Growth Strategy.
• Define the specific opportunities that exist by category by customers.

Implement:

• Execute and track of Category Growth Strategy.
• Input the channel, customer and shopper insights into the category activation plan.

Apply & Sustain:

• Drive communication with key stakeholders (Sales Revenue Planning, Perfect Store and KAM’s).

Leverage & Improve:

• Continuous evaluation of the effectiveness of the Category Growth Strategy.

Key Relationships:

The successful incumbent will liaise with key members of various business units:

• Regional and National Account Managers, including Field Sales teams.
• Marketing (Innovation Manager)
• Perfect Store teams.
• Commercial Finance teams.
• External customers, including Distributors, 3rd party vendors, data suppliers and others as applicable.

Education, Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

To succeed in this role, it is expected the successful incumbent will have:

• A relevant Commercial or Marketing Degree or Diploma/equivalent
• Training in Category Management
• Minimum 5-8 FMCG experience in Sales/Marketing
• Sales experience is essential

Ideally with broad experience across the following:

• Strong financial acumen and history of working with finance/P&L’s.
• Sales at Account Management.
• Good understanding of consumer and shopper either from working directly in that area or as part of, through demonstrated experience.
• Category Management – Operational is essential

Key Competencies

• Initiation and decisiveness.
• Perspective and good judgment.
• Integrity.
• Highly articulate with good written and verbal communication skills.
• Flexible, entrepreneurial and ability to work with multiple stakeholders.
• Customer Focus.
• Drive for results.
• Lead, motivate and develop direct reports and or project team members.
• Teamwork and collaboration.
• Strategic influencing skills both internally and externally, in terms of commercial selling, negotiation and coaching.
• Deal with ambiguity and superior problem solving.
• Strong strategic planning and organizing skills (translate strategy into execution).
• Strategic and organizational agility.
• Creative at strategic level.
• Proven commercial acumen with strong focus on financial acumen and analytical skills, with the ability to translate into actionable insights.  Excellent analytical skills, high attention to detail and proven ability to interpret data into insights.
• Understanding of the principles of Customer vs. Shopper Marketing and Category management.
• Basic understanding of customer packed goods industry, the channels in which our products are sold and account specific market.
• Familiarity with syndicated market measurement data.
• Strong project management skills and details oriented.
• Proven understanding of Category Management and Shopper Marketing principles.
• Proven ability to take information from multiple sources (sales, consumer, customer and macro trends) to formulate insight and provide recommendations and options to influence the Category/Channel strategy.

Obligations and Expectations

It is expected that you will:

• Perform the role accountabilities within the operating and process frameworks applicable to our Company;
• Work together with all your peers and customers.  A key part of your performance review annually will be based on their input;
• Exemplify our Company’s higher Purpose and Values in practice – this will be a key part of your annual development cycle.