Category Development Manager, Rest of Africa at Mondelez International

You ensure that customer plans are developed and executed by supporting the delivery of strategies and tactics for growth. You understand the business metrics and financial drivers needed to unlock profitable growth for Mondelēz International and our customers and work with key account managers to implement plans to deliver our annual target.

How you will contribute

You will:

• Leads the development of the trade marketing part of the category annual plans (contract process)
• Understands market dynamics / consumer insights by channel to participate on trade marketing strategic decisions
• Leads the business planning meeting where the sales quotas are built in order to accomplish the annual plans based on relevant building blocks
• Suggests and influences investment in category building blocks, according to category and channel need, and is accountable of execution excellence at point of sale
• Follows up the competition’s commercial activity in the category in order to detect business opportunities and potential threats for the brand
• Plays a leadership role within the multi categories teams by leading, providing accurate and relevant channel point of sale information that will lead to find business opportunities such as innovations, customer promotions, portfolio, pricing, etc. that will lead to achieve multi categories targets

What you will bring

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

• Category planning and delivering growth through category leadership
• Having a future-focused mindset, being curious about industry trends, digital solutions and innovation for consumers, and translating opportunities into business plans
• Developing and delivering plans, measuring and monitoring results and making recommendations to achieve growth targets
• Business planning and how to maximize revenue growth
• Influencing stakeholders and interacting effectively with others with the courage and resilience to hold an alternative point of view
• Analytical skills and business acumen

This role will be responsible for the following:

• Support the creation of medium-term category strategies identifying Category Value Drivers. Contribute to relevant consumer insights during brand planning processes and developing customer plans.
• Accountable for monitoring, analysis and reporting of category performance across channels and key customers through monthly and quarterly dashboards, combining both external and internal data points as well as ensuring both internal and external stakeholders are aligned to the category vision and initiatives.
• Manage and own the category review process including category story, market analysis and sell in for NPD and reason to believe.
• Undertake analysis to create compelling category focussed business reviews & recommendations that meet the need of brand, consumer, shopper & retailer.
• Create and deliver category selling stories to external customers that link internal initiatives to external category growth.
• Lead the NPD commercialization through the stage & gate process and input any risk and opportunity from a customer and channel point of view.
• Lead fortnightly cross-functional teams to discuss & align on priorities (Planogram implementation) across different market managers regions.
• General reporting and data management from Customer, Distributor and 3rd party sources.
• Generating ad-hoc analysis and reports in response to key topics that is required.
• Support the Annual Commercial planning processes for all of the respective categories to ensure a clearly aligned and commercially strong plan across Sales & Marketing whilst being accountable for crafting the Category channel plan to support the annual business objectives.
• The Category Development manager expert will be accountable for clearly defining the category shopper segmentation and driving category growth through tactics based on consumer, shopper and customer understanding as input to long term Business strategy. Through the support of the  global & local teams, be responsible for identifying priority channels for the Category and developing category strategy, definition and identification of category growth drivers.
• Using category & commercial expertise, be accountable for giving sales inputs into the early stages of the New product development process to ensure that the shopper opportunity is captured and commercialized across channels and key customers.
• Conduct comprehensive and insightful channel, category and market reviews as required using external and internal information sources to facilitate internal decision making as well as decision making with customers and distributors.
• Conduct research and gather information on shopper trends, consumer behavior and local and global mega trends to insure innovative category initiatives
• Manage the relationship with all relevant 3rd party and internal service providers to ensure mutually beneficial relationships. Compiling, analysing and distributing business intelligence for finance, marketing and sales departments. Define the category management strategy through in-depth knowledge and understanding of customer, shopper and consumer behaviour. Stimulate innovation and growth through detailed analysis and interpretation of global and local trends. Track and measure marketing plans, and implementation against ROI objectives. Presenting conclusions and insights to the relevant decision makers. ROI measurements on marketing, sales and trade marketing initiatives and promote a culture of best practice learnings through detailed analysis.
• Utilize internal and external information sources to develop regional and national customer reviews and insights to facilitate decision making and drive the commercial strategy. In-depth understanding of customer and shopper trends, define the instore execution strategy. Develop necessary competency within channel management function to manage the complexity of the channels effectively and provide sufficient analytical backup
• Accountable to ensure Shopper considerations across all relevant outputs, inc. applying shopper understanding in category, channel, brand and customer plans.
• Equip Customer Teams with actionable shopper insights which will inspire customers to implement aligned category strategy and initiatives
• Responsible for crafting the shopper communication brief, based on the outcomes from the Brand engagement process to ensure proper briefing to the Shopper Activation manager to develop timely and fit for purpose in-store communication
• Lead range reviews for the retailers across all categories that Mondelez International operates in. This encompasses the working with Distributors, Market Managers, Retailers and 3rd party planogram company.
• Build and create selling stories for Distributor and MM to deploy to Retailers across ROA markets.
• Ensure that key Consumer RSP’s are adhered to through price survey maintained by the distributor.
• Recommend Key price points so that we can deliver incremental margin for Mondelez and the Retailer without the risk of volume loss.
• Learn, Understand and share price volume interaction for key PPG and categories in ROA.
• Build Library of pricing promotions and uplift to ensure benchmarks can be used for future decision.
• Set the Brand Pack Price Strategy with the Revenue Growth Management Team.
• Responsible for optimizing planograms and assortment across the portfolios and within customers and categories for ROA so that MDLZ increases SOS in line or more than market share in country and customer.
• Share insights and opportunities from data bases to build generic and customer specific planograms.
• Ensure that MDLZ Categories has the fair share of shelf in the respective retailers.
• Implement Shopper flows that are aligned to MDLZ global standards and retailer environment.
• Support the team in ensuring POB and POS is procured at the most competitive rate in ROA.
• Ensure that Design of POB is fit for purpose in the ROA environment.
• Ensure a consolidation of the production, delivery and deployment of POB in ROA.
• Lead Best on Class instore deployment of POB within ROA through ensuring the 5P’s

What extra ingredients you will bring:

• Processed and analytical mindset
• Strong financial acumen and basic understanding of accounting
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Proven Commercial Acumen
• Strong Strategic ability
• Ability to work cross functionally and motivate support from within the organization
• Strong Negotiation Skills
• Strong analytical skills
• Above average leadership skills
• Self-motivated
• Strong communication skills
• Team player with strong leadership skills
• Logical, strategic, agile thinking
• Portfolio development
• Channel knowledge
• Cross functional engagement
• Relationship management
• Customer development
• Distributor development

Education / Certifications/Job Specific Requirements:

• 3 – 5 experience using data sources such as Price Probe, Nielsen, IRI, Dunhumby
• 5 years’ experience as an Insights / Category / Customer Manager
• 5 years’ experience gained within the FMCG environment within a commercial environment
• Proficient in MS Word, MS Excel, MS Outlook and MS PowerPoint
• FMCG Industry experience is advantageous
• Budget Management
• In-depth understanding of Consumer and Shopper Behavior
• Channel research systems and tools / Experience using data sources such as Price Probe, Nielsen, IRI, Dunhumby
• ROI analysis and communication of best practice