Overview
The Head of Category Management Germany drives our ambition to continue to be the best category management FMCG player in Germany supported with strong wiring & strategic cooperation with our customers across all channels.
The Head of Category Management acts as an internal advisor and decision driver by turning category expertise into recommendations for the development of our channel strategies, including leading category vision projects together with the Marketing Director Beverages as well as the Marketing Director Snacks. Lastly, category management translates Brand Strategies and NRM Pricing and Promo strategies into customer growth and value creation stories that enable the sell-in by our Sales organization.
Category Management in Germany also includes Trade Marketing which includes developing all sell-in materials, trade stories and customer presentations for all our customers across all channels. This includes all customer hierarchies: from top management (via Head of Category Management) through Buyers (via our Category Managers) down to the store level (via RSF). In this context the Head of Category Management is responsible for our strategic customer Top 2 Top meetings and presents our category visions to senior top management of our trade partners (such as Rewe Group and EDEKA Group).
The job holder is charged with translating the short term / long term category vision and strategy of the categories into Customer’s Category development projects. The Category Manager is the Category expert towards his/her set of customers and acts as voice of the customer within the new Dx community to drive channel focused strategies. He/she is responsible to define customers category growth opportunities and to develop objective action plans based on Category, Customer and Shopping Behavior knowledge, thorough understanding of channel structures and category dynamics. He/she plays a business critical role with customers in securing flawless execution of the category projects and action plans. The category management team is responsible to lead strategic category projects with our customers, commercially supported by the account management team.
Responsibilities
Team Management
* Leads the DE catman + trade marketing + space management agenda & community (4 FTEs), secures their continuous development and leadership in category management.
* Leads the DE catman team into strong customer wiring & cooperation on strategic projects; 75% of time spent by the team is focused around the customer/channel.
Progresses PepsiCo’s catman leadership in the German customer landscape, including new channels.
Category expert (internal 25%) Category/customer Insights:
* Lead on category planning processes, range reviews and embedding Perfect Store principles with all our customers and channels.
* Leads development & delivery of category visions for relevant categories.
* Leads and develops customer sell-in stories for our Key Accounts across all customers and channels across all customer hierarchies (from Top Management to Store Level Management).
* Translates Brand Strategies for BEV and Snacks as well as NRM pricing and promo strategies into customer value creation stories that enable our Sales Teams to sell those strategies.
* Advises and makes objective recommendations based on category insights derived from analysis of different sources (e.g., retailer trends, shopper and consumer trends, Nielsen, GFK).
* Determines the relevant research question based on the connection of category/consumer-shopper insights, initiates further research in collaboration with Shopper Insights.
* The Category Manager supports the development of NPDs with thorough and ambitious game planning based on objective category insights.
* Together with the perfect store team develops the Assortment & Shelving strategy which gives clear proposals for SKU rationalization, #facings vs variety, OOS analysis, planograms, game planning, SRP, etc.
* Supports Retailer and Customer Teams by utilizing PepsiCo capabilities to deliver promotion, pricing, and basket building opportunities.
* Works closely together with Account Management to translate Category Plans towards strong Account Plans (AOP).
* Acts as voice of the customer within the Dx team, securing strong connection between in-market realities & perfect store channel strategies.
Expert Advisor role to Customers (external 75%):
* Builds strategic alliances with our customer through best-in-class category management cooperation, across channels.
* Develops and presents strong Selling Stories highlighting customer and market data as well as recent shopper or consumer insights to drive business results with retailers.
* Owns Customer Category Management engagement and/or Category Advisorship for specific PepsiCo categories developing mutually agreed upon goals and executing against goals utilizing PepsiCo Category & perfect store fundamentals.
* Utilizes insights and analysis (in collaboration with advanced analytics team) in Customer meetings to review fundamentals that identify opportunities to maximize sales and profits for Category and PepsiCo brands.
* Collaborates with Space Management Teams to develop customer specific planograms (POGs).
* Starts and leads Category management projects with the customer to realize growth possibilities and achieve concrete results, by improving assortment, shelf presentation and promotional effectiveness and by delivering actionable insights for Shopper Marketing.
* Provides, proactively and reactively, retail marketing mix solutions to the customer.
* Works directly with customer or indirectly with sales partners to present category plans, reviews, and opportunities.
Qualifications
* Languages: German and English.
* Capability to analyze categories through all available sources of information to identify category strategic drivers for growth.
* Team leadership skills.
* FMCG knowledge: in-depth shopper insights and customer knowledge (retail).
* At least 10 years experience in FMCG, ideally in sales, category management, insights and/or shopper.
* Leadership to set the agenda, make projects and visions happen, be able to run multifunctional projects, and demonstrate influential impact at various levels and functions in the organization and with customers.
* Being well organized is a must.
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