Category Development Manager, San Juan, Puerto Rico

This role is responsible for delivering best in class category leadership customer collaboration for customers and distributors.

The role influences and engages multiple internal teams to drive appropriate cross-functional collaboration to meet customer, shoppers and company needs to ensure we are well placed to drive customer engagement through development of customer growth plans grounded into localized category vision.

Category management is therefore responsible for the product line development, the definition of positioning guidelines and the development and implementation under Category Management projects with trading partners. The permanent review and adjustment of product groups, taking account of the shopper behaviour is also one of the main tasks, such as controlling the CATMAN projects and actions.

This role is responsible for monitoring category, markets and channel trends and performance within the PR Market, identify future growth opportunities and formulate appropriate recommendations and deliver best in class category leadership collaboration with Internal One Demand Teams, Supported by Nielsen Consulting Meetings.

Responsibilities

·        Lead the development and execution of short- and long-term (5-year) category strategies to drive profitable growth across customers and portfolio.

·        Develop and implement customer-specific category plans, providing strategic insights and ensuring strong internal and external alignment around growth opportunities.

·        Drive the category growth agenda, positioning the company as a trusted category expert through shopper-, channel- and category-centric solutions.

·        Leverage market, shopper and customer insights, supported by strong data analysis, to identify growth opportunities and activate high-impact Category Leadership initiatives.

·        Design and deliver insight-led category solutions that influence shopper behavior and increase conversion at the point of sale.

·        Apply category management processes and analytics to optimize assortment, planograms, distribution, pricing and promotional mix, with a strong ROI mindset.

Education & Professional Qualification

Graduate calibre with experience in a blue chip FMCG/consumer products with demand background and successful experience of customer development.

Knowledge/Experience

·        Category leadership and customer development experience, with proven ability to build customer category partnerships.

·        Category and customer experience with ability to engage, influence and impact customers by providing guidance on strategic direction of the category.

·        Category Leadership expertise in Category Management practices (e.g. 8-step process, category opportunity assessment, strategies and tactics).

·        Ability to build effective working relationships and motivate stakeholders internally and externally.

·        Understanding of FMCG context and retail/online landscape.

·        High analytical acumen with ability to drive and translate insights into relevant strategies and tactics (actions / initiatives) internally and for execution with our customers.

·        Excellent understanding of annual planning process internally (Demand) and externally (customer business cycle).

·        Self-reliant, decisive and resilient and able to respond and adapt to a fast moving, swiftly changing environment.

Critical Leadership Competences required for the role

·        Analytical skills

·        Leveraging insights into actions

·        Decision Quality

·        Action Oriented

·        Integrity and Trust

Drive for results

Critical Functional Competences required for the role

·        Category & Shopper Acumen – Basic

·        Leveraging Insights into Action – Advanced

·        Category Leadership Expertise - Basic

·        Building Winning Relationships - Advanced

·        Customer Execution & Management - Basic

·        Selling – Basic

Financial and Analytical Management –Advanced