Director - Category Management - Leeds

Are you a passionate and strategic category leader with a keen eye for developing excellence in retail category execution plans?

Do you want to lead a growing team that will be steering the direction around how to unlock category and commercial growth?

What will the role look like?

• Create and execute the 3 - 5-year strategic vision for the function, building functional and team capabilities for the long term.


• Lead, coach, motivate and develop a team of senior managers and managers across multiple disciplines (NRM, Data, Strategy, Category Management) to create and execute customer category plans that delivers category growth for Arla and our customers.


• Lead the team and drive the performance of the function ensuring resources are prioritised to deliver against the agreed commercial


• Lead the integration of the NRM function in the full UK organisation ensuring the function is established and anchored as a key part of the UK Commercial Leadership Team and the full commercial organisation


• Develop an ongoing Net Revenue Management (NRM) pipeline of EBIT fuelling initiatives that are continually developed and implemented


• Lead the Digitalisation of the sales organisation ensuring new capabilities are developed and incremental value creation is unlocked


• Ensure Arla is the strategic partner of choice for key customers in all category development activities through ongoing category growth with 3 year strategic plans in place in all customers


• Create the vision and strategic direction for where and how to unlock category growth for Arla and customers at the point of purchase through excellent execution


• Create the Vision and direction for specific channels developing clear growth levers for Arla that the business can mobilise behind and execute


• Ensure a consistent and robust approach to 4P's execution for Arla Brands and the total Categories we operate in


• Ensure the right external KPI's are embedded in performance management conversations; be the champion for data driven decisions using external data, anticipating what Arla needs and when to gain the best possible outcomes


• Be the expert in forward shopper behaviour, taking a 3-5 year horizon, identifying incremental growth territories for Arla and teams are mobilised behind unlocking these growth areas


• Work closely with the European matrix teams, balancing multiple stakeholders ensuring the UK continues to be a pace setter in this area.


• Build and maintain agency/external relationships and ensure the data strategy is enabled by our vendor strategy through the pitch processes


• Anticipate and invest in capability building of the function influencing Europe to scale our capability building


• As part of the Sales Leadership Team be responsible for driving change and raising the skills and competency of the entire sales community to ensure we are futureproofing the organisation


• Lead internal cross functional work teams and influence across the business ensuring the needs of customers, sales and marketing are balanced and met


• Build a strong external network and more widely in the industry to ensure excellence and Arla's reputation as a key voice in this discipline


Personal Competencies

• Creator of change. Capable of creating the functions future direction based on organisational needs balanced with external pending disruption and challenges


• A Strategist - Able to see across the organisation and identify through data where the new growth potential is


• A category and shopper obsessive - Strong industry connections with a hunger and curiosity to build expertise around evolving shopper behaviour.


• High Performance & Growth Mindset - Open to continuous improvement as a leader and as part of a team and willing to grow and learn and enable the functions delivery


• A coach - Proven ability to lead and inspire a team to raise the performance bar and passionate about creating an industry leading team


• Relationship Builder - Can build rapport quickly at all levels and a strong influencer to drive performance and change


• Lazer Focussed on commercial execution -Understands retailers needs and will act with pace and agility to maximise growth for customers and Arla
  
  At Arla, we strive to unlock the highest potential in each other while working together to create a sustainable future of dairy. We call it Stronger People Stronger Planet and it is deeply anchored in our organisation and founded on our commitment to respecting human rights, increasing access to healthy dairy nutrition, inspiring good food habits, and improving the environment for future generations. In order to succeed we need to hire people with a sustainable mindset. Could this be you?
  
  Competitive salary


• 26 days holiday and 8 bank holidays


• Annual Pay review


• Employer pension (up to 25% total contributions)


• X4 annual salary life assurance cover


• Annual bonus


• Family Bupa Healthcare cover


• Flexible Benefits- buy up to 5 days annual leave, reward gateway scheme- discounts with various retailers via my benefit platform.


• Subsidized staff canteen


• Access to discounted Arla products