Top Category Management Executive jobs in Illinois

For All, For Good, our company signature, reflects Bel’s commitment to a healthier and responsible food for all. This mission mobilizes our nearly 13,000 employees every day in over 30 countries to build a profitable and sustainable business model. Universal and positive, our brands - The Laughing Cow®, Kiri®, Mini Babybel®, Boursin®, GoGo SqueeZ® - are constantly reinventing themselves to offer healthier and responsible fruit and dairy snacks to all consumers.

Do you want to join a company with strong brands that puts consumers and responsibility at the heart of the decision-making process? Then Bel is made for you!

Are you bold, pragmatic, and determined? Do you want to contribute to the transformation of a global agri-food company? Then come join us and measure the impact of your talent and energy in realizing an ambitious and sustainable company project!

#IWorkForAllForGood

OVERALL MISSION

In line with our Growth Team mission to pioneer, nurture and drive Bel growth for all, and with our ambition to build an edge in the healthy snacking category, the Global Category Management Director will play a strategic role in helping Bel design, drive and enable the execution of a compelling and daring category vision.

As the U.S is identified as a strategic market for Bel and plays a key role in Bel’s business plan and future growth strategy, the Global Category Management Director will ideally be based in the U.S. in our downtown Chicago office, and will contribute to accelerating our growth plans in the market. This is a hybrid role.

The Global Category Management Director reports to the Chief Growth Capability Officer, and will lead a team to help them bring to life their vision and accelerate execution. They will prioritize Bel’s strategic markets as defined in the business plan with a major focus given to the top 5 markets and to Bel’s must win channels and customers.

POSITION OVERVIEW / JOB SCOPE & CORE DELIVERABLES

The Global Category Management Director designs and implements Bel's categories visions, strategies and trade roadmaps. They define the objectives for each category and is responsible for the development of performant commercial drivers, taking into account customers and channels’ specificities. They act as a transversal bridge between marketing and sales to contribute in building a customer centric organization.

The Global Category Management Director ensure the proper activation of Growth Drivers and their integration in business planning and process (Business Plan, Yearly Activation Plan, Innovation Process).

In line with the Growth Team Vision and Mission (in appendix), the Global Category Management Director will be in charge of helping markets to foster a growth mindset, by initiating growth hackathons to identify incremental growth opportunities in line with the identified growth drivers. Also, by leading with their team the engagement and the upskilling of the CATMAN Community.

The Global Category Management Director will also ensure that Bel builds an edge externally thru thought leadership and perfect in-store execution.

The Global Category Management Director and her/his team overlook category KPIs (value / volume) while ensuring the relevance, performance of commercial drivers (assortment / pricing promo strategies / merchandising, perfect store and in-store activities), compliance of brands Innovation plans with the identified growth drivers and the Category management competence in advantage survey.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE FOR THE GLOBAL CATMAN TEAM

LEAD THE SHIFT FROM BRAND TO CATEGORY APPROACH

• Deep understanding of market, customer and channel trends, issues / opportunities, and competitor activity with on-going communication to the marketing & business unit stakeholders & partners to enable them to make the right strategical decisions and develop the right plans.
• Based on the understanding of the market, localizes the Global category vision to make it relevant in the local context; shares this local category vision, and the local category growth engines, with sales and marketing teams prior to the yearly strategic plans, so as to make sure that marketing strategy and action plans, as well as customers joint business plans are fueling those growth engines.
• Build clear category growth stories to become a thought leader and engage customers, with the objective to reinforce our partnership with them.

DEFINE COMMERCIAL DRIVERS BY CHANNEL & PERFECT STORE MODEL TO DELIVER

• Define clear guidelines for commercial drivers, for each category and brand:
  • Assortment: identify the best performing portfolio, ideal assortment by channel & define the distribution target
  • Shelving: define a shopper based shelving strategy, including a planogram for each Bel category

• • Define the primary and secondary (permanent and temporary) placements guidelines & objectives by channel, with the objective to maximize Bel’s visibility in store.
  • In close collaboration with the RGM manager, translate the pricing strategy (defined at portfolio, brand and SKU level) into a Price Pack Architecture for base SKU’s and into a promo strategy (promotion role & objectives, volume in deal, depth of discount, promo frequency, … at brand and SKU level)
• Those guidelines should fit with the commercial strategy of the BU (including the category vision) & be translated into KPIs.
• Those guidelines will be defined at least at national level and by channel, potentially at customer level, and monitored regularly by the head of category & trade marketing, with the right KPI’s which will be tracked & monitored. The guidelines will be defined in close collaboration with brand teams and KAM.

BE THE SALES LEADER FOR INNOVATION & RENOVATION

• Proposes the relevant innovations and renovations plan to win with customers & shoppers.
• Design & develops with marketing Teams the right category activations to win in stores. (POS material, trade mechanism…)
• Key Sales leader on innovations & renovations, to:
  • Define the must win criteria for a successful launch in stores in all targeted channels.
  • Define distribution target & build up & related volume assumptions.
  • Define recommended assortment & price pack architecture by channel / customer.
  • Define shelving & multi location strategy.
  • Define promo strategy for the launch.
  • Is the owner of the Win in Store Assessment tool (WISA) & the output results.
  • Set up the best performing launch plan by channel.
  • Build the most engaging selling story for the retailers.

TRADE FUND MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS SUFFICIENCY

• Recommends and is accountable for the trade funds spending strategy & guidelines.
• Co-own with brand team strategy & plans for best investment of in store A&P (brick & mortar & e retail)
• Key player of the demand review while proactively providing detailed understanding of Vol / Net Sales/ Spending by sales team and anticipation of risks & opportunities.
• Identify best practices and share with teams’ ways to amplify them.

ORGANIZATION & STAKEHOLDERS (IN / OUT)

• Internally: Direct reports, Partners with Marketing, Sales teams and CATMAN teams.
• Externally: Strategic Customers, Agencies, fairs

SALES & LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

• A capacity to strengthen the Sales Transformation by working transversally both with different departments (category, marketing, sales) and the customers to propose daring and out-of-the box strategic plans.
• A deep understanding of the environment through Market Dynamics Proficiency in order to analyze categories and trade’s trends on a long-term perspective: changes in customers’ behaviors and needs, trends in merchandising habits, shoppers’ insights, new channels emergence.
• An Execution Mastery to perfectly implement categories’ strategies in-store through relevant trade and merchandising actions and to develop impactful categories’ stories.
• A Category Excellence to prove a deep knowledge and a long-term vision of each category, in order to develop cross-category strategies and relevant initiative planning.
• An ability to master data through Smart Revenue Growth Management in order to evaluate category and trade strategies’ performance, through the implementation of relevant KPIs, and to propose key incentives to boost categories’ growth and commercial drivers’ efficiency.
• Embody the Bel Leadership competencies: drive and accelerate transformation, demonstrate agility, dare to innovate, unconditional collaboration, unleash & develop talents.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Bel Brands is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, disability status or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. Bel Brands also prohibits harassment of applicants or employees based on any of these protected categories. It is also Bel Brand’s policy to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws respecting consideration of unemployment status in making hiring decisions.

Bel Brands is committed to recruiting, hiring and promoting people with disabilities and veterans. If you need an accommodation or assistance in using the website, please call 312-462-1500.

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