Manager, Category Analytics & Strategy

Job Location: Hershey, PA
Hershey, PA preferred. Open to remote.
 

Summary:  

The Manager, Category Analytics & Strategy will support growth for the category and Hershey’s sales for the U.S. candy, mint, gum, and grocery businesses. This work will require working closely with Hershey’s home office category management teams in addition to Hershey’s customer teams to gather, analyze, and synthesize information of relevance to the category management organization, specifically focused on distribution changes, trends, and future projections. Examples of data that this role will interact with include human insights, loyalty card insights, planogram insights, syndicated data sources, and internal gross sales projections. This role will be the point of contact for several internal Hershey teams to streamline integration of information from the field to internal departments. This will require strong collaboration with other functions including Commercial Planning, Marketing, Supply Chain, Sales, SRGM, Finance, and U.S. Strategy.

As the point of contact internally for distribution questions, this role will be required to work cross-functionally and explain the key insights from the data and relevance in a manner tailored to the audience. Additionally, this role will be required to understand the unique nuances of our retailers’ different go-to-market strategies to provide an accurate picture of dynamics in the field to internal audiences. This position requires personal leadership and initiative, critical and strategic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, ability to work under pressure to meet deadlines, and understanding of core category management principles. 

Major Duties/Responsibilities:  

Proactively extract and distribute category management insights across the organization; identify opportunities to utilize existing data and tools more efficiently or design solutions and methodologies that enable insights to be delivered faster / with less manual intervention
Internal meeting representative for Category Management’s POV via contributions to pre-read materials, vocal participation during meetings, and accountability to complete required follow-ups in a timely fashion
Collaborate with internal stakeholders to reconcile methodologies and insights to provide a cohesive perspective on historical trends along with future projections; become the subject matter expert to explain gaps between internal sales performance and retail sales performance
Prepare content and create/maintain analytics to enable leadership within Sales (up to the CSO level) to gain deeper and faster visibility to a consolidated view of key KPIs
Monitor trends outside of traditional avenues, such as via social media, to provide greater insights on what is driving certain trends, and leverage analytics to make projections about duration of these trends

Minimum knowledge, skills and abilities required to successfully perform major duties/responsibilities:  
• Strong ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects and initiatives simultaneously
• Strong collaboration and communication skills and the ability work cross-functionally 
• Strong knowledge of category management principles
• Strong knowledge of syndicated data (e.g. IRI, Nielsen) and its nuances
• Proven ability to build a compelling story and explain insights to individuals with different levels of knowledge on the subject
• Analytical skills and the ability to extract insights from complex datasets
• Problem-solving mentality, intellectually curious, and strong critical thinking skills
• Entrepreneurial skills and style

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements:  

Education:    
• BA/BS in Business Administration, Marketing, Management, Finance or Equivalent
Experience:    
• 5-7 years of business experience
• Prior experience in category management or other similar analytical function
• Prior experience working with syndicated data, customer data, or shopper data
• Prior experience working with retailers (i.e., Walmart, Target, Kroger, etc.)

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