Associate Business Manager, World Travel Retail India

Position Title: Associate Business Manager, World Travel Retail India

Summary:

As the Associate Business Manager India the primary responsibility will be to build and execute strategies to maximize sales and increase market share across key airport and border store locations. You will be expected to build strong relationships with both your customers and internal stakeholders to ensure the delivery of sustainable and profitable growth plans. The role will require you to keep up to date with local market and industry trends and the successful candidate will need to demonstrate strategic thinking, strong commercial acumen and excellent interpersonal skills.

In addition to the Associate Business Manager responsibilities for India you will be required to support the Business Manger Europe/ME/India with regular reporting and analysis across the total cluster to help build key insights to drive incremental growth. There will also be a requirement to support/build inputs for the monthly internal Hershey business cycle.

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

Sales & Distribution:

Build and maintain strong, long-lasting customer relationships and partner with them to understand their business needs and objectives.

• Identify and build plans to expand distribution of our core range in key airport locations and border stores.
• Introduce Joint Business Plans (JBP) with strategic accounts to drive more for more growth.
• Use Retail audits to identify tier one airport locations to focus driving breath of assortment, share of shelf and secondary locations such as queue aisles
• In partnership with customer marketing, identify permanent branded space locations in top tier airports to support brand visibility and accelerate sales
• Work closely with brand marketing to build a core regional product portfolio that will be attractive to the traveller across both airports and border stores, delivering against internal gross margin targets.
• Plan and execute marketing campaigns, promotions and product launches to drive awareness, trial and incremental sales across India.

Market Expansion and P&L Leadership

Build and implement strateiges to delvier a sustainable and profitable market expansion plan for India, focusing on key airport locations that delvier against the financial targets for the India region.

• Identify, evaluate and deliver growth opportunities in both existing and new distribution channels.
• Be the local market expert and identify emerging trends, competitor activity and consuer preferences to ensure the delivery of the business unit strategy.
• Deliver net sales, gross margin and OI expansion in line with the annual plan.
• Manage trade funding and DME regional budgets in line with plan, working in close partnership with customer marketing.
• Effective communication and collaboration with cross functional teams to ensure alignment to the strategy.

Analytics

• Post evaluation for promotions/campaigns to understand the success of the activity to help inform future opportunities. Allowing Hershey’s to continually improve performance within the region. You will be supported by customer marketing.  
• Reporting on any in month, quarterly and full year changes that make a material change to the sales outlook and/or strategy.

• Support the Europe, ME & India Business Manger with monthly business updates including:

• Collaborate and support the review of monthly forecast changes proposed by supply chain across all regions in EU/ME and India
• Support the preparation of monthly internal meeting content
• Build and manage a reporting suite to help with business analysis and track KPIs in a clear manner by region.

• Training and Personal Development

Minimum knowledge, skills and abilities required to successfully perform major duties/responsibilities: 

• Languages: Excellent oral and written English communication skills.
• IT Skills: Excellent PC skills in Excel, Word, Power Point and Outlook
• Proven account management and negotiating skills, strong finance understanding
• Strong communication and presentational skills
• Proven ability to drive the sales process from planning to close
• Confident, personable and proactive
• Have a can-do attitude and be willing to go the extra mile

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements: 

Education:

College graduate preferably in Marketing/ Business Management courses, MBA preferred

Experience:

Local Indian market experience required which can be from either World Travel Retail or the domestic market

Eligibility for IJP:

• All Execs & Above (1A) can apply for the role.
• Should have served minimum 18 months at Hershey’s.
• Be open to relocate to any of the metro city where this role shall be based (Location isn’t finalized yet).
• Alignment with Manager and HRBP before applying for the role.

Kindly note:

• Selection process will be as per WTR Selection Guidelines
• Those interested can share their profiles to their respective HRBPs as below:
  • Marketing (Ereka)
  • Sales (Richa)