Category Strategist, Walmart Capabilities

Job Location: Bentonville, AR

Why Hershey?

Over more than a century, our iconic brands have been built on a foundation of community investment and connections between people around the world. Equally competitive and compassionate, we continue to build a legacy as we invest in the people and snacks of the future.

From the beginning, Milton Hershey believed that if you do good, you’ll do well. By doing what we do best—from our delicious snacks to spreading goodness in our communities—we bring people together.

The spirit of creating human connections that motivated our founder 125 years ago remains the driving force that inspires our 18,000 employees today.

And while much has changed in America since the days of Milton Hershey, the power of building connections with those around us—from consumers and shareholders, to our partners and employees—remains vital to the future of our children, our communities, and our business.

Why the Hershey Category Management Team?

On the Hershey Category Management Team, we strive every day to be an indispensable partner to our retail partners by providing strategic guidance and leadership to fuel category growth. Shopper insights, data, and research are the foundation for everything we do. Our team is recognized as best in class and has a proven track record of success, but we are not afraid to think differently and embrace new ideas.

We know our people are our competitive advantage and we empower them to be the unbiased category experts. We are a high-performing team that loves winning in a fast-paced environment, but never doing it alone. We thrive on a collaborative spirit; we are fiercely competitive in business and highly supportive of each other.

If you are fueled by results, intellectually curious, and want to get in on the ground floor of building the future of snacking – this is the team for you!

Summary

The Strategist of Category Solutions will build on and deliver against the Category Management vision of being the trusted indispensable consultative partner for both our customers and Hershey. They will work cross functionally, to be a leader in Hershey’s long-term data and planogram solution strategy, by driving enterprise-wide value, improving decision making and accelerating top-line growth, through innovative solutions, reporting capabilities, and product ownership.

Responsibilities

Develop comprehensive category solution strategies, roadmaps, and action plans aligned with goals and objectives

Develop and maintain planogram data governance, best practices and onboarding of capabilities

Identify gaps with the sales and category teams and proactively create solutions that drive sales

Leverage internal (HBP, IS) and external (3rd party vendors) partnerships

Develop strategic partnerships with internal partners, as a subject matter expert and thought leader (Hershey Insight Networks, Customer Meetings, etc…)

Stay updated on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices related to category management

Enhance data sophistication by leveraging enterprise use of CDS (Commercial Data Store), as a single source of truth, for improved decision making and stronger data integration across each internal domain

As the Product Owner, work with IS delivery channels to plan and prioritize the functional requirements and the Product Backlog that represent the Category and Sales business needs.

Lead the prioritization of business requests through impact analysis and business case development.

Guide and facilitate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of IS feature releases by connecting acceptance criteria with business test scenarios and using enterprise quality control applications

Monitor and evaluate the performance of implemented solutions and make adjustments as necessary

Leverage analytical tools such as Alteryx, Tableau/Power BI, SQL, Databricks, and more.

Comfort with large data sets and the layering of data to triangulate the actionable insights to drive an impact

Proactively identify marketplace opportunities which lead to category growth.

Synthesize actionable insights using retailer data, internal/syndicated data sources, and shopper insights.

Enhance cross-functional capabilities by working alongside counterparts in other areas of the Advisor team and cross-functionally partners.

Question the status-quo and continually challenge yourself and the team with what is possible.

Coordinate the timetables to ensure cohesive experiences and aligned merchandising strategies; ensure timely and accurate execution of physical & digital shelves.

Establish yourself as the leading provider of category solution strategies and expertise, with your retailer and within your team.

Ability to thrive, & operate in Ambiguous situations

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Intellectual Curiosity

• Customer-First mindset

• Impactful data-driven story telling experience

• Strong problem-solving capabilities

• Advanced Analytic Skills

• Project Management, organizational and time management skills

• Technical skills to include space management software, syndicated and panel data sources, data analysis and visualization tools, Microsoft Office

• Advanced understanding of Consumer/Shopper Behavior and Market Research Strategies

• Knowledge of Category Management processes and CPG Industry trends

• CPG and/or Product Owner experience (5-7 years)

• Bachelor’s Degree required

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