Category Manager: Convenience Food & Soft Drink Retail: World Energy Co in Slough

Exciting opportunity for a Category Manager - Convenience Food & Soft Drink Retail to join this global energy company for a 6 month initial contract.

As a Non-Fuel Retail business, the Convenience Retail Team sources goods and services across a broad spectrum of own-label and consumer packaged goods across 13 product categories. The team has a core offer of products and services complemented with a food-for-now proposition, enhanced with a food-for-later and top-up convenience offer developed in close collaboration with major UK Retailer Alliance partners. To drive long term sustainable growth, the business is focused on developing an ever-evolving offer that satisfies the needs of a diverse customer base. Each service station must provide customers with the best mobility offer and must cater to customers with different retail shopping missions.

The purpose of this role will be to manage assigned Categories and/or Alliance Partners for the UK business, ensuring the key KPI metrics are met. This will require best-in-class category management skills and the successful candidate will be required to build extensive knowledge of their categories and the wider dynamics of the retail environment. Pivotal to the role will be interaction with suppliers and partners, negotiating then managing the execution of annual Joint Business Plans.

• Manage the Category performance and P&L against key KPI deliverables.
• Thorough analysis and understanding of the category and market dynamics - measuring the category performance and maintaining an optimal balance between the long-term view and business demands of the annual targets.
• Developing profitable category business plans and ensuring all performance levers are optimized e.g. range, merchandising, price, promotions, operational excellence etc.
• Owning the relationships and negotiation of trading terms with suppliers or alliance partners and identifying opportunities to drive efficiencies. Building appropriate JBPs with the supply base.
• As part of a global business, work collaboratively with the global category management team to unlock broader opportunities.
• Develop and implement appropriate seasonal or event driven activities to maximise incremental sales and revenue.
• Effectively manage relationships with broader stakeholders and other teams within the business to deliver against our objectives.
• Provide an agile response when required to respond to changing market and business dynamics.

The Candidate:

• Experience as a Category Manager / Buyer in a FMCG Convenience Food / Soft Drink Retail environment is essential.
• Result driven mindset; able to deliver against or support delivery of stretching business targets.
• Strong commercial acumen, strong understanding of sales, margin and profitability metrics, supported with understanding of all factors that can influence performance.
• Analytical skills, robust analytical skills demonstrable across different tools with high attention to detail.
• A willingness to take ownership to deliver against the targets set.
• Excellent relationship management skills; able to adapt approach to different audiences or circumstances.
• Strong interpersonal skills, able to communicate, engage, influence or challenge different stakeholders where required.

This needs combining with a positive attitude and an ability to work within a large, globally dispersed project team in a multi-cultural environment. You also need to be a self-starter, a logical thinker and a quick learner, with strong initiative and excellent communication, interpersonal and presentation skills, able to write clearly and concisely.

We believe in equality of opportunity for all job applicants regardless of gender, marital status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, creed or religion, disability, sexual orientation or age.