Senior Category Manager

About Kerry

About the role

To support our growth ambitions a new Senior Category Manager role has been created within the Category Team in IOI.

The purpose of this role is to drive thought leadership and unlock opportunities for growth within the Categories we operate in, both externally in the Irish Grocery Retail trade, internally in cross functional teams and with key stakeholders in the business.

 The role will involve day-to-day management of our Key Strategic Customers , You will build, grow and maintain profitable and long-lasting relationships from a Category perspective for Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Championing the Consumer and Shopper, leveraging strategic thinking and demonstrating actionable insights are at the heart of the role this will include development & execution of leading Category Visions & Strategy with a disproportionate winning share for Kerry.

Key responsibilities

• Manage relationships with priority & strategic Customers
• Review and validate key customer commercial activities for the customers category and deliver category recommendations for optimal distribution, range, space & merch layouts by channel aligned with customer strategies
• Development & execution of leading Category Visions & Strategy
• Identifying actionable insights to fuel our annual brand planning process across a portfolio of brands in Ireland.
• Proactively bringing the ‘outside in’, harnessing insights and disseminating them for action and business impact.
• Support the development of our Category Capability Framework

Qualifications and skills

• Our ideal candidate will also be a dynamic team player that can build relationships and positively challenge to unearth and identify actionable insights that will drive value into our Business and our Customers Categories.
• Being able to flex and navigate a large network within Kerry, alongside the ability to work autonomously.
• Solid experience of working in Category Management and managing Strategic Customers across the Grocery Retail Trade.
• Previous experience in Category Management
• Highly analytical, comfortable quickly surfacing insights and sharing them in engaging ways with various audiences
• Brilliant communication skills and able to build relationships internally and externally with the trade.
• Skilled at working collaboratively and managing data agencies
• Expert working with Category software and portals e.g. Kantar, Dunnhumby, EYC, Talysis, Iri and Shopper Intelligence (all or most preferable)
• Proficient in excel and comfortable working with large amounts of data