OVERVIEW

The Category Operations Lead for Walmart is responsible for leading a team of category experts and analysts to develop and execute category and occasion strategies in alignment with General Mills' (GMI) and customer priorities across Walmart and Sam's. As an integral part of the Omnichannel Category Management team, your team is responsible for managing omni shelf and distribution to grow overall Category and GMI sales, inclusive of digital availability and navigation.

In this role you will work directly with the Walmart buyers, department VP's, and Grocery SVP's to partner on the overall strategy and execution for the categories General Mills' advises. You will be responsible for ensuring that your teams have the necessary data and tools to create processes and strategies to accomplish this goal.

This role demands a high level of internal cross-functional collaboration and organizational agility. In addition, you will work closely with the sales team as the primary owner of all data and capabilities within the Walmart business. You will be in charge of access, management and leverage of data and capabilities to make sure that both sales and category management have the tools they need to drive business results with Walmart and Sam's.

Strong candidates will demonstrate strong technical skills, story-telling abilities, an openness to embracing technology, experience working cross functionally (both internally and externally) and experience influencing high levels of external customer leadership.

The candidate selected for this role will have the opportunity to partner and work closely with the World's Largest Retailer (in a customer facing capacity) and will operate behind Walmart's Firewall offering the unique opportunity to collaborate with Walmart.

Given the complexities of establishing the relationship and trust Walmart expects from this role, this role needs to be located in Bentonville, AR.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

PROBLEM SOLVING & ANALYTICS

• Develop holistic category strategies by leveraging the tools, insights, and analytics from internal, industry, and retailer-specific sources


• Lead team to build an influential selling story by gathering and analyzing category, consumer, shopper, market and customer information from multiple internal and external data sources (e.g., Luminate Nielsen, IRI, CPM, sales data)


• Cultivate actionable insights and strategic category initiative recommendations to drive category growth.

EXECUTIONAL EXCELLENCE

• Through advanced/predictive analytics and research, generate actionable insights and develop strategic initiatives applicable at the national level


• Educate marketing and account teams on consumer insights in order to drive distribution and share growth and meet volume targets


• Influence the marketing and customer and teams to leverage category and consumer insights to close the sale and increase top line growth

INFLUENTIAL LEADERSHIP

• Develop compelling and profitable business building recommendations


• Lead category initiatives and support customer specific opportunities designed to deliver category growth.


• Participate in or lead special projects intended to evolve or advance General Mills category management influence

ENGAGING LEADER

• Model Engaging Leader behaviors to foster an inclusive environment, build a culture of accountability, and develop and/or mentor employees to meet their full potential.


• Inspire, coach and lead a team of 25+ Omni Category Management team members

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree


• Minimum of seven (7) years of experience with sales, marketing, category management, shopper/consumer insights, customer-facing account management, analytics, and/or trade funding.


• Strong analytical skills and experience aggregating internal and external data sources (e.g., Nielsen, IRI, CPM, sales data) of information to build an influential selling story


• Leadership capabilities to recruit, train, develop and motivate employees


• Advanced strategic thinking, planning, financial management, decision-making, and influence skills


• Self-motivated and detail oriented with the ability to perform well in a fast-paced and changing environment


• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft applications (Excel & PowerPoint)

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in omni and/or digital


• Category Management experience in the Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) industry