Job Summary:

The role of Assistant Manager, Customer Planning (Customer Champion) is to drive market share growth and profit growth through the successful implementation of brand initiatives within channel/customer. Role collaborates with sales and internal partners to improve sales forecasting, secure greater share of retailer assets (distribution, shelving, merchandising), improve customer price realization profitability and support key customer engagements.

Responsibilities:

Annual Plan Development & Delivery

• Supports the team with the deployment of budget targets across customers and channels to ensure Brand targets are met or exceeded. Includes assisting with bottoms up sales forecasting, identifying building blocks, key plan drivers and risks/opportunities.
• Supports roll-up of annual plans to help inform budgeting process and determine where gaps exist.
• Aids the creative brainstorming process for sales on alternatives to achieve sales/profit objectives.
• Works to develop in-period contingencies when annual plan is at risk or opportunities to overdrive are present,
• Provides Brand \ Category Planning Call support by providing insights for the customer \ channel input into S&OP cycle (DRM). Focuses on driving continuous improvements to forecast accuracy and attainment with Field Sales.
• Supports Product supply prioritization, allocation recommendations, and sales communication when prolonged supply \ demand in-balance issues exist.
• Monitors Innovation Sell-In and Reporting at customer \ channel level.

Liaison Between Sales & Marketing

• Represent the voices of the customer internally and the voice of the customer externally
• Continuously seeks to drive objective alignment between both internal & external customers
• Develop skillset to serve as a "Brand Champion" by supporting sales commercialization efforts on new products/ initiative launches

Customer P&L Management

• Continuously identifies opportunities to optimize customer and channel P&Ls.
• Aids in sales review of optimization opportunities (Exit or Fix) on negative margin SKUs/ Customers at customer \ channel level
• Helps to develop pro forma P&Ls for assortment swaps, line review recommendations, seasonal programs, merchandising displays.
• Provide financial analysis on price exceptions and ITN investments outside of existing guardrails

Customer Price Strategy Execution

• Monitors and highlights when competitive pricing strategy needs to be reviewed, challenged or adjusted
• Assists with management of invoice-to-net channel/ customer pricing to minimize channel conflict and unlock growth
• Partners with team to help Sales to identify negative ROI promotions and areas for trade promotion optimization at the customer \ channel level
• Aids with providing pricing challenge to sales operations on E&O selling opportunities

Supports Customer Engagements

• Line Review (LR)- supports team for LR preparations on strategic customers.
• Joint Business Planning (JBP)- supports sales in JBP gap closure efforts with opportunity assessment/valuation
• Trade Shows- able to represent the business at trade shows by demonstrating category and company knowledge to customers visiting Newell exhibits, if needed

Key Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree; required
• 1+ years of experience with a CPG or durable company, ideally in channel management, brand management, insights or sales, preferably with retail/ mass channel
• Understanding of Syndicated POS and Panel data to support critical analysis
• Understanding of US retail customer knowledge
• Strong business acumen with the ability calculate and manage risk
• Ability to effectively manage change
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Ability to travel 10% of the time