Category Analyst

Insights & Analytics | Naperville | Full Time | Permanent

Wilton is a US heritage brand with a 95-year history in baking and decorating. Now fully integrated into the Dr. Oetker family, Wilton aspires to be the most influential and successful cake decorating brand. Learn more about Wilton at www.wilton.com.
 
 

Job Summary
Do you have a passion for telling stories with data to support the growth of your business? Our Category Insights Analyst is a key member of the Insights and Analytics (I&A) department and supports the Sr. Manager Category Strategy with developing category strategy, supporting channel strategy, and the delivery of revenue management. You’ll work closely with all of Wilton’s Brand & Product teams to ensure that customer and consumer related activities are driven by insights and are aligned to Wilton’s brand and purpose.

Essential Responsibilities

• Create compelling strategies and selling stories from all available data resources.
• Support the development of category strategies, leveraging consumer and customer insights to become category experts across our entire portfolio.
• Work within a matrix organization to support and empower Brand & Product Teams and the broader commercial organization through insight generation and strategic guidance.
• Educate stakeholders on key finds and data tools.
• Ensure category insight drives the development of products and campaigns.
• Influence Net Revenue Management and Category/Brand Growth by driving strategy development and addressing key components of category analytics:
  • Channel and Customer Mix – Identifying the ideal assortment that should be available across channel and retailer landscapes. 
  • Portfolio Pricing – Determining if our products are priced correctly against our competition and if there are any gaps in the market that we can exploit. 
  • Price Pack Architecture – Supporting the development of an optimized mix of product formats and ensuring these formats are priced correctly. 
  • Promotional Analysis – Performing post-mortem analytics to determine promo effectiveness and strategic recommendations.  
  • Merchandising – Creating insight informed merchandising analysis for best-in-class planograms aligned to categories and market channels. 
  • Innovations – Discovering which innovations, and what types of innovation, are driving market growth. 

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or related subject is required.
• 2 to 4 years of experience in data analysis, reporting and presentation creation, preferably in a CPG environment.
• Proven experience in consumer and category analytics and insights development.
• Strong base knowledge of pulling/formatting/analyzing/extracting insights from syndicated, customer, and panel data sources (Circana, Nielsen, 84.51, Numerator, Stackline, etc.).
• Experience in Category Management analyzing insights to determine industry and consumer trends as well as developing strategies to support category and product decisions.
• Local candidates (Chicagoland area) preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Strong analytical and creative problem-solving skills (i.e. gathers critical data, translates analysis of an opportunity to resulting volume and financial goals, develops POV and recommendation)
• Basic financial and P&L acumen.
• Management of multiple projects at a time (timeline development, completion of tasks, and delivery of projects on time).
• Strong Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word skills.  Excel Power Pivot skills a plus.
• Holds self and others accountable by partnering with cross functional teams.
• Solid working knowledge of the CPG market and marketing principles. 
• Strong oral and written communication and problem/situation analysis skills.
• Ability to identify and seek needed information/research skills  
• Critical and analytical thinking skills.
• Very detailed oriented and quality conscientious.

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