About Unilever

With 3.4 billion people in over 190 countries using our products every day, Unilever is a business that makes a real impact on the world. Work on brands that are loved and improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We are driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace, and it is our belief that doing business the right way drives superior performance. At the heart of what we do is our people – we believe that when our people work with purpose, we will create a better business and a better world. 

At Unilever, your career will be a unique journey, grounded in our inclusive, collaborative, and flexible working environment. We don’t believe in the ‘one size fits all’ approach and instead we will equip you with the tools you need to shape your own future.

Job Purpose

The Customer Strategy & Planning (CSP) team is responsible for delivering the commercial plan through developing and deploying Category Growth Strategies from Business Group to Country.  Key deliverables include defining, deploying and delivering the Commercial Plan across all customers and channels, the Customer Category Growth Strategy based on Category Value Driver’s (CVD’s), and Best in Class Capabilities across NRM, Cat Man, Shopper Marketing and Insight. 

Main Responsibilities

The CSP & Performance Lead for Beauty & Wellbeing is responsible for leading the Category Growth Strategy, Category Operations and Planning, and Shopper Marketing capabilities within the Beauty & Wellbeing BU.  They have full accountability for building and shaping winning category & commercial plans for both customers and UL, whilst delivering the category forecast & objectives through effective operations and planning.

Customer Category Growth Strategies are built through fully integrated, shopper, customer and channel insights and strong validated CVD’s. They are an expert in category management and build strong customer partnerships via their category expertise to help grow customers categories.  They also utilize their category expertise across customer and channels as a key input back into the BU, where they are accountable for representing the voice of the customer within IBP, D4C and NRM.

The key responsibilities defined by main pillars:

I.CATEGORY STRATEGY & INSIGHT

Category Growth Strategies

• Develop localised Category Growth Stories (CGS) to channel and customer level, with clear storytelling.
• Lead customer engagement on how to grow the category & create customer specific category plans.
• Voice of the customer, category & shopper connecting Integrated Business Plan (IBP) & Joint Business Planning) JBP.

Category Growth Management

• Align and quantify CVD’s (i.e. category JTBD) against high value shoppers & guide conversion solutions.
• Deliver Current & Future Shelf/e-shelf, aisle & department design enabled by shopper Insights & Analytics & future fit Customer Insight and Innovation Centre.
• Own Retailer Assortment Optimisation, Net Revenue Management (NRM) Lever 2/3, Space Planning.

Renovation, Innovation, D4R, D4C and Activation pipeline

• Ensure alignment upfront to CVD’s & Category Growth Story and fit for channel and customer.

II. CATGORY OPERATIONS & PLANNING:  Deliver Commercial Plan

Targets, Budgets and Business Reviews.

• Deploy Underlying Sales Growth (USG) targets and investments by customer to deliver Business Group (BG) strategy by customer and channel.
• Deploy budgets by channel and customer to deliver UOM target
• Lead quarterly business review.

Innovation

• Define & execute national innovation plan and launch plan to channels/customers
• D4C / D4R execute locally

Execution

• Deploy strategically aligned commercial plan in market via CBD, including Shopper / Digital Marketing.
• Define & execute channel/customer SOS (share of shelf) & TDP (Trade Development Plan)

Pricing Promo and Mix

• Own & deliver Pricing and Promo Strategy
• Lead the review and actions of the monthly forecasting outputs.
• Own NRM Levers 4 and 5

Capability

• Deploy core capabilities required to win by customer and channel e.g. NRM

III.PERFORMANCE

Strategic analysis & performance tracking

• Analysis, Opportunity identification & projection
• Price & Performance KPIs tracking
• Innovation performance tracking

IV. PROCESSES & SYSTEMS

• Radical simplification of ownership of S&OP process
• Future proof CSP: Review of end-to-end CSP process, tools and systems to unlock capacity of team (outsource/automate/simplify) and transform the function to be more strategic and act as COO to business
• Governance: play a key role in ensuring governance in business operations 

Candidate Criteria

Experience & Qualification

• 10+ years of business experience, preferably cross-functional with Customer facing and Category experience with a proven track record.
• Experience of Thailand customers is a plus
• Exposure/experience to Dcom/Social commerce is preferred.

Skill

• Innovation mindset; Commerce channels execution and digital business models; Commercial Strategy and Business Acumen / NRM; Category Growth Management; Data-Driven Mindset; Customer and Retailer Understanding

Leadership

• Leadership Behaviours of strategic thinking and writing; communication and storytelling; Stakeholder Management; Lateral Influence without Authority; Process Thinking (Discipline); Ability to connect the dots and show the big picture.
• You are an inclusive motivator of people. Your team deliver with real passion, growing and learning from each other whilst delivering quick wins.
• You are still responsible for your own results and as a team leader, you also need to motivate others to deliver with passion, creating an inclusive and engaging climate around you. You can balance challenge with support and coaching. You understand the wider business context and you are emotionally intelligent enough to motivate people to deliver what is needed.
• As an individual you are the one responsible for your own wellbeing and delivering high standards of work. You must also focus on the Consumer and what they need. You are humble and have your head up, looking around to interpret evidence and data smartly, spot issues and opportunities to make things better.

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.