Business Category Lead - Walmart - General Mills

The Foodservice Category Advisory team is seeking a Business Category Lead, Walmart to support our North America Foodservice (NAF) strategic priorities to leverage data, analytics and insights to drive growth for our business.  Come join our growing Connected Commerce, Data & Analytics team with an opportunity to make a direct impact to win with our customers and partner cross functionally within our segment and across General Mills.  You will have the opportunity highlight your skills and experience on our team while also continuing to learn new skills and develop your career.

As a Business Category Lead (BCL) on the Walmart business, you will use analytical skills to develop category and retailer data and insights through data analysis and reporting with a specific focus on our largest Retail Foodservice customer, Walmart. In this role, you will be responsible for delivering the most current category insights, competitive insights, category data analysis, shelving, assortment, and merchandising recommendations to drive the category at Walmart through the Walmart modular relay process.  

In this customer facing role, you will be partnering closely with Walmart for their Retail Bakery department on activation initiatives. This role is responsible for advising the Retail Bakery buyer through the Relay process while providing the latest category performance and consumer insights. This is a role where you will significantly develop your analytical skills in a unique way as you learn Luminate data, Walmart’s new robust customer data source, and work towards enhancing your story telling skills as you leverage the vast amounts of data fields available from Shopper Data. In addition, you’ll develop your customer selling skills as this position allows for customer presentations throughout the Relay process, and leadership skills. 

Strong candidates will work as a team, demonstrate strong communication skills, be detail oriented, demonstrate strong analytical skills, story-telling abilities, the ability to be proactive in digging into the data to develop a story or pull-out key insights, and the ability to influence to drive results. 

Responsibilities

You will leverage your Foodservice and Retailer industry knowledge to develop insights from a broad range of information sources and formulate a cohesive story that enables sales growth:

• Partner with Walmart Merchant teams to develop, plan and execute category activation initiatives, answer business questions and proactively develop actionable insights to drive category growth, grow sales and distribution while executing retailer objectives
• Collaborate and leverage Consumer and Market Intelligence insights to gather and drive informed decisions and actionable insights with analytics for best-in-class support of retail customer
• Develop and maintain suite of reporting tools to execute and strategize long-term growth and development of the retail bakery
• Provide market performance and share information to identify business opportunities leveraging RetailLink, Nielsen & Luminate data sources
• Develop capabilities with emerging resources to support the best ways of working with General Mills India Center (GIC), Cantactix, and dissemination of tasks and responsibilities.
• Continuously develop Industry knowledge regarding trends, challenges, and opportunities
• Take personal accountability and ownership for category results and prioritize what’s important
• Interface with the customer on a regular basis to deliver consumer and category insights; participate in special strategic category projects intended to evolve or advance category management

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree
• 2 years of Walmart Category Management experience on an advisory team
• Completion of 2+ Walmart Modular Relays and the ability to take a lead role in future relay projects
• Strong proficiency in JDA/Blue Yonder Space Planning
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills
• Ability to influence across key stakeholders
• Prioritization skills
• Strong analytical and data interpretation skills
• Strong project management skills
• Valid driver's license with a good driving record

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Cantactix or CKB
• Experience in Luminate
• Experience using Nielsen/IRI, sales data for market research

Additional Considerations

• This position will be based out of Bentonville, AR at the Walmart Business Center
• Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the U.S. General Mills will not sponsor applicants for a U.S. work visa.
• International relocation or international remote working arrangements (outside of the US) will not be considered.

We exist to make food the world loves. But we do more than that. Our company is a place that prioritizes being a force for good, a place to expand learning, explore new perspectives and reimagine new possibilities, every day. We look for people who want to bring their best — bold thinkers with big hearts who challenge one other and grow together. Because becoming the undisputed leader in food means surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for what’s next.