Manager, Strategic Insights- Competitive and Market Intelligence

Purpose Statement

The Manager, Strategic Insights, is responsible for developing and leading research and analysis programs to drive business outcomes, including competitive intelligence and market position, innovation research, and delivering insights to customers. This role will deliver new capabilities and insights to enhance decision-making across various levels and functional groups of the organization and elevate the customer experience.

Key Accountabilities and Outcomes

• Mobilize Insights to Inform Business Strategy:
  • Lead development of competitive intelligence programs and associated processes and technologies, partnering with cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Evolve insights and reporting on competitor activities, market and category trends, Rich’s market position, and industry developments to proactively identify opportunities and risks.
  • Deliver actionable insights to leadership levels to inform business strategy and innovation.
  • Define and lead initiatives for insights to inform strategy, including new opportunity space landscaping and sizing and research efforts on consumer needs / shifts.
  • Identify knowledge gaps and opportunities for new insights capabilities across categories and divisions.
• Customer Insights and Innovation:
  • Lead a defined area of market monitoring, and develop trends content, thought leadership and presentations.
  • Create programs of customer-facing insights engagements, targeting strategic customers.
  • Lead planning and execution against a designated area of innovation with research, syndicated data, and VoC to inform new product platforms.
• Research and Analysis:
  • Leverage syndicated data, including shopper panel data, and conduct market research (quantitative and qualitative) to uncover insights across consumers, customers, and categories.
  • Analyze and synthesize data to provide a concise perspective and deliver compelling findings through storytelling and workshops.
  • Actively seek out best-in-class methods, tools, and programs for efficiently and effectively developing insights.
• Insights and Initiative Leadership:

• Lead business problems through to insights: establish plans, skillfully manage and resolve ambiguous situations, gain stakeholder alignment, find creative solutions, and make data-driven recommendations.
• Evaluate and select appropriate sources of acquiring data (internal and external sources) and means of transforming into actionable insights.

• • Manage research budgets and insights partners/vendors, including vendor assessment, contract negotiation, and business alignment.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing or related field, MBA preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in marketing roles exhibiting business and market acumen, with a proven track record of regularly extracting insights from data. Food industry experience preferred.
• Experience analyzing competitor activity required, experience with competitive assessment frameworks preferred.
• Strong creative problem-solving abilities (to identify efficiencies, find and fill data gaps, develop solutions to get business problems to insights)
• Strong analytical skills to interpret complex data and translate insights into actionable strategies / recommendations.
• Strong communication skills, including written and oral presentations to both internal associates and customers.

• Proven experience in navigating complexity and working effectively with cross-functional teams, including business users and stakeholders, to drive program success.
• Strong organization skills (i.e., project management/time management) and flexibility to adapt to changing priorities. Ability to plan and develop research roadmaps for assigned areas of responsibility.

• Demonstrated experience using market research to solve business needs and translating data to insights. Survey design/execution/analysis is preferred.
• Solid software proficiency, including advanced proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint, syndicated data experience preferred (i.e., POS or shopper panel data such as Circana or Nielsen), and survey software experience preferred (e.g., Qualtrics, Forsta/Decipher, Upsiide
• Travel up to 20% as needed 

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