Convenience Trading Director

Hovis is one the UK’s leading food brands. In fact, it’s worth over £300m in retail sales. In a very competitive crowd, we’ve continued to demonstrate growth, category leading product innovation & quality. Our brand heritage and most recent performance is testament to this. Unsurprisingly, we have bold ambitions for our business & brand. We’re now searching for a proactive and committed Convenience Trading Director ready to play a key role in the next chapter of our journey. Please see below for more detail.    

This role will manage and lead the development of profitable channel plans through creative and high value JBPs, relationship building and high performance team development. Create growth strategies that cope with the variances within customer performances to ensure the overall business plans are met or exceeded.

Key Responsibilities:

Commercial Delivery

• Ensure delivery of the company financial targets with a focus on turnover, profit and cash
• Construct contingency plans to ensure and shortfalls are mitigated whilst ensuring business buy in
• Manage promotional and investment spend within agreed budgets and ensure appropriate returns are made

Customer Relationships

• Build strong multifunctional relationships within customers to ensure understanding and buy in to the Hovis strategy at senior level.
• Ensure the customer’s plans and strategy are understood widely internally such that these can be incorporated into future planning
• Construct improvement plans based on Advantage survey feedback and gain cross functional buy in to implement
• Build strong cross functional awareness understanding the profit drivers in other functions and act accordingly

Business Process

• Ensure risks and opportunities to the plan are accurately understood and that suitable plans are constructed to mitigate/deliver these
• Ensure that all JBPs and commercials decisions have been agreed and signed off according to the business governance process
• Take responsibility for maintaining a clean ledger and ensure customers are paying to terms and actions are in place to bring in line as required

People Management

• Manage and motivate the team and identify development opportunities with each member to ensure high performance output along with high employee engagement and satisfaction
• Influence board members cross functionally to engage and gain support for plans

Experience & qualifications:

• Proven commercial experience in FMCG commercial arena
• Educated to degree level or equivalent
• Proven track record of developing high value relationships at a senior level across multiple functions
• Highly effective team player with ability to understand the bigger picture and act accordingly
• Excellent motivational skills with the ability to identify and nurture talent
• Highly competitive with a strong desire to win through innovative thinking and urgent execution
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex data into executable plans
• Remains calm under pressure but quickly responds to changing surroundings
• Prepared to take personal responsibility for decisions and actions

Location:  Based in High Wycombe with travel

Type of role: Full Time, Permanent

Reporting to: Commercial Director

Applicants must have the right to work in the UK