Planning and Delivery Executive

Innovation is Key part of our next level FMCG Retailer strategy, and as part of the planning and delivery team you will play a pivotal role in ensuring we deliver our innovation products and projects.

The P&D team is responsible for working with the technical and innovation teams, to ensure that our plan is accurate, managing end to end processes to land projects on time, enabling our 3rd party suppliers (e.g. Artwork, design agencies) to plan resource to deliver the plan on time and on budget.

To support our ambitious plans, we need proactive, organised individuals in this team, with an eye for detail and excellent communication plans.

This hybrid position requiring 2 days a week in our Farringdon office.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

• Be a custodian of product plan, ensuring process is followed in order to keep the plan accurate. This includes running lock meetings and product plan strategies, issuing reports and minutes, and escalating issues in a timely manner for resolution.
• Monitor ongoing projects and milestone progress, such as gate meetings, flagging where delays mean that the critical path must be updated in line with our batching ruleset.
• Support the planning and delivery manager with batching and plan management to balance workload across the year as much as possible, including planning peaks and risks.
• Support the internal product development and technical teams and agency partners with regular and accurate visibility of upcoming work.
• Be an expert in our processes, documenting them clearly and concisely, and helping to develop and run training sessions for your colleagues. You should know the process better than anyone else and be able to provide support and guidance to teams.
• Proactively monitor processes and identify pain points, using feedback and your own initiative to see opportunities to improve and proposing potential changes we could implement to make it better.
• Play a key supporting role in key meetings, such as Artwork Governance Forum and Design Forum by managing the attendees, sharing minutes and actions.
• Attend WIP meetings to monitor project progress and identify emerging themes in queries and/or delays in order to resolve them, escalating and unblocking any barriers.
• Provide central project management for large or cross-category projects (e.g. redesigns, new initiatives) working closely with relevant internal teams and partner agencies to define skulists, processes, risk management, and critical plan.
• Support the product developers by designing and running projects through platforms such as Nectar 360 attest.
• Work with product plan data and coordinate company insights platform data, partner agencies, and internal finance and internal customer insights teams to provide periodic seasonal and annual reporting, including managing skulists, sharing project progress and pain points, highlighting new lines, and communicating product performance data.
• Provide day-to-day support for our agency partners across design, product specs, and packaging artwork, responding swiftly to help resolve queries and keep projects on track.
• Support the planning and delivery manager with day-to-day budget management through robust planning and processes.

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW

• Good understanding of artwork and processes is essential.
• Expertise in end-to-end project delivery of a complex product development/innovation plan.
• Strong and varied IT system knowledge skills, particularly Excel and PowerPoint.
• Good project management and planning skills.
• Ability to deliver artwork, project, and product performance, reporting against SLAs for Heads of Technical and Head of Innovation.

WHAT I NEED TO SHOW

• Excellent attention to detail and result-driven.
• Commercial awareness and data fluency.
• Excellent communication and self-awareness.
• Effective planning and prioritisation.
• Good judgement, drive, and influence with a clear targeted personal development plan to enhance these areas.
• Growth appetite and continual improvement.
• Effective recommendations for improvement in process and ways of working across innovation teams.
• Understanding, influencing, and supporting product developers through applications of process knowledge.
• Planning and delivery of time within areas of work to deliver to budget.