Lubricants Marketing Operations Manager at Vivo Energy

Job Purpose:

Overall, the role is responsible for supporting the development of marketing plans and programs for lubricants and measurement of implementation impact within the different Lines of Business and channels in the OU: B2B Direct, B2C Indirect, and Retail, through market analysis and deployment of appropriate market understanding and measurement metrics that meet the brand and business objectives. Specifically, the role should:

• Provide the relevant insights regarding market trends (customer and competitor) as inputs in the development and review of business/marketing programs and identification of growth opportunities.
• Participate in the development of the OU marketing plan and marketing initiatives in line with the country business strategy.
• Lead and own the lubricants S&OP, forecasting processes and the lubricants S&OP portfolio/product lifecycle management, price management, marketing research and marketing initiative post implementation reviews.

Principal Accountabilities:

Market Insights and Understanding

• Conduct brand, market and competitor analyses that feed into country lubricants marketing plan development.
• Coordinate, deploy and manage identified/agreed marketing research projects aimed at providing insights that inform product, brand and channel strategies.
• Continuously scan the environment to identify new opportunities and provide feed of suspects into the SPANCOP pipeline.

Product Lifecycle & Portfolio Management

• Manage the running of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process from product introduction to withdrawal.
• Prepare business cases for new product/SKU introduction, underperforming SKU withdrawal and liaise with the Africa PLM Manager on business case approvals, product label/packaging development.
• Continuously analyze portfolio performance and make recommendations to achieve a robust portfolio that reflects the local market needs.

Pricing

• Conduct periodic value chain analysis, regular updates to brand maps for key SKU’s and make recommendations to extract maximum value and meet price positioning objectives.
• Monitor pricing performance for key SKU’s, including cost trends, provide analysis to inform pricing positioning and review mechanism for B2B customers.
• Ensure the master Wholesale & Recommended Retail list price is up to date and any changes are communicated to all relevant stakeholders.
• Provide new product pricing recommendations in liaison with the Lubricants Marketing Manager

Marketing implementation

• Provide support for key lubricant marketing projects and initiatives including evaluation of return on marketing investments (pre and post implementation, concept testing for new products, new product potential/market penetration evaluation, preparation of marketing investments business cases, ad-hoc analysis as may be required from time to time.
• Manage the procurement of marketing materials for agreed campaigns/marketing initiatives to ensure best value in liaison with CP/initiative owner and in compliance with CP policies.
• Monitor and challenge utilization of the SP&A as per planned marketing activities to ensure spent is within approved budget.
• Improve marketing communication decisions through analysis of the different media options and their effectiveness using appropriate marketing metrics.

Demand Panning

• Lead, manage and drive effectiveness in lubricant sales forecasting across the organization as the lubricant sales & operations process focal point to achieve business goals.
• Liaise with the sales team to capture any new activities that impact demand and sales forecast and make necessary adjustments to sales forecasts accordingly.
• Coordinate and convene the lubricants S&OP meetings in liaison with the Supply Manager and follow up to ensure agreed actions are closed out by all parties.

Others

• Support and participate in the on-ground implementation of marketing initiatives, agency supervision and performance evaluation on need basis.
• Monitor and control the Sales and Marketing budget.
• Provide ad-hoc analysis as may be required from time to time by the B2B/B2C Marketing Manager

Key Challenges:

• Strike a good balance between focus on the internal and external environments.
• Ensure alignment with multiple stakeholders, sometimes with competing needs and priorities.
• Achieve necessary influence to drive the lubricants agenda across different lines of business.
• Ensuring timeliness in provision of scheduled and ad hoc analysis from multiple and often independent sources

Requirements

• A university degree preferably in business, marketing or related field
• At least 3 years of experience in marketing with strong analytical skills.
• Experience in an FMCG setting and digital marketing while not essential is an advantage.
• Good understanding of Retail, B2C and/or B2B markets
• Ability to draw insights from data and communicate them to different audiences with ease.
• Good project management, communication and presentation skills.
• Self-motivated and individual with good commercial instinct and customer orientation
• High proficiency in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and other common computer programs.