Channel Development Manager

Job Description :

Job Title: Channel Development Manager

Level: Mid-Level Management

About the Function

Our Sales team love building relationships, connecting with customers to sell our much-loved brands in new and vibrant markets where they can thrive. They help sell our iconic brands across 180 countries every year.

We’re operating across different markets, channels, and areas of expertise. Using your curiosity and passion, you’ll make the most of consumer insight and digital platforms, reaching new customers, markets, and celebrations to help us achieve our growth potential. We’ll support your learning and growth as you develop your career with us and work with people across our business to realise your fullest potential.

About the company

Uganda Breweries Limited is a leading value and premium drinks company that is proud of the growth of our brands and our people.  The ambitious business goals focus our company on achieving strong growth through understanding of consumer & customer motivation.

As a business we are structured into Demand and Supply functions. The Supply business is composed of Source, Plan, Make and Move sections supported by the governance and manufacturing Excellence teams. Supply is responsible for the overall planning, sourcing, production and warehousing of finished product. The Demand business is involved in marketing and selling the product through RTC partners and retailers to consumers supported by HR, CR & Legal and Finance as enablers

About the role:

Ensure the business is externally curious to the operating environment, customer/retail and consumer/shopper needs and evolution.

Guide and lead the commercial plans (direct partner to channel and shopper managers). Champion the organization’s insights and learning plan. Also be responsible for the delivery of the Annual One Plan and Trade Strategy

Role Responsibilities:

Commercial Planning

Develop Trade Strategy and plan execution: work in close partnership with the commercial teams to ensure Business Plans are based on the understanding of shopper needs & motivations, revenue growth management and category growth drivers.

• Trade and category strategy
• Execution standards: price, share, distribution
• Plan & develop growth drivers
• Category management and outlet segmentation

Channel Development

• Understand the category dynamics and the shopping missions in the channel and recommend the corrective actions to capture growth opportunities and adapt our plan.
• Transforming consumer and shoppers’ relationships with our category through the creation and implementation of compelling shopper-based growth drivers
• The role will develop the understanding, insights and implications enabling Shopper Marketing to create growth drivers that deliver category growth and Diageo share disproportionately by changing shopper/consumers’ attitudes and behavior.
• Driving a culture of Customer Collaboration based on a deep understanding of our shared consumers and shoppers

• The Role is customer facing and an indispensable business partner to the Customer Marketers and KAMs assigned to the customer (s) within their remit.

Manage performance

• Lead the activity review process and have data-informed conversations with sales, marketing, finance and supply to improve performance, effectiveness, efficiency and drive sales forecast accuracy.
• Lead the executional standards within my market and include those in Commercial Scorecard reviews with the commercial team. Key being closing gaps on share, pricing, distribution and visibility. Ensure that all plans and projects agreed on during commercial planning are realized. Provide all the right input to deliver great reviews and work closely with commercial operations and performance teams to set up the routines to review and accelerate/correct performance.
• Best practice Learning Plan is in place for every growth driver within the Shopper Planner’s remit including concept testing to improve effectiveness at the point of purchase, measuring the impact of the activity on consumer/shopper behavior and finding opportunities for improvement with the customers within their remit.
• Allocation and deployment of shopper planning resource and investment. Measurement: share versus competition, category growth, NSV, Brand health, Distribution, Visibility, Promotion.
• Watch and beat the competition: Own and carry out data analysis e.g. retail audit, scanned/till point, Internal Salesforce effectiveness data, customer data and ex-factory data, for various retail channels. Translate shopper- and consumer trends into tangible in store propositions.

Shape the future – externally curious

Work with research agencies and the commercial team to refresh and contribute to the UBL knowledge and insight vault:

• Market and competitor knowledge
• Brand and category knowledge
• Customer/retailer understanding
• Shopper understanding and insights
• Channel dynamics

Inspiring leaders and stakeholders

• We will challenge thinking internally with our stakeholders and externally with our agencies and achieve breakthrough results by working with and through other people.

Building Talent and Teams

• Customer Marketing and Sales leadership see the role as an indispensable partner
• The role operates as a high performing team characterized by a bias for action; understanding and insight only bring value through implementation. 

Leadership Responsibilities

• Be authentic: consistency in own behavior, treat others fairly, show courage in the face of opposition, adapt to changing business needs and work with integrity:
• Consistently deliver great performance be willed to take action, set priorities, drive for results and create collaborative relationships
• Connect to the Diageo purpose: reinforce the Diageo values, generate excitement and passion about our brands and take personal responsibility for brand quality
• Find solutions: creativity & decision quality, problem solving & process management and demonstrates commercial acumen
• Grow yourself; builds self-awareness and listens, learns from both experiences of success and failure, constantly works for self-improvement and proactively seeks feedback from others.

Experience / skills required

Qualification

• University graduate or equivalent with a minimum 5-7 years’ experience. Experience in similar roles within Consumer-Packaged Goods ideal.

Experience

• Experience managing research agencies is essential. Commercial experience/exposure is highly desirable. Strong communication skills are a must. Confidence to:

• Challenge existing thinking
• be in customer-facing situations (as part of a multifunctional team)
• Able to create alignment within cross-functional teams. Thrives in a fast-paced, constantly changing environment: an agile and adaptable individual.

Diversity statement:

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this.

We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you’ll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You’ll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences, mindsets, and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world.

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you. 

If you require a reasonable adjustment, please ensure that you capture this information when you submit your application.

Worker Type :

Regular

Primary Location:

Portbell Brewery

Additional Locations :

Job Posting Start Date :

2025-04-16