Home Care Professional Assistant Manager Design for Channel

WL1c – UK (100VE London)

Hiring manager: Karen van Luttervelt

Unilever Professional:

Unilever Professional is the strategic growth engine within the global Home Care Business Group. The B2B business has the ambition to realize 1 Bn Euro turnover in 2030. Unilever Professional operates end-to-end within the HC BG, with its own Marketing, CMI, R&D, CD, SC and Finance teams.

Our key operator segments are Food Service, Hospitality, Offices and Launderettes. We leverage our HC retail brands under the flag of Unilever Professional in the professional cleaning & laundry market. Unilever Professional is already quite mature in Europe and Latin America and scaling up fast in markets as Turkey, SEA, India, Indonesia and South Africa. In Europe, we partner with Diversey as our sales agent.

The core Unilever Professional leadership team is based in London, Port Sunlight and Rotterdam. A considerable part of the global Marketing, CD and SC teams operate from Rotterdam, while R&D is based in both Port Sunlight and Cascale. The GM reports directly into the Home Care BG President. 

The CMI HC Global Customer & Channel team:

The vacant Upro CMI role is part of the Home Care CMI Global Customer & Channel team. Your team members are the team lead (NL based), CMI CSP (NL based), CMI Cat Man/dCom (NL based) and a CMI Cat Man (UK based). The team is responsible for delivering CD execution performance measurement as well as Shopper insights for CSP, dCommerce, Cat Man in addition to supporting Unilever Professional.

The CMI role in Unilever Professional context:

CMI plays an unmissable role in the Unilever Professional growth acceleration. The Upro business is built on operator centricity: understanding the operators needs/pain points and designing a portfolio accordingly to that.

You will be part of the Innovation squads to help to develop winning, operator centric mixes. In addition to Innovation projects, you are also responsible for Demand Creation/Engagement related projects as well as (incidental) Shopper projects.

Reporting line:

You will report into the CMI Global Customer & Channel Lead for Home Care, based in NL.

Skill set:

We expect that you bring:

• A hands-on, start-up mentality
• Strong communication & facilitation skills: to ensure insights and research recommendations are brought into action as well as to facilitate multi-disciplinary workshops
• Experience with innovation research
• Ideally you already have first experience with AI CMI methods in innovation and/or comms/engagement studies
• Data analytical skills: you are comfortable with market sizing data as well as can support innovation sizing

Interfaces:

You should be able to work independently but can also operate effectively with:

• Global Marketing/R&D/CD
• Local Upro teams/Upro country leads
• Global Upro GM/Upro LT

Your primary stakeholders will be the global Innovation squads but you will also drive in-market projects as well as run assignments for the Upro LT.

Given the different working locations, disciplines and levels of seniority, it is crucial that you are resilient to operate effectively within this context.

Key Accountabilities:

• Support the multi-disciplinary Innovation Squads (H&H Concs, Advanced Laundry, Core):
  • Concept screening & testing
  • Product testing
  • Mix validation
  • Innovation sizing/business case support
  • Post-launch evaluation
  • A key responsibility is to make a step up in innovation (testing) management by embedding standardisation of methods/agencies and further integration of A.I. methods
• Support Demand Creation, Shopping and Execution:
  • Brand power evaluation
  • UPS (Upro’s method for UBS: 6P analysis) through country workshops
  • Pretesting through increased usage of AI e.g. AIM/Brainsuite

Behaviours:

• Agile & positive attitude  
• Constructive team player 
• Effective in dealing with peers in the innovation squads and in markets as well as with senior stakeholders in the Upro LT/Upro country leads    

Experience:

• At least 3 years of experience in a CMI Innovation role
• If you have conducted another type of CMI role, or you have Marketing, Cat Man or CSP experience and you like to

make the step into this type of role, we encourage you to apply as well    

Location:

Unilever office 100 VE, London, UK.