WHAT DOES A CATEGORY DO?
Published: May 27, 2025 - The Category Professional defines the specific duties and expectations associated with a given role within an organization. This position outlines key tasks, decision-making authority, and performance indicators for accountability. This role supports effective recruitment, training, and evaluation by clarifying job requirements.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Category
1. Category Analyst Duties
- Data Analysis: Provide the category teams with clear suggestions based on data from various sources (brand, Partner Wholesale, Retail & Strategic Insight) to facilitate a commercial range plan that addresses consumer, category, retailer, and market needs.
- Insight Generation: Provide data & insights that support the creation of seasonal product KPIs that ensure the category product plan delivers optimum efficiency and conversion.
- Decision Support: Deliver actionable insights and decision support that maximise the performance of product ranges.
- Analytical Challenge: Supply insight and analysis that challenges the category team, ensuring every SCO is working hard for the business.
- Financial Analysis: Provide financially driven sell-in and sell-out data that is used to understand and optimise product lifecycle management.
- Performance Recommendation: Make recommendations that drive range performance in terms of optimum size, SCO margin productivity improvement, and understanding the impact of price point.
- Margin Analysis: Deliver regular SCO/Style analysis with a focus on margin delivery and price architecture.
- Category Partnership: Partner with the Head of Category to review the range architecture and price positioning throughout the season, identifying gaps and proposed solutions.
- Cost Mitigation: Engage with the sourcing team to understand and help mitigate the impact of FOB cost price movements on a seasonal/annual basis.
- Sales Analysis: Develop regular analysis on Gross Sales to Invoice Sales.
- Margin Reporting: Provide monthly in-year phase margin analysis by brand/region, explaining movement and variances vs. forecast/last year.
- Financial Support: Provide financial/analytical support to the Category team as part of the NPD process, collating data to build and support business cases.
2. Category Buyer Details
- Tender Management: Prepare and manage freight and transportation-related tenders
- Rate Negotiation: Negotiation of rates and conditions with service providers
- Savings Initiatives: Work with stakeholders to determine savings initiatives
- Incoterms Compliance: Address Incoterms alignment
- Performance Evaluation: Evaluate carrier performance and address deficiencies
- Billing Verification: Review and verify customs/duties billing
- Audit Assistance: Assist in the freight bill and audit process selection and monitoring
- Tender Support: Assist the global lead buying on international freight forwarding tenders
- Dispute Resolution: Resolve carrier disputes and/or payables issues
- Data Reporting: Reporting and analysis of freight data
- Stakeholder Communication: Communication of rate updates and maintaining a network with internal stakeholders and service providers
- Market Analysis: Conduct market analysis for new opportunities and solutions
3. Category Development Manager Responsibilities
- Category Leadership: Spearheading work for the category and strategy vision
- Relationship Management: Developing and maintaining strategic relationships with UK retailers to establish Kraft Heinz as the partner of choice
- Insight Development: Developing insight-led opportunities, driven by shopper needs, to be able to drive and deliver category growth
- Range Management: Management of the range and planograms in the trade to ensure optimum distribution and space allocation
- Sales Collaboration: Working with the sales team to land NPD externally and effectively lead range rationalization
- Performance Reporting: Leading the rhythm of reporting and analyses of retailer-sub-category and product performance, providing recommendations to improve
- Customer Advocacy: Being the voice of the customer internally to shape and influence the business agenda
- Insight Influence: Bring compelling, actionable insights to influence the internal innovation pipeline and help validate innovation business cases with market data
- Marketing Support: Work with the marketing team to support NPD/ campaigns with consumer insight
4. Category Manger Job Summary
- Procurement Strategy: Contribute to the EO Procurement strategy and framework in order to support the organization in delivering the business strategy.
- Cost Savings: Through market research and benchmarking, identify and implement cost-saving purchase strategies that deliver actual measured cost savings.
- Target Setting: Establish logical cost and investment targets for internal approval and supplier agreements, ensuring QBE’s commercial position is protected and improved.
- Tender Management: Provide accurate tender management to support on-time budget control and development in line with internal processes and guidelines.
- Contract Handling: Handle requests for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) process, undertake contract reviews and make recommendations of award (ROA) that best meets business needs.
- Relationship Building: Build and maintain positive working relationships with key users of the function and ensure relevant training and support is provided.
- Consultative Support: Provide consultative support to key buyers across the business, supporting decision-making.
- Team Leadership: Foster a culture of continuous improvement, motivation, and collaboration within the team to effectively engage employees and ensure delivery of business objectives.
5. Senior Category Manager Functions
- Category Reviews: Manage and conduct range and category reviews with relevant retail partners.
- Customer Relationships: Manage the day-to-day relationships with Customers that ensure we are a key part of Category Strategy processes, range reviews and captaincy consideration enabling us to drive growth for Kerry Foods.
- Vision Implementation: Implement category vision plans in conjunction with marketing, insight and commercial teams.
- Market Analysis: Ongoing prompt, actionable analysis, interpretation and dissemination of external continuous market data sources including Nielsen, Dunnhumby, Kantar, Shopper Intelligence etc.
- Space Management: Ensure distribution, space and quality of space targets are met or exceeded.
- Execution Support: Supporting and delivering excellent execution in-store.
- KPI Tracking: Accountable for tracking KPI’s and working with the Category, Commercial, Marketing and Brand Managers to support performance delivery through cross-functional Growth teams and Natural Workteams.
- Market Understanding: Understanding of macro environment, shopper dynamics and retailer landscape and driving actions based on this through the Marketing and Commercial functions.
- Project Management: Working cross functionally, undertaking key strategic projects and managing those successfully to completion.
- Stakeholder Management: Contribute to the management of complex stakeholder groups, up, down, within and outside of Kerry Foods.
6. Senior Category Manager Job Description
- Merchandising Leadership: Lead merchandising and promotions for Corsair and Elgato’s D2C product lines (hardware + software) for a set of categories.
- Offer Management: Manage D2C offers and promotions for equipment and equipment bundles.
- Pricing Development: Develop pricing for brand and loyalty sites within the guidelines set by product/channel marketing.
- Sales Growth: Drive top-line sales, bottom-line contribution margin (including shipping), conversion rate, and average order value.
- Merchandising Tactics: Implement best-in-class site merchandising tactics to drive positive business outcomes (e.g. onsite search, bundles, promotions, attachment, and other site capabilities).
- Analytics Partnership: Partner with analytics and marketing to identify user segments and develop/deliver targeted promotions based on a variety of triggers.
- Strategic Campaigns: Partner with product and strategy teams to target and deliver strategic merchandising and promotion campaigns.
- Trend Analysis: Become the expert on categorical seasonality and customer trends, adapt strategy to parlay insights into merchandising, marketing, and/or overall sales wins.
- Thought Leadership: Provide thought leadership on new site capabilities to drive conversion and increased order value.
- P&L Management: Work closely with the eCommerce Manager to manage & improve P&L, report to VP eCommerce.
- Business Ownership: Be a business owner, own the P&L.