Job Description

Job Description

This executive leader position leads the Whole Foods Pricing team to continue the transition of the company to scalable global price management and drive growth in in-store and online sales, profit, customer engagement, and longer-term customer price/value perception. Ensures that the analytic output of the team is well tailored to help drive the business and address the needs of stakeholders. This person, and the Pricing team, will partner with Whole Foods Merchandising, Marketing, Finance & Tech to define pricing strategies & tenets, accelerate adoption of global pricing tools & processes, execute price changes in WFM pricing systems, and implement a pricing recommendation system which maximizes company, category and sales channel financial performance.

Responsibilities:

* Leads the Whole Foods Pricing team (Pricing Science, Pricing Strategy, Pricing Execution)
* Defines strategic direction and operational execution of pricing function. Builds, iterates, and implements strategy, roadmap, and tactics for Pricing accountabilities. Leads quarterly business review with senior leadership on pricing initiatives, on-going maintenance, and business impact
* Engages with senior internal stakeholders, including category, merchandising, marketing, product development and other leaders, to ensure a mutual and shared understanding of Pricing capabilities, objectives, rules and strategy
* Leads the strategic integration of base, promotion and discontinued item pricing
* Provides guidance to the Pricing Science team in pricing testing & optimization, pricing data management (including competitive, cost and promotion data), and demand forecasting at an item and store level
* Serves as a key leader of the Enterprise Analytics function
* Engages with key WFM stakeholders to understand upcoming business and operational changes and prioritizes Pricing initiatives accordingly
* Regularly engages with WFM leadership to share relevant learnings and prioritize Analytic work against most relevant business questions/decisions
* Engages with other leaders to design, maintain and champion the mission, vision and strategy of the organization
* Actively monitors and leads Pricing team performance, driving issue resolution and elevating performance issues as required
* In cross-functional conversation, serves as a subject matter expert on Pricing analysis and processes
* Ensures Pricing Analysts have access to and ability to use and apply state-of-the-art technical and methodological tools
* Ensures data-generated understanding and lessons learned are shared widely across the company.
* Develops and implements procedures and methods to drive interdepartmental communication and project monitoring
* Communicates complex business drivers in simple terms to all levels. Build trust and align teams to strategic solutions. Help stakeholders manage risk by outlining key decisions. Use analytic results to articulate tradeoffs and present opportunities to mitigate
* Engages with other leaders to design, maintain and champion the mission, vision and strategy of the organization
* Establish team culture by setting tenets and communicating vision in alignment with organizational priorities. Recognize exceptional performance and encourage others to do the same. Skilled at providing meaningful feedback. Resolve performance issues by guiding TMs through performance improvement plans, finding better-fit roles, or separating from WFM
* Develops and maintains relationships with senior-level executives, both inside and outside current areas of responsibility
* Partners with leadership across organization as thought leader. Makes and influences strategic decisions for long-term growth. Comfortable providing input to leadership on strategic plans and assumptions
* Engages with internal and external stakeholders to define, clarify and resolve issues related to performance expectations

Skills:

* Shifts comfortably between big picture strategic thinking and the tactics required to achieve outcomes
* Able to guide the Pricing analytics and data science teams to isolate the impact of business drivers and control for them. Able to identify connections and patterns in data, often across multiple factors. Quickly adjusts technical solutions based on emerging business problems. Construct a fact-based narrative, with focus on operational and performance improvement
* Demonstrates nuanced understanding of the WFM business, food retail industry and the business models of key strategic partners and competitors
* Able to Influence broad organizational strategic direction and planning on a go-forward basis
* Shows a bias for action and anticipate the need for future projects. Remove roadblocks for others. Help develop business objectives with partner teams
* Able to develop deep, credible relationships with senior-level executives, both inside and outside current areas of responsibility
* Able to define, develop and implement initiatives to enhance customer service and the responsiveness of the team in solving partner needs and adding business value
* Able to assess how key functions, processes and operating models impact the business; delivers recommendations on how to optimize
* Proven ability and interest in leading a pricing organization through the transition from manual legacy pricing processes to more automated global price management, gaining alignment and support from senior business partners

Education & Experience:

* BA/BS degree and 8-10 years relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience
* Graduate degree preferred, ideally in a quantitative discipline (e.g., engineering, math, operations research)
* 5-7 years leadership experience over a pricing team within a large leading retail organization, ideally within grocery