Lead a team of pricing analyst who are responsible for maintaining Meijer’s pricing strategiesInfluence changes to pricing strategy via analyses and alignment with senior leadershipDeveloped a simple pricing application to support pricing analysis and executionDevelop talent, with a focus on customer marketing and category management disciplinesIdentify and lead continuous improvement initiatives to increase departmental efficiency / effectiveness

Responsible for sourcing and overseeing the acquisition of competitive data against multiple retailers and channels. Designs, develops, and maintains executive score-carding on competitive data via SSRS tabular models and PowerBi. This includes establishing price index metrics, defining aggregations methodologies, and designing concise data visualizations.Delivers Ad Hoc Analyses for the business and executive leadership via the use of such technologies as R, Python and SAS analytical tools. Requests most often involve competitive price indices correlated with internal KPI's (sales, margin, customer churn, etc.), leading to recommendations on price investment opportunities.Designed, and overseeing the develop of, a base price management application. This includes a complete back end database overhaul, well defined business logic and data flow; as well as front end U.I. design to facilitate process and workflow aimed at maintaining system configurations, aid in pricing analysis, and managing efficient price execution.Designs and implements process, capability, and tool improvements for the pricing department. This includes project plan development and execution, current process mapping and future state design along cross functional lines (internal and external to the pricing team), and the evaluation of new tools and technologies. Successfully negotiated contracts with third party data providers to improve visibility to market price position.

Led a team that derived data driven insights from a wide range of structured and unstructured data. Presented analytics and recommendations to executive leadership, key business partners, and other company stakeholders. Very often this included working cross functionally with Marketing, Pricing, Space Planning, and I.T. to deliver holistic merchandising and marketing opportunities. Utilized advanced tools such as R, Python, SAS, APT, PowerBI, and Alteryx to perform supervised and unsupervised machine learning, hypothesis testing, data visualization, forecasting, and general descriptive statistics. Accessed, organized, transformed, and / or created new data sets from internal and external data sources that were otherwise unavailable via the same tools listed above; delivering innovative analytics and insights back to the business.Assisted Merchandising, Marketing, and I.T. organizations in developing actionable reporting, score carding, and sanctioning of new business metrics that often includes P.O.C. coding and design work. Served as a Product Owner under the SAFe Agile process for all Merchandising Business Intelligence based projects.Heavily contributed to Meijer's core Master Data Management team, which included standing up a comprehensive data cataloging tool (Alation) and establishing governance processes and best practices.Co-led a team in developing Category Management processes, as well as created tools and facilitated training to support those processes. Led company effort to define and implement category roles framework to enhance business planning and strategy efforts.Worked with Merchandise Planning and Category Analytics Director to build out a merchandising data science organization, which included re-scoping roles and responsibilities, aligning compensation, and building out desired training and career growth opportunities.

Partner with Buyer to drive merchandising strategies and tactics that deliver financial objectives and deliver ROI. Work with the Buyer to drive and execute key business decisions impacting the assigned category such as: Sales and Margin Forecasting, Product Flow & Exit Strategies, Resource Allocation (Receipts, Space & Inventory), Calendar & Timeline Compliance.Partner with the Buyer to develop key business strategies impacting the assigned category such as: Pricing & Promotional Activity Assortment Planning, including Planograms Pre/Post-Season Planning: Partner with the Buyer develop strategies which will achieve targeted goals. Develop bottom-up financial plans that meet the assigned financial goals.Line / Category review preparation and presentation. Partner with the Buyer to develop and present financial and statistical documents that tie to assigned financial goals. Partner with the Buyer to develop sub-category buy plans and ladder plans that identify sales plan and purchase quantities to meet or exceed financial goals. Provide post mortem analysis of sub-category and seasonal performance to plan to identify successes and failures.In-Season Management: Co-Lead team meetings reviewing current state of the category, projecting future results and driving to solutions and actions which result in meeting or exceeding plan. Forecast and record projected financial results of current strategies while maintaining high level of forecast accuracy. Identify item level opportunities to drive item level performance that increase sales or liquidate poor performers while providing direction to the Inventory Control Analyst on demand level forecasting at the total company level. Partner with the Buyer to drive execution of strategies which will achieve or exceed these goals. Manage item level exit strategies to meet targeted out date and manage margin impact.

Responsible for store level inventory and product flow execution through order creation, allocation, and replenishment.Accountable for inventory in-stock levels, and managing sophisticated replenishment and forecasting systems to maintain those levels.Assists Financial Planner in creating and maintaining annual financial plan, which includes managing sales, margin, receipts, and inventory.Aids Buyer in assortment planning and review, and partners with Planner to determine impact to financial plan.Executes category transitions, by ensuring appropriate inventory levels to maintain sales, while mitigating margin loss to clearance during plan-o-gram resets.Leading a Lean Six Sigma project as a Project Green Belt to optimize category inventories.

Trained store leadership and associates on proper execution of store processes to prevent loss of margin in sales.Created, monitored, and analyzed comprehensive exception based reports to determine breaks within store processes, and partnered with store personal to correct and maintain those processes.Held weekly Shrink meetings to review data from reports, and to develop and maintain action plans to improve execution of store processes.Conducted monthly audits to verify that stores were maintaining proper execution of processes.

Operated central checkout register.Supervised sales floor, which involved the planning of cashier breaks, managing minor customer complaints, closing our registers at end of day, and maintaining front of store conditions.Responsible for counting previous day's register tills, and reconciling sales receipts with those tills.