National Brands Limited (NBL), a leading subsidiary of AVI Limited, is one of South Africa’s top FMCG companies with iconic brands like Willards, Bakers, Five Roses, and House of Coffees. For over 173 years, NBL has been a key player in the South African food sector, expanding its reach across Southern Africa and delivering high-quality products that impact daily lives. 

At NBL, we embrace a culture of high standards, teamwork, and accountability. Our employees are driven by excellence and innovation, always prioritising customer satisfaction. We celebrate our South African roots and foster a workplace where collaboration thrive. 

An exciting opportunity exists for a Customer Insights Manager.  This newly created role will act as a strategic liaison between Sales, Marketing, and Commercial Finance, with responsibility for the management of data, insights, interpretation, and execution. 

The role provides a cross-functional lens across Marketing, Customer, and Finance teams to interpret and triangulate solutions that add value and deliver win–win outcomes for NBL and its customers.

Key Outputs

• Develop and execute business strategy for customer and shopper insights aligned to the company’s growth, category development, and commercial objectives.
• Lead market insights procurement for NBL.
• Lead the development of integrated insights across consumer, shopper, customer, brand, and category domains.
• Develop prioritised commercial category plans to support sustained, profitable systems growth.
• Inform product and pack/price innovation by channel.
• Balance customer margin and growth targets with internal financial goals.
• Ensure timely and accurate delivery of actionable insights to support strategic decision-making.
• Establish platforms for centralised insight sharing and collaboration.
• Ensure integrity and standardisation of customer point-of-sale data and inventory levels (including effective aggregation and dissemination to stakeholder base for performance management).
• Monitor daily/weekly, and monthly sales performance (sell in / sell out and customer inventory levels) vs prior year, run rates, and targets.
• Conduct monthly and quarterly margin performance reviews for key value items (KVIs).
• Lead planogram optimization strategies, commencing with PnP category champion planogram development and roll out (followed by roll out to other key accounts in time). Ultimately this should logically include supporting execution and managing Channel Marketing budget and activities.
• Lead cross functional program to optimise biscuit portfolio and ranging across Shoprite/Checkers/Usave banners, leveraging Rex data.
• Integrate Spar accelerate and Boxer customer data into NBL customer database.
• Provide insights driven support for informal trade activations.
• Attend meetings as required:
• Monthly Sales Manco meeting
• Quarterly Customer Governance Forum (CGF)
• PnP category champion meetings (determined by the roll out agenda)
• Key customer joint business planning sessions (as per demand)

Minimum requirements:

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce, Marketing, Economics, Data Analytics, Informatics, or Statistics
• Ideal: Postgraduate qualification (MBA or MSc in Data Analytics)

Experience

• Minimum 8 years’ experience in customer insights, category management, or commercial analytics within the FMCG or retail sector
• Proven experience engaging major retail customers and managing shopper insights data

Skills and Knowledge

• Strong analytical and commercial acumen
• Ability to influence across functions and organisational levels
• Sound understanding of market research principles
• Proven ability to work with large data volumes
• Proficiency in insight software, analytics tools, and retail measurement systems (e.g. SQL, Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Nielsen, IRI)
• Advanced written communication and business report writing skills