Position Id 2012-565

Job Description
The Company:
Originally founded in 1979 as Information Resources, Inc.(SIG), SymphonyIRI Group is the world's leading innovative partner that helps clients transform insights into impact at every level of their organization. SymphonyIRI Group enables consumer packaged goods, retail and healthcare companies to drive growth by better understanding their business, their consumers, and the market. We do this by combining decades of professional experience with rich data sources, predictive analytics capabilities and a revolutionary technology platform called Liquid Data:
Currently privately held, SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. serves as a holding company for the equity interests of SymphonyIRI shareholders. With our majority owner, New Mountain Capital LLC, we have secured the growth capital necessary to continue our transformational momentum. New Mountain Capital is a New York-based private equity firm that is committed to SymphonyIRI's long-term investment philosophy and supports the company's growth strategy. SymphonyIRI consists of seasoned, senior advisors who provide subject matter expertise to both CPG and retail firms.
As the originator and innovator of marketing insights, SymphonyIRI is evolving into a global provider of predictive, on-demand business insights applications. If you are driven to solve real world problems, are a dynamic leader and enjoy cultivating lasting partnerships with top executives from Fortune 500 companies, we want to speak with you.
Responsibilities:
The Consultant will occupy a position central to the success of SymphonyIRI's premier Shopper Marketing practice. This is a client-facing position. Through driving deep Shopper Insights, he/she will optimize the relationship between several Consumer Packaged Goods(CPG) manufacturers and their Food/Drug/Mass Merchant(FDM) retail partners as related to Shopper Marketing. The Consultant will work primarily within an established base of existing SymphonyIRI retail and manufacturer relationships.
The Consultant will own" their client relationships from a Shopper Marketing perspective and be a lead consultant in leading analytical projects. He/she will start with a discussion of client business issues, write the proposals, connect the issues to a research plan/project framework, match the issues to a custom or off-the-shelf" SymphonyIRI Shopper Marketing solution, work hands-on to build the solution and finally, delivering Insights that will have measurable client business impact. Approximately 50% of his/her time will be spent on direct contact with clients and associated project management tasks.
The Consultant will have a big sand-box" in which to function in terms of analytical tools, client and client issues. From a tool perspective, he/she will work extensively with SymphonyIRI's revolutionary web-based report generating tools and advanced panel queries/analysis. Approximately 50% of his/her time will be spent working in a hands-on capacity with SymphonyIRI's technology tools and rich data sets derived from multiple sources. Using different modeling techniques for execution to form results around pricing for example.
Key client business issues include assortment optimization, promotion effectiveness, new item introduction and consumer segmentation and targeting. The current economic environment requires that the Consultant bring fresh thinking and innovation to identify/address current and future consumer trends.
Externally, the Consultant will work at all levels across multiple client functions including Category Management, Consumer Insights, Sales and Brand Management. Internally, he/she will work with Retail Client Solutions,(on-site CPG manufacturer SymphonyIRI client teams), Retail Analytics, Technology, the Consumer Centric Retailing team and the broader Consumer & Shopper Insights team. Having the out-going personality to foster collaborative internal relationships will be essential to the Consultant's success.
The Consultant will be well-positioned to add value to SymphonyIRI and to our clients from their first day. He/she will tackle substantive client issues that cut across to total store(versus a single category) and participate in writing the game rules" for a growing and dynamic business practice.
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Requirements:
· 7 or more years of retail or CPG experience or a high degree of passion and comfort with the retail and CPG manufacturer space.
· Experience may be gained in one or more of the environments below:
o Top-tier consulting firm(i.e., Accenture)
o CRM-oriented software firm(i.e. Peppers & Rodgers)
o Retail(i.e., Target)
o CPG manufacturer(i.e., Kraft)
o Travel or hospitality(i.e., American Airlines or Starwood Resorts)
o Market Research(i.e., Dunnhumby)
· Strong project management skills; proven skills to maintain focus and poise amidst concurrent and competing priorities
· Experience with consumer panel data or customer data is a plus
· Strong experience or potential to foster internal and external consultative client partnerships
· Expert in PowerPoint and Excel
· Proven curiosity and skills to acquire, assimilate and new information with little direction
· Strong applied and pragmatic mathematical/modeling skills
· Proven skills summarizing or presenting complex technical subject matter for/to a non technical audience; strong and well-rounded communication skills
· Ability/drive to make decisions with conviction in ambiguous and fast-moving environments; must be comfortable filling in the blanks" with only 70% of the facts at-hand
· Knowledge of SAS and/or SQL; SPSS a plus
· Undergraduate degree is required in quantitative discipline(Market Research, Statistics, Math, Computer Science, Engineering, etc.); Advanced degree is a plus

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