Group Senior Insight Manager

Overview We're the feel-good fashion brand making style accessible and fun for over 55 years, on our website, mobile app and over 300 stores in the UK.

By living our values - we play to win, customer obsessed, we are one and it starts with me - we deliver That New Look Feeling for our customers and each other.

The Role:

• Reports to Head of Customer Planning & Analysis and helps them implement a Customer & Market insight focus and business strategy across all areas of the business.
• Strong business partnering of Chief Customer Officer, Customer Director suite & Department Heads to provide insight and play an integral role in the development and expansion of commercial and business strategy
• Lead and inspire the Insight & Planning team of 6 FTE (3 Managers & 3 Analysts)
• A primary point of contact for Director suite, Heads of BMD & Customer, for all business Insight, planning. Partners Commercial Finance and key part of their senior management teams
• Highly commercial role, driving business performance and profitability through accurate, reliable and insightful commercial reporting and analysis, to aid decision making
• Drives efficiency through developing and refining current procedures, and identifying any issues
• Engage with Executive Directors on trends, and changes in the UK Womenswear market.

WHATS IN IT FOR YOU:

• 40% staff discount plus friends & family discounts throughout the year
• Access to our reward platform for external discount and offers
• Virtual GP access for you and your children - it allows you to speak to a doctor at a time and date that suits you
• All employees are covered by our life assurance policy from day one
• Unlock extra leave with our buy more holiday scheme.
• Celebrate YOU! Enjoy an extra paid day off on your birthday each year
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave, and shared parental leave.
• Spread the cost of your commute with interest-free season ticket loans
• Do your bit for the environment and save money with our Cycle2Work scheme
• We're proud to partner with the Retail Trust and Fashion & Textile Children's Trust

What you'll be doing: Leadership & Influence

• Plays a leading role in providing strong insights and inputs in the development and expansion of commercial and business strategy, prioritizing customer-centric business goals.
• Provides leadership and support in generating customer strategy and customer data, pivotal to shaping the future organization and how data lakes, insights, and WOW enable a customer-centric universe.
• Uses data and analytical insight to inform Channel Trading plans, monitoring customer profitability and the role each lever plays in driving incremental EBITDA.
• Partners with the Customer Senior Management team to influence and assist in providing insights to ensure robust and deliverable key KPIs.
• Key stakeholder in aligning strategic ambitions with financial plans and ensuring corporate strategy is reflected in channel and customer strategies.

Insights Ownership

• Develops and drives the roadmap for building world-class insight capabilities, ensuring insights workstreams are fit for purpose and comprehensive in addressing business priorities.
• Responsible for setting the overall direction of all verticals within the insights function, ensure they're optimised and producing maximum value for the business.
• Synthesizes learnings across verticals into cohesive, actionable narratives to ensure insight underpins strategic direction and regular decision-making.
• Confidently articulates key insights and recommendations to leadership and key stakeholders, challenging current assumptions and practice where necessary to stimulate productive debate and progress decision-making and ways of working.

Growing Reach

• Fosters a customer-first mindset within the business, leveraging robust, relevant data with compelling, timely reporting to drive customer-led decision-making.
• Builds strong working relationships with key stakeholders, driving data-led decision-making as well as identifying and leaning into opportunities to better leverage insight capabilities.
• Champions insights as a critical component within the business' data strategy, ensuring insights capabilities are set-up for data democratisation and automated workflows.
• Partners with planning and analytics colleagues, ensuring insights is aligned with analytics in terms of strategic direction and championing a joined-up approach for cohesive outputs.
• Builds strong working relationships with key agencies, fostering a collaborative working relationship and identifying opportunities to collaborate elsewhere in the business to maximise partnership value.
• Partners with managers to identify areas for opportunity, identifying new ways of thinking and driving RFP processes where necessary to ensure the business is always working with the best possible partners.

Planning & Forecasting

• Coordinates the commercial elements of the annual budgeting process for all areas of Customer, across Omni channel operational strategies and product strategies, to understand key growth drivers and deliver challenging yet realistic financial targets.
• Ensures sales aspirations align with BMD, Customer, and trade channels, triangulated to an overall business sales confidence level.
• Informs and supports the development of business OKRs, leading from New Look company pillars with clear and measurable strategic objectives.
• Drives and supports the annual forecasting processes (3-year plan, Budget, Quarterly Forecasts) to create realistic long- and short-term financial expectations based on planned business activity.
• Partners to develop and implement robust and accurate product category strategies for New Look's trade, ensuring alignment of overall sales numbers with trade channel owners and BMD, based on structured market insights (Price Architecture, Category Mixes, Brand opportunities).
• Coordinates and articulates key building blocks for quarterly forecasts, working with key stakeholders to size appropriately and support justification of marketing investments.

Strategic Projects and New Opportunities

• Identifies growth opportunities through current trading channels (Product Category, Marketing, and Country) and investigates further channels to market.
• Partners with Product squads to identify further opportunities with the Capex roadmap from a customer standpoint, ensuring accuracy and robustness of further projects.
• Leads complex and strategic ad hoc projects, shaping insight responses to briefs and managing execution.
• Manages junior support on ad hoc projects, providing hands-on mentorship where necessary
• Accountable for the ongoing development of individuals within the insights function, ensuring growth opportunities are capitalised upon and providing hands-on coaching where necessary.
• Directly manages and develops team managers, shaping their objectives and providing coaching and development.
• Promotes a culture of learning, collaboration, and critical thinking, fostering a confident and progressive insights function trusted within the business.

Who you are Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, or a related field. An advanced degree (MBA or equivalent) is preferred.
• Proven experience in a senior insights or planning role within the fashion retail industry, ideally within womenswear.
• Strong leadership skills with experience managing and developing a team.
• Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to translate data into actionable insights.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, capable of articulating complex insights to senior stakeholders.
• Strong business acumen and commercial awareness, with a track record of driving business performance and profitability.
• Experience with data analytics tools and platforms, with a strong understanding of data strategy and democratization.

Key Performance Indicators

• Produces insightful, accurate, timely management reporting
• Demonstrates a forward thinking, creative approach to work around problems
• Manages multiple deadlines, and clearly communicates risks to meeting these
• Utilises planning and reporting systems effectively
• Demonstrates a pro-active approach/solutions focused first
• Shows initiative, suggests a range of solutions to problems yet seeks advice when necessary.
• Enthusiastically approaches new tasks
• Expert in business, offering insight and education to broaden understanding of the bigger picture narrative behind the numbers
• Demonstrates a commitment to attention to detail, together with an understanding of the 'big picture'/'story' behind the numbers
• Shows commercial awareness through contributing new ideas
• Consistently adds value to the team and overall business

Why New Look? We care about you and the planet and believe fashion should be a force for positive change . We celebrate inclusion and diversity in everything we do. We're proud of our inclusive culture and our talented team members who embrace our shared purpose, behaviours and values.

We prioritise development, offering training to support your progression, so you can be your absolute best and achieve your goals.

We pride ourselves on being a flexible employer, our colleagues work a range of patterns . click apply for full job details