Retail Merchandising and Planning – Strategy Senior Manager

Hobbsnews; New York (NY); On-site; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture in the US is seeking a Strategy Senior Manager to lead Retail Merchandising and Planning transformation engagements for major clients. You will shape strategy, drive execution, and translate insights into actionable operating models across merchandising, planning, and data-enabled decision making.

You'll supervise multi-workstream programs, collaborate with executives, and ensure value realization through adoption of new processes and systems, as you guide teams from design through

Qualifications

• Experience in merchandising strategy and planning across buy, allocate, and inventory management.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams and client steering committees.
• Strong program leadership with focus on adoption of new processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead large transformational programs with multiple concurrent workstreams and stakeholders.
• Orchestrate delivery across strategy, process, data / technology, and change management.
• Own client relationships, including executive sponsors, and manage alignment across disparate views.
• Ensure engagement quality, timeliness, and profitability.

Job description

Retail Merchandising and Planning – Strategy Senior Manager

We Are

Accenture's Retail Merchandising and Planning practice helps the world's leading retailers reinvent how they buy, plan, allocate, and manage product across the value chain. We work at the intersection of merchandising strategy, planning process design, and AI-enabled decision making, helping clients across apparel, hardlines, grocery, and specialty retail modernize their operating models and improve performance in demand forecasting, assortment planning, and inventory productivity.

You Are

A retail merchandising and planning professional who combines deep functional expertise with strong program leadership. You've spent your career close to the buy, whether in category management, merchandise financial planning, assortment, allocation, replenishment, or demand/supply planning, and you understand how these functions connect end-to-end. You translate that expertise into operating model redesign, process reinvention, and capability roadmaps clients can execute against. You are accountable to realizing value, and you have experience rolling up your sleeves to ensure high adoption of new processes and systems. You're equally comfortable leading a workstream, coaching a team, and standing in front of a client steering committee.

The Work

As a Senior Manager, you will lead transformation engagements for retail clients, working directly with client executives and Accenture leadership to shape strategy, drive execution, and activate results.

Engagement Leadership

• Lead large, transformational programs with multiple concurrent workstreams and stakeholder groups
• Orchestrate delivery across cross-functional teams spanning strategy, process, data / technology, and change management
• Own client relationships, including executive sponsors, and manage alignment across disparate points of view, escalations and ambiguity as they arise
• Ensure engagement quality, timeliness, and profitability

Merchandising & Planning Transformation

• Lead assessments of current-state merchandising, planning, and inventory management capabilities against industry-leading practices
• Design future-state operating models spanning category management, merchandise financial planning, assortment planning, allocation, replenishment, demand planning, and supply planning
• Develop capability strategies, transformation roadmaps, and value cases that quantify the impact of change
• Apply sub-industry nuance across apparel, hardlines, and/or grocery to tailor recommendations to client-specific dynamics

AI & Technology Enablement

• Bring current knowledge of AI, analytics, and emerging planning technologies to identify where they can solve merchandising and planning business problems
• Help clients evaluate and adopt planning platforms and AI-enabled decision-making tools as part of broader transformation