Senior Analyst Sales Resource Optimization - Full-time / Part-time

Description

Staples is a Fortune 500 company with a Business to Business sales organization to match. Every year the company makes material investments to aid the deployment of thousands of sales representatives to drive new customer acquisition, manage existing customers, and serve specialty needs in the market. The question of how to get a better return on this investment is the role of the Senior Analyst of Sales Resource Optimization (SRO).

Sales Resource Optimization is a strategic and analytical framework for determining the best allocation of our sales resources to our customer needs. Working in this discipline, the Senior Analyst of SRO has the task of building out the modeling to answer three primary questions for the business: First, how are we allocating our sales reps? Secondly, do we have the right sales models in play for the various segments? Finally, what is the return we are getting from each of the models we have deployed? These are difficult questions that require someone who is both confident with the financials and the data behind them. Even more critical, this analyst must have a truly strategic, business-oriented, perspective. The output of this work is not numbers in columns or rows. Rather it is business insight that enables effective decision-making.

In short, the Senior Analyst of SRO has the responsibility for not just analyzing the SBA Sales business, but for effecting meaningful change in it. This person must have the to lead the organization through restructuring, expansion, and redeployment initiatives. The analysis this person produces will affect people, jobs, and Staples' bottom line. To that end, the analyst should possess the following core competencies:

Strategy

• Strategic Perspective: Data is only truly impactful in context. This individual must gain an understanding of the strategic mandates of the business and be able to interpret the results of their analysis considering that overall business strategy.
• Senior Leadership Influencer: The types of recommendations this analyst will make will have meaningful repercussions for the business and, as such, will require a level of approval and oversight from senior leadership. This individual will be responsible for sharing those findings and influencing senior sales leadership through the 'story' that will be crafted from the findings.
• Change Management: Following the senior leadership approvals, this analyst is also responsible for driving their recommendations into realized gains through business adoption. As such, this individual must be able to influence stakeholders and drive change management throughout an enterprise wide organization.

Analysis

• Analytical Aptitude: While it is not expected that the analyst will come already knowing the tools and frameworks used for Sales Resource Optimization, a familiarity in working with data (and a fluency in analyzing it) is expected. A background in finance, supply chain analytics, pricing, marketing analytics, data science, accounting, or a related analytical discipline will be helpful in this respect.
• Data Savviness: In addition to analytical skills, the candidate will benefit from showing a competency in working with different types of data and some basic data munging skills. This can range from an understanding of basic data structures to developer level skills in SQL or unstructured database systems.
• Insight Creation: The secret sauce this candidate will bring to the table is the ability not just to analyze data, but also to interpret that data for the business. This individual should be able make connections that help business leaders make sense of their operations. Not just analysis, but insight. That's the mandate for this role.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor's degree required, advanced degree (e.g. MBA, MSF, etc.) preferred
• Years of experience: 3-5+ in related field
• Communication: Excellent communication skills, both oral and written
• Collaboration: Ability to work collaboratively and influence cross-functional teams
• Advanced Analytics: Data Visualization, Modeling, and Optimization
• Personal Traits: Adaptability, highly organized, detail-oriented

Skills

• Capabilities
• Strategic Thinking
• Demand Management
• Required Tool Competencies
• Modeling: MS Excel
• Preferred Tool Competencies (Not required but value added)
• Data Visualization: Tableau, QlikSense, Microsoft Power BI, etc.
• Analytics: R, Python, SAS, SPSS, Minitab, etc.
• Database Management: MS Access and/or SQL server
• Process Mapping: MS Visio

Staples is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.

Staples is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.

Staples