Associate Manager, Merchandising Capabilities

**Help us boldly shape retail in Canada**

Canadian Tire Corporation’s (CTC) rich heritage of serving Canadians from coast-to-coast dates back to 1922. Our vision is to become the #1 retail brand in Canada and we are focused on innovating and making important investments in our business, especially when it comes to our people. To reach our goal, we need the best talent to help us evolve and drive change across the business - and boldly help shape Canada’s retail industry. As we strive to be at the forefront of a complex and vastly changing retail industry, it is an exciting time to join the Canadian Tire family of companies.

Merchandising Capability Development is an exciting team established to collaboratively develop & enhance Merchandising Capabilities, including processes and tools. The focus of work in the upcoming year will include the on-going expansion MDM, and modernization of the Merchandise Sourcing and Costing capabilities across the various CTC banners, as well as other projects. This small, dynamic team works closely with a variety of stakeholders to address ongoing challenges and implement solutions to improve the way we work.

The Associate Manager will collaborate with various merchandising and cross-functional teams across all CTC banners to redesign and implement core merchandising processes and tools. Our solutions will enable core objectives by improving efficiency, consistency, and quality.

Work includes leading a work-stream, organizing, and driving the project forward by gathering and documenting current state information, supporting and leading workshops and meetings that identify opportunities and organizational risks, and analyzing and consolidating this information into actionable recommendations for future state design, and completing other project tasks as required.

At Canadian Tire we work flexibility embracing ‘Hybrid’ whereby individuals utilize a combination of working at a CTC campus and or virtually in service of outcomes. Determined by managers, decisions around work location will be made based on business and team needs and grounded in a desire to support individual well-being and personal needs. Our goal is to empower teams and individuals to make the right decisions for them, and we expect that to look different for everyone.

**What you’ll do**
- Manage a workstream or key deliverable within the project plan, as well as associated project management activities which include but are not limited to schedule, resource requirements, risks, etc
- Provide direction to team, and support the development of project analysts assigned to the project
- Conduct interviews with various business stakeholders across the organization to identify, understand and document current state practices
- Support the development of, participate in, and lead workshops or meetings that identify opportunities to improve process and tools. Create slides and presentation decks, as well as present the content to large audiences.
- Compile learnings and analysis from workshops into recommendations for sustainable future-state processes and tools
- Work with various cross-functional stakeholders to assess proposed processes and tools in terms of organizational & process impacts, costs and benefits, risks and dependencies and critical success factors
- Participate in the development of detailed user stories (requirements) and acceptance criteria, required to support components of the IT solution
- Support the development of timelines to implement recommendations, identify risks and develop a mitigation plan
- Support Change Management by providing visibility to the future state processes and changes
- Support business testing of new systems, including resolution of gaps
- Support the implementation of recommendations, transition the project to a sustaining organization and provide post roll-out support to smooth the transition

**What you’ve done**
- 4 - 6 years of business experience working within Merchandising, Supply Chain, or other CTR function that requires a comprehensive understanding of key merchandising operations
- Experience planning, coordinating and driving projects, including facilitating and planning sessions in an Agile environment
- Experience with process and tool development is an asset
- Experience with Visio and JIRA is an asset
- High proficiency in MS Office (Excel and Access)
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, as well as solid presentation skills
- Proven analytical and problem-solving skills
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, cross-functional team and able to meet tight deadlines
- Ability to effectively cultivate relationships with key stakeholders of varied levels, and representing a broad range of functions
- Demonstrated ability to challenge the status quo through suggesting opportunities to improve ways of working
- Committed to delivering results through remaining open to and readily responding to shifting priorities, following through o