Rita Achen

• Provide strategic leadership and guidance to a team of 30 people with 7 direct reports.
• Represent Jibu's interests in overseeing and managing Franchisees and all business activities
• Development and monitoring of country specific goals and tactical plans
• Development and monitoring of Jibu Uganda marketing plan based on insights from franchisees, trade and past trends
• Responsible for Jibu Uganda budget; formulation, monitoring and defending budget spend with deviations clearly accounted for and explained

Successes:

• Increased brand equity as result of successful franchise expansion from 34 franchises in 2022 to 43 franchises in 2024
• 71% Year on year growth as at Q1 2024 and first full quarter of breaking even for Jibu Uganda driven by sales growth and better cost management.
• Put together high performance team driven by performance management initiatives

• Developing key account customer marketing plans, tracking and rewarding customers that achieve set parameters
• Ensuring all trade marketing activities meet or improve on budget, cost, volume and efficiency targets (KPIs) in line with business objectives
• Responsible for Distributor stock order management from the principal company based on required buffer days, planned marketing activities and cash flow
• Provide overall supervision to the distributions staff and monitor their individual and collective progress towards the achievement of distributions goals
• Provide guidance on resource and budget allocation, trade terms and credit risk
• Carry out regular coaching sessions for the distributor sales team through direct engagement and route accompaniments and provide feedback on opportunities for development

Successes:

• Managed to train and provide guidance to the sales and distribution team on best trade marketing execution which saw the distributorship receive recognition from BAT in 2020
• Successfully developed, oversaw execution and tracked business plans for the distributor which led to a net profit growth from 580,000,000 in 2019 to 727,000,000 ugx in 2020.

• Revenue growth
• Own the development of the distribution strategy and implement it effectively across the network
• Advising franchisees on the critical business decisions to grow their business in a sustainable manner
• Brand Standard Enforcement
• Act as single point of contact for internal and external feedback about brand standard adherence
• Coordinate audits at franchises to ensure full compliance with brand standards
• Act as single point of contact for internal and external feedback about brand standard adherence
• Customer Experience
• Review customer feedback data to continuously improve Jibu's customer experience philosophy
• Ensure consistent customer experience during all customer interactions
• Training
• Work closely with Jibu's head of Training to develop first class training materials to build capacity of franchise teams
• Coordinate delivery of training to new and existing franchise teams
• Successes:
• Rebuilt and strengthened the Franchise Development team through training, coaching post a restructure in November
• Launched the new brand direction in Uganda which brought about brand clarity more so internally that caused cohesion and eventual growth
• Developed the 2022 marketing plan that I fully implemented although with an excess of 102% of the budget spend but balanced out with 32% volume and revenue growth from 2021.

• Building and managing relationships between Colgate and key players in the Key account(s) and channel
• Working with customer marketing teams to leverage trade spending and develop effective promotional and in-store programs that drive consumption off the shelf cost effectively
• Drive point of sale execution with and through the merchandising company
• Responsible for developing and applying expertise on shopper behavior and the retail environments in which Colgate Palmolive products are sold
• Working in conjunction with shopper insight and research professionals to develop research programs and make recommendations derived from the customers related to (4Ps) product, pricing, placement, and promotion
• Collecting pre and post analyses of customer and channel promotions, developing a library of performance history, and recommending adjustments to business plans

Successes:

• Recruited and trained merchandising agency on best practice shopper marketing execution which saw the agency win several execution awards in East Africa
• Successfully championed implementation, monitoring and evaluation of three new product development projects in Uganda modern trade
• Developed commendable brand plans that were approved by the company which enabled access of financial support to run successful promotions and uplift the trade marketing execution in the modern trade.

• Support assigned Branch managers to achieve volume and distribution targets by ensuring full understanding and implementation of steps of a call as the leading selling technique
• Supervise sales and distribution staff and monitor their individual and collective progress towards the achievement of sales and distribution goals
• Manage the relationship with key accounts, BAT the principle and other stakeholders
• Champion innovation in trade programs development programs, development processes and distribution systems
• Provide the Executive director with regular updates pertaining to sales and distribution department activities
• Set area based objectives and targets broken down to routes to drive proper tracking of the field based team
• Successes: Built a strong fit for purpose distributor sales team
• Grew distribution foot print with the sales team that led to acquisition of more territory in the East by BAT.

• Management of information platforms integrating both internal and external area wide customer databases
• Developing and continuously improving demand forecasting capability
• Maintain effective information systems from both secondary and primary research
• Gather and provide data on brand and trade performance in the end market, and maintain an area central reporting database
• Provide assistance to the rest of the end market Strategic Planning & Insights (SPI) team to ensure effective SPI performance across end markets
• Build a close working relationship with information sources such as Anti Illicit Trade Unit, Trade Marketing & Distribution, brands teams and other business units
• Successes: Achieved 98% demand planning forecasting accuracy for the period I was on the role
• Took the lead in guiding the sales team on different types of information to look out for in the market which insight I disseminated to the marketing team regularly to guide in their brand planning.

• Providing leadership to the distributor sales team through the translation of the marketing strategy into operational programs which led to successful implementation of three volume and value projects
• Drive sustainable volume and value growth by training the distributor team to prioritize product availability, visibility, merchandising, pricing, product freshness and managing out of stock situations in my assigned territory
• Supporting the assigned distributor to achieve volume and distribution targets in order to maximize brand availability and visibility, through the execution of essential Trade and brand marketing activities
• Manage key customer relationship database on the SAP system at the distributor level which resulted in increased numeric coverage footprint and acquisition of new territory by the distributor I managed in South western Uganda
• Provided guidance to the distributor in areas of Sales, warehouse management, demand planning and forecasting for stocks
• This was a major success that saw me qualify for a promotion to demand planning at the national level
• Successes: Grew distribution footprint and opened up another distribution point for the distributor in Rukungiri which led to an increase in sales revenue and distribution optimization
• Trained the distributor teams on best trade marketing execution which led to the team getting awards and recognition in 2013 and 2014 at the end of year distributor conferences.