Alice Mcips

Responsible for leadership of the trade category team within Toolstation (TP PLC retail channel) With key responsibilities including: - Leading & developing a category team providing coaching & experience to drive performance and achieve targets - Leading special projects and initiatives alongside BAU demonstrating flexibility and adaptability to an ever changing market environment - Representing category as part of the ELT and driving positive change - Regular analysis of market trends, customer insight and competitor activities to identify growth and innovation opportunities - Cross functional collaboration with other teams including customer, supply chain and finance to meet customer demand and maximise sales potential - Own the P&L and budget for the category team to deliver on objectives, manage the supplier base and introduce new opportunities for greater returns with challenging negotiations - Build brilliant strategic supplier partnerships to secure support through aligned growth plans - Understand & manage commercial risks, communicating to the relevant stakeholders

- Continuation of leading a commercial team and the actions that come with that but with an expansion of responsibilities to include additional categories within the merchant business as well as HIRE and therefore a wider team -In addition to the responsibilities already listed I built on leanings from my previous HIRE specif role and prioritised a review of our sourcing strategy across all categories for all customer segments and this has led to the creation of a 4 tier model. I am now leading the team to implement this approach - This role enables me to work closer alongside the Managed Services arm of the business to ensure we can continue to add value to this customer segment whilst managing our supplier base effectively

- Lead the development and delivery of the category strategies aligned to the Hire business strategy - Representing Commercial on the Hire Senior Leadership Team to drive the commercial agenda with a focus on customer and branch support tools - Work cross functionally to develop a market leading range combining fleet (owned) tools and re-hire sourced products and balancing core range with extensions and innovation. - Responsible for the marketing and digital proposition build and influencing the execution through the sales and branch operations teams to build a customer growth plan with clear communications aimed at delivering the strategic goals - Create and lead a trading plan to deliver the category financials including building and tracking budgets / forecasting / COGS / trading accounts / market share - Lead, manage and develop the commercial team whilst providing support and leadership for the commercial agenda to the Hire Senior Leadership Team - Reviewing and leading the monthly commercial trading performance review; identifying areas of concern / opportunity and taking appropriate action in line with the category role and intent - Managing the supply base to develop a strategy and management of supplier relationships, to maximise return and working with a safe and compliant supplier base through leading the supplier audit team and process - Support negotiation of key supplier trading agreements and joined up plans to support these agreements - Oversea the housekeeping and administration of the commercial team to support our operational and sales teams - Work cross functionally and develop relationships across the business to support and land key initiatives - Monitor and implement pricing strategies for consistent pricing to our customers and margin performance

- Development and implementation of a trading plan to deliver customer centric strategies and activities for each customer segment purchasing heating spare parts from our business - Working cross functionally to deliver the trading plan, influencing and collaboration skills with internal stakeholders at various levels within the business - Team leading and development of colleagues including a category manager, category assistant and Business Development Managers to build a community and efficient team - Product Range management - range reviews to keep a customer relevant range in the right place and available at the right time for our proposition whilst managing supersessions and obsolete products in the range - Supplier relationship management to support the strategy and contract management supporting the sourcing team - Flexibility to adapt to the changing environment and requirements within the role whilst making informed decisions at speed when required - Ownership for marketing and campaign strategy, manging the parts campaign calendar, working with marketing on the collateral and specialist uniform for parts campaigns - Reporting on performance and analysis to understand drivers of performance; generating and leading the implementation of actions off the back of reporting findings. Creating action plans to deliver targets

Prior to completion of the Wolseley UK Graduate Scheme I obtained a position within the Heating Category team, as a Category Manager, completing the scheme early to take the next step in my category management career. From here I have taken on increased responsibility and this resulted in receiving a promotion in Summer 2018 to take a new Category Manager role, managing the cylinder, electric water heating, ventilation and tanks categories. I am responsible for just under £100million annual revenue. Covering all of WUK specialities means I am responsible for managing both domestic and commercial products within my categories to suit all our customers project requirements. My role involves in developing, presenting and implementing a category strategy including the constant review and maintenance of a core product range to ensure it reflects what our customers want and makes commercial sense. I also am responsible for my suppliers annual terms agreements, cleansing provisional stock and mitigating price increases. In addition to managing the external stakeholder relationships, particularly with suppliers, I also work closely with internal stakeholders for example working with marketing to deliver a joined up promotional campaign every two months and working with the external sales team to drive engagement and sales growth in key product ranges.

A graduate scheme to develop my skills in my desired sourcing role. Throughout a series of placements I worked across roles in several areas of the business including marketing and inventory, in order to gain a well rounded look at the aspects and departments linked to my final Product sourcing Manager role. My first role was based within branch operations in the Northamptonshire area where I actively participated in the running of a branch to provide an initial insight about Wolseley and the customers we serve. I gained product knowledge and feedback from customers as well as helping administer the companies stocktake. From January 2015 I commenced a 4 month placement working within the inventory team on a placement to gain an understanding of this area of the company. I managed purchase orders and the movement of stock between our distribution centres as well as maintaining availability of stock and cleansing slower moving lines. In May 2015 I joined the Pipes, Valves and Fittings (PVF) category working on a project surrounding repricing the own brand fittings range to be more market relevant. This was a major project to be involved in and it gave me great exposure to suppliers and the work behind ensuring our customers' get the right price every time. In December 2015 I took on my final role as a Product Sourcing Manager within the Domestic Heating Team, managing my own categories and putting what I had learnt in the scheme into practice. With the scheme officially ending in March 2016.

Part time job to coincide with my studies. Through managing a successful job and degree I have developed extremely high organisation skills. Working within a sales environment, striving to meet targets and create a loyal customer and recommendations through excellent service and a seamless shopping experience. I use communication to find out customers problems, wants and needs and sell them the solution to these problems with the right product for them. I present myself in an approachable manner. Taking notice of my body language and appearance. CAD knowledge to design visual representations of what customers' see their dream room looking like Fully confident using SAP systems - placing customer orders, booking in deliveries and communicate with vendors on a frequent basis. EPOS skills and fully computer literate especially with word processing and spreadsheet programs, used on a daily basis.

A placement in industry to compliment my Business Management and Economics degree Digesting daily figures and presenting these to the teams within the store Engaging my team to make sure they were focused on the task in hand. Leading my team to meet the targets. Using my communication and presentation skills when hosting training sessions with both shop floor employees and my fellow managers to ensure that company communications were fed down to all positions within the company Improving my organisation skills, especially when attending weekly management meetings and creating the departments monthly rota Working with finance - conducting safe checks within the stores safes to make sure that the cashing up, paid outs and till floats were accurate Working on administration functions within the store - managing the vans daily planner and booking in store deliveries from vendors I was elected into the position of the Stores Helpul People's Champion where I conducted listening groups at store level to gauge the teams opinions on how the store and company could be more helpful to employees and are customers and I presented these views at regional level - representing my store

My 4 year sandwich course included a year in industry and 3 years studying modules such as: - International development Economics - Industrial Economics - Managing the Global Supply Chain - Corprate Governance and Fraud Risk Management - Industry, Corporations and Governments - Investment and Portfolio Management - Marketing Management - Global Economic Issue - Marketing and Operations - Accounting and Finance - Quantitive Methods for business