The Ulta Merchandising Strategy & Insights Team works in close partnership with the merchandising team and cross functional stakeholders to inform and support the development of assortment and merchandising strategies that drive sales and value growth. The team is responsible for developing and providing a thorough understanding of the beauty market, comprehending current and future consumer behaviors and trends, and tracking and predicting competitor activities. In addition, we assess the performance of past and current initiatives to provide merchant leaders with a thorough understanding of drivers of category performance and actionable insights that enable data-driven decisions and uncover growth opportunities.

YOUR ROLE AS MERCHANDISING STRATEGY & INSIGHTS SR ANALYST

The Merchandising Strategy and Insights Sr Analyst will help inform and enable key assortment and merchandising innovation strategies that drive growth and profitability across channels. S/he will provide holistic insights to the merchants including category trends, consumer behavior, pricing and promotion dynamics, space allocation, brand specific insights and growth trends. This individual will support their merchant partners by providing meaningful insights that help them better understand their business and uncover key opportunities to drive growth and profitability. They will partner with FP&A, Analytics, Merchandising Planning & Inventory, Corporate Strategy, and other groups to provide holistic insights to merchant leaders to help them better understand their business performance and opportunities.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop on-going proactive analysis and insights for designated categories
• Respond to specific requests by the merchandising team for insights on key, priority topics
• Support enterprise initiatives that drive improved integration of data to influence decisions being made by blending the art and science of merchandising
• Partner cross functionally with Merchandising, Marketing, Finance, Guest Insights, Corporate Strategy, Pricing etc. to tap into existing data analysis as needed
• Analyze wide sources of data and translate the data into meaningful and useful insights for merchant partners
• Gather, analyze and triangulate data from multiple internal and external data sources and use the data efficiently and effectively to derive meaningful and useful insights for merchant partners
• Drive disciplined hypotheses-driven problem-solving approaches to structure analysis and efficient data collection
• Communicate complex ideas in both analytical and user-friendly language to all levels and departments within the organization
• Create effective PowerPoint presentations that include influential data points utilizing easy to interpret visuals
• Elicit cooperation from a wide variety of sources, including upper management, project team and other departments within the organization.
• Present insights to Merchandising team in large group settings, including leaders
• Manage relationships with cross functional partners
• Automate processes and analyze data within Excel/Access or other analytical tools such as Tableau

Requirements

• Minimum of 3 years relevant direct work experience in data analysis (with 1-2 years experience in strategy consulting with a top tier consulting firm preferred)
• BA/BS or equivalent required
• Proficient Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint skills
• Clear planning and prioritizing skills; methodical and detailed work behavior
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills
• Experience preparing, analyzing, visualizing and communicating data
• Capable of working in a dynamic environment, handling multiple projects, meeting deadlines, able to prioritize appropriately and respond to issues quickly and creatively with an open and positive attitude.
• Independent decision-making skills and the ability to recommend viable solutions to issues, processes, and data change requests
• Intermediate experience with data mining and writing queries a plus (SQL preferred)
• Intermediate data visualization skills a plus (Tableau preferred)