Senior Manager, Trade Planning & Deployment

Job Description

The Senior Manager, Trade Planning & Deployment, translates commercial and business priorities into clear, coordinated, and executable deployment plans for Field and store teams.

This role manages the end-to-end trade planning and deployment process, from calendar development and readiness planning through communications and content development, implementation support, execution visibility, and post program review. The Senior Manager connects Commercial, Planning, Marketing, Operations, and other Store Support Center functions to ensure initiatives are appropriately prioritized, sequenced, and operationally ready before deployment.

A core responsibility is developing and coordinating clear, practical Field communications and supporting content, ensuring store teams understand what is changing, why it matters, when it will happen and what action is required.

The role also oversees deployment and execution readiness, ensuring workforce capacity, labor standards, inventory, pricing, systems, materials, communications, training, and other operational dependencies are considered before launch. This requires a strong understanding of retail workforce planning, workload, labor standards, and store operating models to ensure planned activity is achievable within Field capacity.

The Senior Manager serves as the operational connection between strategy and Field execution, ensuring activity is prioritized, communicated, operationally ready and achievable before deployment.

What You’ll DO

Trade Planning & Governance

• Manage the integrated trade planning and deployment calendar, providing clear visibility to promotions, pricing activity, and priority business initiatives.
• Coordinate timelines, milestones, ownership, and readiness checkpoints across participating functions.
• Assess planned activity against Field capacity, workforce requirements, competing priorities, and operational readiness.
• Identify conflicts, dependencies, and risks early and facilitate decisions around timing, sequencing, and resource requirements.
• Lead cross-functional planning and readiness meetings, ensuring actions have clear owners and completion dates.
• Maintain deployment standards, templates, governance, and escalation processes.
• Coordinate competing commercial and operational priorities to create a manageable and executable plan for the Field.

Oversight of Communications & Content Development

• Lead the development and coordination of Field and store-facing communications and content for trade, promotional and operational activity.
• Translate complex commercial and functional inputs into clear, concise, and actionable direction for Field and store teams.
• Develop and coordinate deployment materials, including launch communications, implementation guides, toolkits, checklists, timelines, FAQs, and leadership briefing materials.
• Ensure communications clearly explain what is changing, why it matters, when it needs to happen, what action is required and who owns it.
• Coordinate content review and approval across Commercial, Planning, Marketing, Operations, and relevant subject-matter experts.
• Maintain communication discipline by consolidating overlapping messages and minimizing unnecessary, conflicting, or late activity sent to the Field.
• Manage changes to approved activity and ensure revised direction is communicated accurately and consistently.

Deployment & Execution Readiness

• Oversee the end-to-end deployment and execution-readiness process for trade, promotional and priority business initiatives.
• Establish readiness criteria and confirm critical requirements are addressed before activity is released to the Field.
• Coordinate readiness across inventory, pricing, systems, equipment, fixtures, signage, materials, communications, training, workforce capacity, and operational procedures.
• Partner with Field Operations to assess execution complexity, store capacity, and operational impact.
• Maintain clear visibility to readiness status, outstanding actions, risks, and decisions required.
• Identify and escalate initiatives that do not meet agreed readiness requirements or create material execution risk.
• Coordinate the final handoff to Field teams, ensuring leaders and stores have the tools, content, clarity, and direction required to execute successfully.
• Support deployment by coordinating questions, clarifications, and cross-functional issue resolution.

Workforce Planning & Labor Standards

• Apply a working knowledge of workforce planning, labor standards and workload management when assessing deployment readiness.
• Evaluate the labor and capacity impact of promotions, new programs and operational initiatives before deployment.
• Consider task complexity, frequency, duration, store format, operating hours, and existing workload when assessing Field capacity.
• Partner with Field Operations and workforce planning partners to understand whether initiatives can be delivered within established labor and operating standards.
• Identify situations where overlapping activity creates workload or capacity conflicts and recommend changes to timing, sequencing, or deployment approach.
• Ensure new activity is appropriately incorporated into existing store routines and workload assumptions where applicable.
• Incorporate relevant workload and execution requirements into deployment materials so Field leaders understand how activity fits within existing operating routines.

Performance & Continuous Improvement

• Monitor delivery against the trade calendar, deployment plans, and readiness milestones.
• Maintain reporting on calendar adherence, deployment readiness, execution accuracy, communication effectiveness, and outstanding risks.
• Partner with Field Operations to gather structured feedback on execution, workload, capacity, and the effectiveness of deployment materials.
• Lead post-implementation reviews for significant initiatives, identifying successes, execution gaps and lessons learned.
• Partner with Commercial and Finance to understand incremental sales, profit, and program performance where appropriate.
• Use performance data and Field feedback to continuously improve planning, communications, readiness, and deployment processes.
• Reduce rework, late changes, execution errors and unnecessary complexity through stronger standards and earlier cross-functional alignment.
• Provide concise executive updates on major activity, readiness, risks, execution performance, and required actions.

Cross-Functional Influence

• Lead collaboration across Operations, Merchandising, Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance, Human Resources, Technology, and Asset Protection teams.
• Facilitate alignment among competing priorities to maximize organizational effectiveness.
• Build strong partnerships across corporate and field organizations to improve execution consistency and business results.
• Represent Trade Planning & Deployment at executive steering committees, planning sessions, and strategic initiatives.

Leadership Capabilities

• Strategic & Operational Alignment: Connects business and Commercial priorities with operational execution, ensuring initiatives are properly sequenced, supported, and realistic for the Field.
• Workforce & Operational Acumen: Understands how workload, labor standards, store capacity, and operating routines affect execution. Uses this knowledge to identify unrealistic expectations and ensure activity is appropriately planned and resourced.
• Deployment & Execution Readiness: Maintains strong discipline around readiness and considers the full operational impact of an initiative before deployment. Identifies gaps early and drives cross-functional partners to resolution.
• Communication & Simplification: Turns complex strategies and functional inputs into simple, clear, and actionable communications. Protects Field teams from unnecessary complexity, duplication, and conflicting direction.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Builds alignment across Commercial, Planning, Marketing, Operations and other functions, establishing clear ownership and shared accountability for successful deployment.
• Operational Judgment: Balances commercial priorities with Field workload, capacity and operating realities, knowing when activity should proceed, be simplified, resequenced or be escalated.
• Ownership & Accountability: Maintains momentum from planning through deployment, establishes clear ownership and follows actions through to completion.
• Continuous Improvement: Uses Field feedback, execution results, and performance data to strengthen future planning, communications, workforce assumptions, and deployment standards.
• Executive Presence: Communicates priorities, risks, decisions, and recommendations clearly to senior leaders, balancing strategic context with the operational detail required to drive action.
• Team Leadership: Sets clear expectations, develops capability, and creates a culture of ownership, collaboration, quality, and consistent delivery.

Compensation: $105,000 - $115,000 annually

About WHSmith North America

WHSmith is a leading global travel retailer with over 1,700 stores across 30 countries worldwide. WHSmith North America, incorporating Marshall Retail Group (MRG) and InMotion, represents over half of the Company’s international store estate, with a collection of attractive, successful specialty retail stores located in airports and resorts across North America.

EEO/ADA/DFWP

WHSmith North America is committed to employing a diverse workforce. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin/ancestry, age, gender identity, gender expression, military/veteran status, marital status, disability status or any other basis prohibited by law.

Job Requirements

Qualifications:

Role Requirements & Leadership Capabilities

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Operations, or a related field preferred.
• 7–10 years of experience in retail operations, trade planning, commercial deployment, program management, or a related discipline. A combination of work experience and education will be considered.
• Strong understanding of retail store operations, workforce planning, labor standards, workload management, and Field execution.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating complex initiatives across Commercial, Planning, Marketing, Operations, and other business functions.
• Experience managing integrated calendars, implementation plans, milestones, dependencies, and deployment readiness processes.
• Experience assessing workforce capacity and labor implications associated with new programs, promotions, or operational initiatives.
• Working knowledge of task-based workload assumptions, store productivity measures and workforce planning processes.
• Experience creating Field, store, and executive-facing communications, with the ability to translate complex information into practical and actionable content.
• Strong written communication, editing and presentation skills, with the ability to tailor content to audience.
• Strong analytical and reporting capability, including the ability to translate performance data and operational feedback into clear actions.
• Strong project-management, process-improvement, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities while maintaining accuracy, visibility, and accountability.
• Experience with enterprise project-management, collaboration, and reporting tools.
• Ability to influence decisions and drive action across functions without relying on direct reporting authority.