Sr Analyst, BPA Analytics Engine Performance

Sr. Analyst – Business Performance Analytics | Analytic Engine Performance

About General Mills

We make food the world loves: 100 brands. In 100 countries. Across six continents. With iconic brands like Cheerios, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Nature Valley, and Häagen-Dazs, we’ve been serving up food the world loves for 155 years (and counting). Each of our brands has a unique story to tell.

How we make our food is as important as the food we make. Our values are baked into our legacy and continue to accelerate us into the future as an innovative force for good. General Mills was founded in 1866 when Cadwallader Washburn boldly bought the largest flour mill west of Mississippi. That pioneering spirit lives on today through our leadership team who upholds a vision of relentless innovation while being a force for good.
For more details check out http://www.generalmills.com

General Mills India Center is our global capability center in Mumbai that works as an extension of our global organization delivering business value, service excellence and growth, while standing for good for our planet and people.
With our team of 1800+ professionals, we deliver superior value across the areas of supply chain, digital & technology, innovation, technology & quality, consumer & market intelligence, sales strategy & intelligence, global shared services, finance shared services and Human Resources Shared Services.
For more details check out https://www.generalmills.co.in

Job Overview

The future of food will be created by those who best anticipate evolving consumer behavior. Insights & Analytics collects, curates, and combines data, human behavior understanding, and empathy to achieve competitive advantage for General Mills.

Our mission in Insights & Analytics ‘globally’ is to be the spark that ignites growth acceleration, connecting insights and analytics to drive action.

We drive business growth through a deep understanding of our consumers and our markets. Our goal is to illuminate growth opportunities and guide teams to activate behind them through consumer-led strategies and ideas.

‘The Agency’ is a GMI internal central marketing team of experts that is agile, consumer-obsessed, data powered and AI-enabled.

The Insights and Analytics organization within ‘The Agency’ is responsible to deliver integrated consumer, customer, category, and business performance insights to power smarter, faster decisions and next-best actions, enabling precision in brand strategies, campaign execution, media and investment optimization across our US businesses and brands. The Insights and Analytics org has integrated teams operating from our Minneapolis and India offices, and this role is based of our India office.

The BPA Excellence team works on market insights and business analytics for different business units within GMI segments. This team leverages a variety of data sources (Point of Sale, Consumer Panel, Analytics outputs, Numerator, Luminate, etc.) to provide insights around critical business questions ranging from Brand and Category deep-dives, Driver analysis, Innovation, Macro factor impact, Consumer segmentation and Pricing and promo impact. This team plays a crucial role in ensuring that General Mills succeeds in an ever evolving market environment.

Key Accountabilities

Primary Objective of this role is to maximize the impact of the Data Science team in the Analytics Engine – Performance group by providing rigorous business-context validation, streamlining model deployment, and transforming raw outputs into persuasive stakeholder narratives.

Core Responsibilities
• Data Science Model Integrity & Reasonableness Checks: Systematically pressure-test model outputs (Forecasting, Drivers, Innovation) against historical behavior, economic expectations, and conventional BPA benchmarks.
• Operational Bridge: Collate data science outputs and integrate them into standardized business templates to support key planning cycles.
• Analysis of Change: Move beyond reporting "what" the data says to explaining "why" it changed, identifying drivers of variance between model predictions and actuals.
• Workflow Optimization: Own the "non-data science" tasks (data collation, template management, recap drafting) to allow Data Scientists to focus on high-value model development.

Team-Specific Support Areas
1. Forecasting & Economic Drivers (Support for Forecasting Lead)
• Build a repeatable process to recap and pressure test model output —ensuring forecasts mirror macroeconomic trends and historical category elasticity.
• Establish a systematic process for pressure-testing "Drivers" outputs to ensure they align with BPA logic before they reach leadership.

2. Strategic & Commercial Insights and BPA Support (Support for Insights Leads)
• Incrementality & Endurance: Develop case studies and examples to validate model outputs regarding new product launches to determine true incrementality vs. cannibalization.
• Demand Space Exploration: Mine "Where to Grow" insights in support of Strategic & Commercial Insights team to identify whitespace opportunities in specific food categories.
• Trend Analysis: Assist recapping trend forecasting and “so what” recommendations across our categories

3. Conduct UAT for New Capabilities (Support for AI Pods)
• Conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for new capabilities, including analytic ecosystems and AI to ensure functional and data accuracy.
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies, and improvement opportunities in data sources, logic, and reporting, and proactively recommend enhancements.
• Support successful rollout of new analytics capabilities by developing clear learning and development materials, including user guides, training documentation, FAQs, and walkthroughs.
• Enable user adoption by conducting knowledge transfer sessions, training workshops, and demonstrations for business users and stakeholders.
• Maintain documentation of validation processes, test results, and best practices to support governance, auditability, and continuous improvement

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum 6 Years total work experience with atleast 5+ yrs working with syndicated datasets like Nielsen RMS, Panel, IRI etc. Should have good understanding of key metrics across these datasets. This can be in CPG analytics, category management, revenue growth management, forecasting, or business planning with an expertise on RMS and Panel data
• MBA with Bachelors/Master’s degree in Business/ Statics/Economics
• Experience supporting forecasting, data science systems, modelling, or annual planning cycles will be preferred

Preferred Skills/ Job Experiences

• CPG Subject Matter Expertise: High proficiency in Nielsen/IRI/Circana and Panel data. You must know what a "reasonable" category growth rate looks like to effectively challenge a model.
• Analytical Skepticism: The ability to look at an automated alert or forecast and identify "noise" vs. "signal" based on business context.
• Process Engineering: Experience building templates or workflows that make complex data digestible for non-technical audiences.
• Collaborative Mindset: Comfort working in a high-touch environment supporting multiple workstreams (Forecasting, Innovation, and Strategic Insights).
• Exceptional analytical, organizational/prioritization and problem-solving skills.