Senior Innovation Consultant

BACKGROUND & ROLE PROFILE:

FIS Group is a mission-driven innovation & insight agency, seeking to re-imagine the future of food & drink. Founded in 2010, the business spans 2 divisions, split by insight & innovation to offer full-service solutions for the nation’s largest food & drink brands.

Sitting within the innovation division & reporting to the group innovation director, this is a pivotal role within the business, primarily working on partnership & integrated program clients. This will mean working very closely with the qualitative & quantitative insight leads to craft consumer centric workstreams.

As a senior consultant, you will be expected to understand, define & develop bespoke programs in response to client briefs. This is a consultative role with a bias for action & creative problem solving at the heart of it. We are looking for a great communicator, someone who’s confident, articulate, creative & well organised.

As part of your role, you will need to be able to identify opportunity, structure an approach, and inspire creativity whilst remaining outcome focussed. We need you to be able to think both critically & creatively in a way that brings clients on the journey but keeps projects on track. As an experienced innovator, you’ll be able to adapt throughout the process to ensure we’re achieving against client expectation.

This role would suit someone who enjoys autonomy & independence but can also slot into a team seamlessly. You will be expected to lead scoping discussions, projects & guide junior team members across the group.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

• Scope complex projects, quite often with little to no formalised brief. Using your skills & experience to probe, understand & develop the appropriate response. This will typically be with senior stakeholders across the client’s brand, innovation & commercial functions.

• You will be the face of projects you scope, acting as the lead client account manager & being present for all insight activity.

• Coordinate, lead & work on tasks related to project scopes of work, these could include but aren’t limited to:

- Proposal writing & scoping

- Data mining & synthesis of trend foresight & consumer research

- Framing & development of innovation platforms

- Workshop planning, coordination & development

- Facilitation of workshops & customer meetings

- Experience in concept writing & refinement

- Process development & optimisation

- SOP creation & recipe formatting

- Critical path development & governance

- Supplier briefing & information gathering (Specifications, MOQ, Price)

- Supply chain mapping & enquiries

- Reviewing all client presentations

• Lead project workstreams across multiple teams & external partners/ contractors.
• Assign project resources to meet key milestones and deliver completed projects on time.
• Accountable for maintaining detailed project plans and real-time project updates, tracking and reporting on project status to the SLT.
• Accountable for keeping projects on track.
• Identify project risks, and opportunities for mitigation and ensure timely communication/avoidance when projects are likely to be delayed
• Other tasks as assigned subject to project scope & client need.
• Building strong relationships with clients & driving repeat spend & upsell opportunities.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING TO FIS:

• BA degree preferred (not essential) in relevant field (Food Science/ Nutrition, Food Marketing, Food Business Management etc)
• 8+ years of related experience in Innovation, R&D, Brand, Consulting, Product Management
• Agency experience preferred (not essential)
• Analytical in approach with ability to synthesize information concisely at pace
• Excellent project management skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to work cross functionally & build relationships
• Strong computer literacy, and interest in learning new program platforms, as required
• Flexibility in workload & travel with the ability to prioritize resource workloads
• Passionate about food & drink brands with deep cross category knowledge

Other skills and attributes that will contribute to success in this role:

• Experience of commissioning consumer research projects & an understanding of various methodologies to tie in with innovation.  
• Creative with a keen interest in technology or design
•  Commercially astute
• Strong intellectual curiosity
• Confidence & a willingness to speak up and take ownership of the process
• Bias toward action & self-motivated
• Proficiency in the use of computer systems and software (Microsoft Excel/ Powerpoint)
• Experience using project management software like Monday.com