First 100 Days at Corporate Life

years.

Prologue

Every beginning has its own feeling. Whenever you pass to a new era in your life, you generally have mixed feelings with the questions: Will I be able to manage this?, Am I going to reach my goals in the future? etc.

You have a new place to discover, a new language and new people. For sure, it will be hard to adapt yourself to this new life. I tried to make it easier for you with this fundamental guide.

Mark Twin will help us to experience this new challenge of life. He is a new graduate from college and about to begin his first professional experience at a well-known FMCG company. We will witness first 100 days of Mark together and try to contemplate the dynamics of his new life.

Certainly, all the characters, the incidents and the places are imaginary in this book. And it is so clear that process details or work environment may change in different companies at FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) industry. Moreover, all financial numbers and market dimensions do not represent real numbers.

I sincerely hope that this book would be a reference for the new graduates or the students at college, still searching what is the best for themselves. If this book supports any of the readers that I reach out, it will complete its mission. And I would feel very happy to connect with you.

ALPER G.

Day 1

After several interviews, Mark had got the offer from TBC (The BEST Chocolate) Company. When he first saw the offer, he figured out that it was the one he expected. He always wanted to be a part of a Marketing Team at a well-known company and he immediately accepted it to be an Assistant Brand Manager without a second thought.

TBC was well known for its famous chocolate throughout the country. It had been operating at the FMCG industry since 30 years, and took the 1st place at the market. Mark always admired this company and he was one of the loyal consumers since childhood. So, this was making him more engaged to his new company.

Today, he was at the reception desk and waiting to be picked up by his manager. First day was always hard because of uncertain things; but if you could imagine it like a new adventure or a new era for yourself, it could become much easier.

He met with his manager, John Bruton, brand manager from the Marketing Department. John took him to his new desk, and the first day started. He knew about John from the interviews; but now he was reporting to him, things would change from now-on.

John gave some brief information about day start-finish, cafeteria, lunch times and he introduced Mark to his team. There were 2 more people who were reporting to John. They called it a team. And small teams came together to build up departments (functions) and then a big organization.

John continued to tell about the organization:

Angelika and I report to Susan. Susan & Gomes are marketing managers in the team. They are responsible of different big brands & trade marketing execution. And the head of the function, Marta, Marketing Director, reports to Jay Colo, the CEO

Picture 1: Typical Organization Chart for Marketing at TBC

Glossary

Organization means an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as business or government department.

Organizations are mapped with Organizational Charts as seen in Picture 1.

CEO represents the HEAD of Organization and sits at Layer 0.

All the other department heads report to CEO at classical organizational chart and Layers go down in ascending order with branches seen in Picture 1.

As you may remember from our interview, we are responsible for the brands Balva & Crincho which are from chocolate bars (tablets) category. I will give more information about Balva, the brand you are responsible for. But first let’s take coffee from the coffee station.

When they were grabbing coffee, they met with Jim Harvest, who was Consumer Insights Lead reporting to Marta. John introduced Mark to Jim and continued:

Jim, Mark has started today and I am very happy to see him in my team. He will be responsible for Balva and you know we have great plans over there. I will encourage him to work with your team very closely, we need your analytics support for each project.

Jim greeted Mark warmly: Nice to meet you, Mark. Welcome to the team.

On the way to his desk, Mark thought about his new life. He would be the part of a big team and a complex organization, that was making him excited but also little bit nervous.

He had his new laptop prepared by IT team on his desk. And his first email appeared on the screen, it was a welcome email from IT and user login details were in.

Couple of minutes later, he received some emails coming from John about his responsibility area – Balva. There was an email about latest brand activations at Balva and market share reports of last year. Also he received details about the brand and executive summaries presented to the Executive Board:

Balva is one of the most admired Chocolate brands, which takes high market share among competitors. Total sales volume previous year was around 100 M Tons and has a market share of 11.5%. Balva has growth momentum for the last 3 years and the brand has grown 9% at CAGR (Last 3 years’ cumulative average) …

Picture 2: Balva Logo

Mark scanned the executive summary and he saw lots of new words and definitions. He was getting more curious. He wanted to learn everything as soon as possible and to become an expert at his own area.

His manager, John, caught him staring at his screen and felt his curiosity, also anxiety. He came closer:

Lots of new things, huh? No worries… Everything will be OK. You will learn all of them as time goes by. We will have sessions together to make you more familiar. Tomorrow we will have weekly team meeting; I have forwarded the invitation to you.

He just checked his inbox and clicked on Accept button. He realized that he had to learn more about outlook to understand different functional features (Calendar, notes etc…)

Glossary

At today’s business, companies use different mail providers for internal communication. One of the most popular ones is: Outlook.

Understanding different functionalities of Outlook like; Calendar, Notes and Contact Management will provide you confidence on setting your daily agenda.

After a busy 1st day, Mark was thinking about all the things happened in one day. He had lots of things to get used to but he was sure that he could handle.

Day 2

They were all together in a meeting room as a team. Kevin, who was responsible for the brand Crincho, was giving some brief information about last week’s sales and potential opportunities for the next period. He also elaborated new product launches and brand activation programs when going deep. It was like 10 slides of presentation, but it had lots of data, tables & visuals.

He wrapped up and gave the word to Julia. But John interrupted, he gave a task to Kevin to strengthen the story of presentation and he turned to Mark:

Mark, you will be working with Kevin while he is preparing his stuff. I want you to be familiar with the terminology and flow of presentations.

After the meeting, John and Mark continued their onboarding. John gave information about departments (functions) and how they operate together:

Mark, tell me, what is the main purpose of a company or an organization? To generate profit?

Very good… So, how do you generate profit?

Mark tried two options: Sell products? Decrease costs?

Yes, both are correct. So, selling, and saving are the main actions. We cluster the departments according to where they serve. I mean where a trade support action exists, we call that kind of functions as commercial.

Mark asked the expected then: "So, what about others? Production? Logistics? Distribution?

We call them as Operations. They operate from raw material purchase to deliver the product to customer. And all the others are called as support functions. Let me draw you:

Picture 3: Breakdown of Functions according to their responsibilities.

John went on:

I would like to arrange 1-1’s for you, with the critical stakeholders in each function, this will give you general information about the work flow. Also, I will send you a message that one of my mentors shared me in the past. I like the way it shows the actions and relationships between functions.

We will start with how we understand the consumer and how we generate our plans with help of these insights, so first meeting will be with Jim, Consumer Insights guy tomorrow. And afterwards we will have a catch-up session to make you familiar with your brand and Marketing.

Mark commented positively:

Thanks, John. Actually, I have some questions about the report that Kevin showed us yesterday. Can we plan some time together with you to go over?

Why aren’t you asking it to Kevin? He is the expert of it. Mark paused:

Yes, you are right. Let me ask him, thanks.

Mark went back to his desk and checked his emails. He received the email coming from John about flow & relationships between functions. It really looked very proper and showed different functions under four main tasks.

He thought: "It looks so simple when I consider whole process like that.

But in the details, I get confused. I think, day by day, I will get used to the general flow and terminology."

Then he scheduled some time with Kevin to go over the report that he presented at the meeting.

Picture 4: Main Tasks & Relationships between functions

Glossary

Different functions come together and act in harmony to deliver to the final product to consumer. Flawless execution is based on executing the right strategy.

First, organization designs the product and plan to make it real by executing the strategy. When it’s feasible by financial & market tests, production then trade happens.

Day 3

Time flew, so it was Mark’s 3rd day at TBC. Today, he would have meetings with Jim, the insights guy and John for marketing wrap up. He heard about Jim too much and this meant that he had an important role for the team. But it was always hard to build relationships with new people for Mark. When they first met with Jim at coffee station yesterday, his first impression was good.

While he was waiting for the appointment with Jim, someone entered the room. It was Marta Hopkins and it was his first time with her. She greeted him:

Hey there, you must be the new guy, Mark? Yes, I am. Mark Twin.

Nice to meet you Mark, I am Marta Hopkins.

Nice to meet you Marta, I knew you from our conversations with John. I was expecting to meet you soon.

Yes, sorry. I was out for meetings and the agenda was a mess. Normally, I generally introduce myself to new comers. How is your first week?

Oh, everything is so new as you may guess. Trying to adapt myself, but it’s very exciting to be here.

Happy to hear that. So you have a meeting here, I think? Yes, I will have an onboarding session with Jim

Umm, Jim is an expert in his area. You will learn too much from him. Ah, he came already. Hi Jim!

Jim answered:

Hi Marta, nice to see you. I need your 10 minutes just to go over the latest market share report.

Of course Jim, just come over to my room and sure, I will have some time with you. My agenda looks OK till mid-day.

Great, I will come after my onboarding session with Mark. Thanks. Alright, see you guys then.

After she left, Mark thought that it was a very smooth encounter for him. He did not know about Marta, and he had prepared himself even for the worst. His inner voice was interrupted by Jim’s sentences:

So, Mark, I will tell you about myself first, and then I will give information about what we are doing for Marketing and for the whole process.

I have been a TBC employee for 6 years and has started my career at Marketing Insights team here. I was working at another multinational, again at Insights before I joined TBC. It’s my 12th year at Insights.

Jim went on:

I have 3 people in my team, we are analyzing different parts of market data. There are different types if I go deeply, consumers, shoppers and customers. All they differ depending on your business model. For instance, for a kid consuming Balva, mother is the shopper, kid is the consumer. When selling our products to Organized Trade - Big Chain Markets, they are the customers and analytics for them is totally different. So we analyze a different bunch of data for different groups. You will learn in much more detail when you jump in the big data for Balva.

Mark had lots of questions in his mind:

How do you measure Market Share for Balva, Jim?

That was the question I was expecting… he chuckled. Actually, you may see the details at our monthly report but let me tell you the mindset. And he drew some figures in front of him and stated:

So, when you divide how much you sell as Balva brand to your market volume in local currency, typically, Gross Sales/Total Market Sales gives market share.

He added on the definition:

But generally, on top of this concept, you hear some stuff like organic growth, market expansion etc. These definitions will be clearer when you spend time on your data. Also, I want to give details about how we provide data from our vendors. There are companies that work on Market data and measure market share for different segments. For instance, for Balva, the brand acts in 2 main segments: Chocolate Bars as unique one, and All chocolate category for the more comprehensive segment. We track market share at both groups and report you for your actions.

That was one of the things I was wondering. What is the frequency?, Mark asked.

We gather reports monthly, and you can track changes in very detail for each segment/sales channel for Balva. Do you know about sales channels?

We will go over them with John. We have a session in the afternoon.

Good, Jim smiled. So, we are almost done in time and let’s stop here. You can come back to me with any questions. Probably you will have more when you are more in details.

Sure, Mark replied. Thanks for your time, see you later.

Jim left the room for his catch-up with Marta. Mark scanned his notes but there were many things he wanted to understand. For instance, one of the things was: Sales were in local currency when measuring market share, but there were different prices of the product in market. For Balva’s competi- tors, if they sold same quantity as Balva’s monthly sales with a higher price, they for sure would have bigger market share than Balva. How was this price sensitivity reflected to the reports? He noted down his question to his notebook and would ask them to Kevin, maybe John for the next time.

Mark went to the coffee station to grab some coffee. He was a little bit pensive with brand-new things. He just got his cup from the machine and someone said Hi to him. It was a girl and smiling with big shining eyes.

Mark said Hi to her. The girl went on:

Hi, I am Jessica from HR. I have not seen you here before? Yes, I have joined TBC recently. I’m Mark from Marketing. Nice to meet you Mark. When did you start?

Only 3 days ago..

So new. She grinned. Did you meet anyone from HR except recruiters? No, actually, you are the first one.

OK, you know me then. I am from the Talent Management team, responsible for all talent process. Ops, probably you do hell not know anything about it. Maybe I will tell you what is it about one day when we are available. We can plan some time.

Mark thanked Jessica about her warm welcome and offer. He was getting surprised that all the people he met look so friendly. John, Kevin, Jim, Marta and now Jessica. He felt lucky.

After chatting with Jessica, Mark rushed to his desk to check his calendar. He had a review with John after the insights catch-up with Jim. John offered to make it like a business review and marketing agenda deep dive to make him familiar with the concepts and terminology used at TBC.

Three days passed and Mark was already curious about lots of things. And he might ask different topics to John at this meeting. He had some questions about the market, Balva and the general work flow. Mark was expecting John to answer lots of his questions, he assumed that he was the man who could help him.

Finally, John got his desk. He looked a little bit nervous. When Mark attempted to ask about the meeting, he just told very shortly:

Mark, I have something urgent from Marta, can we make our session later?. He did not have the eye contact with Mark and it seemed he was so busy.

OK then, I will try to arrange something tomorrow. Mark replied. OK, John nodded.

Mark felt disconnected for the first time. He was thinking like every time this positive energy would go on. It was a stressful moment for him and he thought that he should understand the situation.

Then he saw Kevin at his desk and went closer: Hey, Kevin, how are you?

Fine Mark, tell me how can I help you?

Thanks, do you have time to work together on Crincho presentation? I need a warmup on presentations.

Yes, we can. Let’s arrange one of the meeting rooms and go over it.

When Kevin had finished the set-up in the meeting room, he started from basics:

Look, every company has its own way for the presentation flow. But generally it seems similar. Sure, details will matter. For instance, in my previous company, they use special templates starting with the meeting’s agenda, and generally they focus on the problems to be solved and actions to be taken. For sure, flows may change function to function. For instance, finance team uses different flows with lots of numbers in their slides but we generally use pics, numbers and visuals together. So, I just wanted to give an introductory information. Once you discover the details of the flow more, you will be able to influence your stakeholders.

Kevin went on:

My presentation is a sample business update for the brand Crincho. It’s structured on the marketing (initiative) calendar, monthly sales compared to annual forecast, market share by channels and key actions – follow- ups for the next period. And I also like to add an executive summary for highlights before connecting the main flow. John likes to have this summary as well.

Pretty nice. Mark was enlightened. It looked like more fun rather than data crunching. He thought that if he relied on his data, structures, flows could be enriched in various ways.

He asked: Do you generally use PowerPoint for presentations?

Kevin replied: Yes, we almost use PP for every presentation. Hence, if you have upper intermediate expertise on PowerPoint and excel, you can really do well on your daily job here.

Glossary

One of the main elements in corporate life is presentations, in other words storytelling tools.

Every organization has its own way for storytelling. This can be captured