Who doesn’t know of The Kraft Heinz Company? We’ve all mostly used their products in one way or the other – mayonnaise, baked beans, and easily sighted at any restaurant – their classic tomato ketchup. A food and beverage giant of a company is inviting me to work with them? One cannot begin to describe the level of excitement I struggled to contain when receiving the phone call for an offer to work as a Sales intern at Kraft Heinz.
The role I assumed at Kraft Heinz was of a Sales intern in the Southeast division of the Distribution and Exports department, overseeing trade & exports as well as supply chain management activities in the following countries: The United States of America, Canada, Greece, Israel, Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom. It was a thrilling experience. I had always been interested in sales, since my father had over 30 years of experience in the field. However, this would be my first time working in a company at such a large scale. I was eager to absorb any information my Manager and team members relayed to me – and absorb I did! I learnt an unimaginable amount of practical skills such as communicating closely with distributors regarding novel product launches, in-store activation and crisis management when supply chain issues arise and collecting, analysing and presenting information on sell-in & sell-out sales data, marketing, prices and promotions while providing input for account plans. Twice every week, I conducted presentations sales movements of the previous weeks to the Business Unit & Managers. This gave me the opportunity to interact with employees far above me in the seniority ladder – a rare opportunity I made sure to enjoy and learn plenty from, including social activities such as keeping up with European middle-aged men’s beer drinking pace.
Apart from really becoming a master at using Excel and other number-crunching platforms, the biggest learning I had was related to Business Intelligence. I thank my Manager for allowing me to lead this responsibility, as it was a clear demonstration of the high level of trust he had in me to successfully implement this project that would change the trajectory of how the company works internally, from small tasks like manual logging of numbers in an Excel sheet to vital activities such as 5-year plans. I lead the implementation of a key Business Intelligence platform, ’Neogrid’, within the internal Kraft Heinz database. This was related to increased visibility and easy tracking of sales movements & reducing tiresome manual routines in order to switch over to an AI platform that would churn the numbers for you. It was difficult, and took up most of my day for months. However, my target was to be able to finish it successfully by the end of my internship – I had to have many frustrating calls with distributors and endlessly chase internal employees to meet my deadlines, but finally achieving this goal was a massive affirmation of my efforts. It feels great to know that even after leaving the company, the product of my efforts is still being used by them.
All things considered, I had an incredible learning journey at Kraft Heinz. I was constantly pushed to deliver the best results and encouraged by team members that were simultaneously pushing themselves to do the same. I am very grateful to have received this opportunity and developed close relationships with my Manager and team, that will remain long after my departure.