Maria Rakla, Director

Maria Rakla

Director

The Nielsen Company

Location
United Arab Emirates - Dubai
Education
Master's degree, marketing
Experience
22 years, 0 Months

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Work Experience

Total years of experience :22 years, 0 Months

Director at The Nielsen Company
  • United Arab Emirates
  • My current job since March 2010

leading a team of “Associate Directors/Senior Managers and below” across MENAP working on different research projects for Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Mondalez in the region

More than 115% target achievement throughout the tenure - even during current recessionary times
Helped the team grow client portfolio by 125% over last 2 years consequently currently looking after the Platinum clients in MENAP
Successfully introduced business consultancy approach across markets
Managing the team and formulating business development strategies to budget and then meet yearly unit targets
Provision of continuous consultancy to clients through:
•Identification of market opportunities and recommending strategies to capitalize on them
•Monitoring of competitive market standing and facilitating related business strategies
•Providing consultancy in implementation of regional client initiatives at country level
•Looking after a complete Nielsen portfolio of products, which includes, customized researches (Quant, Qual, Online communities and Retail Audit)
•Dealing independently with the top to top management at P&G and PMI both presenting recommendations for their strategic decision making
•Have been also supporting teams other than MENAP for both P&G and PMI, which includes India and Sub-Sahara Africa
•Developed Joint Business planning actions to understand their business objectives for the year and helped facilitating the same throughout the year to help meet their targets as well as generate ROI

Senior Manager at The Nielsen Company (Pakistan)
  • May 2002 to February 2010

Starting from Executive level, over the years, progressed to Middle Management cadre based on well acknowledged performance in team management and business development

Lead team of Managers and Executives and mainly responsible for:

Give achievement / performance points here - minimum three points

Managing portfolio of diversified clients including P&G, RB, Kraft, Cadbury, Shell Pakistan and other local accounts
Designing, developing, managing and successful implementation of research projects across urban and rural segments
Managing Retail Audit of different FMCGs in Urban & Rural areas involving tracking of FMCGs market on weekly/monthly/bi-monthly basis,
Monitoring of field operations & training, deliberation on data processing and production of reports for the market estimates
Designing and conducting Census of Retailers/Dealers in Urban and Rural Pakistan
Designing and conducting projects involving in-depth analytics and consequently bringing out actionable recommendations to the business partners - leading it to ROI calculation
Managing client trainings on research techniques, methodologies, benefits & utilization - several workshops conducted in this regard

Education

Master's degree, marketing
  • at institute of business management
  • September 2001
Master's degree, Marketing
  • at College of Business Managemen
  • January 2001

Advanced courses included Business Research, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Management, Advertising and Media Planning •Worked as Research Assistant in Business Research Field

High school or equivalent,
  • at College for WomenCollege for WomenModel High School
  • January 1999

Specialties & Skills

ADMINISTRACIÓN DE BENEFICIOS
APPROACH
BUDGETING
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
BUSINESS PLANS
CUSTOMER RELATIONS
MANAGEMENT
MARKETING
RESEARCH

Languages

English
Expert
Arabic
Beginner
Urdu
Expert