Senior Manager, Regional Commercial Systems and Administration

About the job

The Position Holder is a people manager role impacting customers, organic growth, operating margins and profitability for the region. The role has direct responsibility for key commercial functions in the region with matrixed responsibility to the regional Commercial VP. In addition to direct people manager responsibilities, the role requires collaboration and engagement with external customers and with other internal functional teams in order to coordinate and execute on planned initiatives. The role will also have the opportunity to impact and improve operational elements of the described function with the goal to remove non-value added selling tasks for Commercial teams.

The Position Holder’s primary responsibility is to lead the Commercial Systems & Administration functions: the Sales Backoffice, the Pricing & Contract team and other commercial operations functions across all business segments. Furthermore, the activities need to be set against SOX compliance and ensuring quality of commercial processes. The Position Holder is responsible for understanding, measuring (KPI’s & Metrics), globalizing and improving core business processes, systems and practices to sustain profitable growth in the region.

This role requires commercial experience and acumen, thought leadership, and business partnership competencies.While a significant portion of the position demands supporting sales and business segment teams on execution of existing commercial initiatives, it also involves working with Business Development, Customers and Partners on future trends to drive new growth initiatives in the region. The leader will collaborate and work with Regional Commercial Leaders to understand strategic priorities/objectives for each segment and align resources/deliverables to achieve collective commercial goals. The role will provide insight into sales territory analytics and improvement projects related to cost to serve, customer profitability, market trends to support pricing activities and overall sales efficiencies. Overall a demanding, challenging, and fast-paced role with opportunity to impact and improve operational elements of the commercial function with strategic responsibilities to help influence future and forward looking initiatives for the enterprise.

What will you do ? 

• Effectively leading in the development of people in the department through appraisals, goal setting and motivation of employees and creating and maintaining a high collaborative team environment, leading people remotely (if applicable).
• Determine and ensure clear roles & responsibilities.
• Drive and achieve an internal/external customer excellence culture. Enable collaborative culture and drive organization to improve customer/client satisfaction levels and responsiveness. Monitor customer complaints and take appropriate action where necessary.
• Develop KPIs and reporting to measure and improve on the team’s performance in order to achieve more effectiveness and efficiency. Identify opportunities to improve internal / external customer experience and ensure a continuous improvement mindset (e.g. LEAN).
• Develop and manage the annual budgeting and planning cycle.
• Identify and implement Customer and Price Master Data strategy, policies and procedures by working closely with the other region counterparts, the global Master data management team and other key stakeholders. Ensure creating and maintaining an efficient, correct and timely data structure in JDE of all customer master data.
• Manage customer segmentation and hierarchy and coordinate and maintain third party administrator duties for customer portals and websites.
• Collaborate with the Pricing & Contract, commercial operations analysts/specialists and Customer service teams on pricing administration timeliness and accuracy. Provide guidance for improving day to day Customer master data and administration functions including price setting, price lists, price increases, price quotes and price exceptions and similar. Ensure a smooth order processing for the Customer service teams.
• Work with internal / external resources as needed to address processes, systems (incl JDE) and data issues that make inefficient or prevent execution of our internal commercial operations processes and activities. At the same time, drive systems and process simplification and automation and achieve best practice within the region and with other regions;
• Identify and implement key technologies that will maximize the efficiency of data management, order processing and reporting.
• Ensure JDE and Quality Management System (QMS) processes are implemented and maintained. Support internal and external Quality audits and timely closure of audit findings. Maintain Commercial SOX compliancy and improve controls and compliance within the commercial department.
• Ensure sales team has necessary support for all sales-related systems & programs (i.e. CRM) and administer sales analyses (SIP calculations, T&E, customer reports etc.).
• Provide business analytics, budgeting and forecasting support and QBR related activities.
• Support other initiatives and tasks that are not listed above but may fall into the function’s scope and responsibility.

Key Education or Certification Required

• Education and/or knowledge to the level norm acquired in a Bachelor program in or equivalent Job holder has preferably experience in a comparable position in an international industrial environment.
• Acumen and understanding of financial concepts and controls/compliance: SOX, GAAP preferred.

Required Minimum Number of Years of Relevant Experience

• 8+ Years International B2B environment, preferably multinational.
• 10+ Years in a B2B leadership / people management role equivalent to this position

Required Skills and Competencies

• Job holder must be fluent in English (professionally verbally and written) and preferably have knowledge of another language.
• Strong people leadership and management skills.
• Good working knowledge of MS Office, like Excel, PowerPoint and Word, preferably PowerBi.
• Strong Communication Skills – written, verbal, active listening, influence, etc.
• Result and customer oriented.
• Proactive / self-starter and team player.
• Resilient and being able to set the right priorities. Pragmatic and hands on mentality.
• Leads change – Seeks opportunities and serves as change agent
• Ability to collaborate and build relationships – internal and external. Strong influencing skills across business functions; confidence to approach business leaders with difficult messages and defend position.
• Analytical & Problem Solver – Analyzes situations and makes informed decisions with courage and conviction.
• Solution minded.
• Ability to recruit, train and motivate staff.

Join the team and let's do great things together!

Interested? For more information about the role or how to apply contact TA Partner Ying Cheng at [email protected] or your assigned HRBP.