Commercial Excellence Sub-Saharan Africa Senior Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific

Position Summary:

The Commercial Excellence Manager is a leadership role responsible for managing the commercial processes and systems used to drive execution across the commercial organization. The Commercial Excellence Manager is the owner of commercial processes including commercial operations, business development and commercial business processes. This role will work with commercial leaders and marketing to develop the commercial capabilities of the sales team and will play a leadership role in defining organization structure, resource allocation and competency development to ensure a commercial capability that clearly differentiates Thermo Fisher in the market. This role will operate as a key partner to the sales leaders, the channel leaders and marketing that support the commercial organization in MEA & also support the Eastern Europe (EE) rgion. This role will lead planning and execution on a local level of several key strategic and tactical Commercial Excellence initiatives including:

• Commercial Execution initiatives: performance management (metrics, KPI, etc.), support sales funnel management and optimization, sales training, CRM, Sales Initiative Plan & induction plans etc.
• Value Expansion initiatives: contract management and optimization, pricing management and optimization
• Business development initiatives: internal & external growth opportunities/initiatives

Responsibilities:

• Responsibilities span several topics, including Commercial Excellence, Commercial Operations and Business Development, Pricing, Go-to-market strategies, Sales planning, Market and competitive intelligence
• Leading and coordinating the local implementation of Commercial Excellence initiatives aligned to Global/Regional strategy.
• Leading and coordinating the local implementation of Practical Process Improvement (PPI)
• Leading and coordinating the local implementation of Integrated Business Planning (IBP)
• Driving continuous improvement in the commercial (sales and operations) processes to improve business performance (metrics, KPIs, etc.) supporting sales funnel management and optimization, sales numbers, sales training, CRM, Sales Initiative Plan & induction plans etc.
• Identifying and supporting the roll out of tools related to: Account planning and Analytics tools (margin management, CRM, etc)
• Contributing to strategic decisions and playing a critical role in translating strategic plans into operational plans,
• Contributing to strategic decisions and playing a critical role in translating strategic plans into operational plans
• Setting KPIs and performance management processes, assess local performance, identify performance gaps and drivers, develop remediation or action plans and deploy resources as needed
• Working horizontally within the region and across Divisions and Business Units to drive alignment, execution, accountability and results.
• Coaching team members to deliver high performance and accelerated growth (if/when applicable)

Key competencies for success in the role are:

Problem solving:

• Identify, assess and solve complex business problems for areas of responsibility, where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth evaluation of variable factors
• Demonstrate a strategic approach to achieve business objectives by asking strategic questions, aligning resources, developing action plans, and evaluating action plan results.

Analytics:

• Continuously maintain subject matter expertise with data sources and tools (including Business Intelligence tools), and apply this expertise to develop data gathering tools, deliver high quality data and generate high actionable insights and recommendations to achieve business objectives and address opportunities and or challenges.

Internal and Field Stakeholder Management:

• Closely follow the strategic direction set by senior management when establishing near term goals
• Interact with senior management on matters where they need to gain acceptance on an alternate approach
• Effectively communicate and partner up with internal and external stakeholders to align on business objectives and associated action plan

Decision Making:

• Act independently to determine methods and procedures on new assignments

Leadership and Teamwork/Collaboration:

• Align various functions that are included within the Commercial Excellence organization such as Demand Managers, Distribution Managers, Pricing, Contracts Managers etc.
• Actively collaborate within and beyond the team to design and ensure buy-in around solutions

Project Management:

• Utilizes project management tools and skills to organize and manage tasks and timelines in a manner that ensures timely completion of deliverables
• Ensures accuracy of analyses and other deliverables
• Ensures stakeholders are aligned with project deliverables through the life of the project

Skills and Attributes:

• Proven management skills with the ability to optimize team performance and development
• Highly skilled communicator with the ability to form and maintain good relationships internally and externally
• Strong interpersonal, negotiation and influencing skills
• Customer focused
• Proven analytical, problem solving and organizational skills
• Strong planning skills with the ability to handle multiple projects through to completion and to manage competing priorities
• Project management skills
• Commercial and financial acumen with a full understanding of the impact of failure in terms of business cost, production schedules and customer order fulfilment
• Excellent attention to detail skills

Qualifications and Experience Levels:

• Relevant business/commercial degree is preferred.
• Prior experience of working in a multinational organization
• Advanced Excel user
• Ability to analyse and manipulate technical and complex data and provide meaningful information
• Demonstrated decision making latitude
• Strong leadership skills
• Strong business acumen and project management skills
• Proven track record of handling complex analyses
• Must be fluent in English
• Must be available to travel 30% of the time