Commercial Manager - Cape Town at RCL Foods

Job Description    
Are you a skilled Commercial Manager looking for an exciting opportunity? Look no further! Vector Logistics, South Africa’s leading frozen logistics operator, is seeking an innovative and experienced individual to join their team.

The job holder will be required to :

• Provide commercial support and insight into the operations and performance of the various Operating Units, across the Supply Chain, Analyse financial performance and make recommendations based on the findings and outcomes of the analysis.
• Consolidate and prep of monthly Flash results and commentary
• Consolidate and analysis of group Capex plans and quarterly forecasts.
• Provide direct commercial support and insight to the Supply Chain teams.
• Work with the Supply Chain and Strategy Commercial Executives in driving the ROIC agenda across Continuous Improvement, Capital Allocation & Planning workstreams.
• Facilitate commercial engagement with the various Business Units on monthly performance and various other Commercial initiatives.

If you’re ready to make an impact and contribute to Vector Logistics’ success, apply now, and don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity!

Minimum Requirements    

• CA SA or CIMA
• 8 years’ experience, including commercial costing and people management.
• SAP experience would be advantageous as would exposure to a supply chain/FMCG/ logistics environment.

Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Contribution

• Participate in the formulation and implementation of the national strategy, based on a 2 to 5 year view of requirements.
• Ensure that assigned and agreed strategic targets are operationalised and achieved.

Customer Pricing and Contract Management

• Calculate and provide accurate pricing information for the annual price negotiations.
• Together with the Customer Director, review customer and principal pricing contracts and manage the annual pricing negotiations and formula-based adjustments and agree pricing with customers and principals.
• Ensure related profitability objectives are achieved.
• Conduct regular performance reviews and highlight opportunities for the business and its customers/principals relating to, among others, rate reductions and improved efficiencies.
• Provide continuous pricing support regarding profitability to ensure that costs are managed against targeted margins.
• Drive commercial conversations with and answer related queries from customers and principals.
• Ensure that the Finance Support Team is informed of the correct pricing for customers and principals.
• Manage and monitor the allocation of charges to customers and principals to ensure that they conform to the agreed rates.
• Draft new contracts and service level agreements in consultation with the Rainbow legal team and Knight Turner (Company Lawyers) and manage the process in consultation with the Customer and Financial Directors to the point of formal sign off by the parties concerned.
• Monitor the contract terms of all existing customer and principal contracts including notice periods and schedule renewal discussions accordingly.

Budgeting and Forecasting

• Compile and review results of the budgeting and sales forecasting processes, including volume and distribution revenue analysis.
• Provide insight and interpret the impact of key cost drivers on profitability.
• Compile the monthly reports detailing customer and principal sales and performance.
• Conduct regular business strategy reviews and report to the Board on:
  • current and historical performance
  • market positioning
  • competitor analysis and pricing
  • growth strategy and opportunity
  • margin improvement opportunities
• Complete annual “tail cutting” reviews focusing on unprofitable customers and principals.

Profitability Analysis

• Provide meaningful profitability information and recommend ways to optimise customer, principal and business profitability.
• Support the customer team in the use of system tools regarding costing and profitability.
• Provide support and regular feedback on performance to the customer, sales and account managers.

Activity-Based Costing

• Drive the functionality of the activity based costing model and the associated business efficiency opportunities and costing.
• Manage the regular review of key cost drivers and update of the activity-based costing system to improve the accuracy and integrity of the model.
• Further develop and extend the activity based costing model to all businesses so that multi-dimensional costings and profitability statements can be produced by customer/principal.

Proposal Management

• Manage the business’s end-to-end planning and response to proposal requests from potential principals or customers, including driving multi-disciplinary teams involved in the process, ensuring compliance with proposal requirements and alignment with the business strategy.

New Project Appraisal and Feasibility Assessment

• Drive the appraisal and feasibility assessment of all new projects and provide commercial insight and capacity to the Customer, Operations and Finance functions.
• Challenge the apparent opportunities offered by new projects.
• Use back of match box calculations to determine feasibility and shoot down unfeasible project proposals at the "what if" stage.
• Ensure projects are costed accurately and profitably.

Reporting

• Drive enhanced customer and business profitability and performance information designed to unlock margin opportunities and influence improved contributions.
• Identify opportunities for value added reporting to improve the quality and content of reporting and message management.
• Provide sustained support to customers and principals, particularly those who raise specific queries.

Commercial Insight and Technical Expertise

• Provide calculations, detailed analysis and associated recommendations emanating from any and all queries that arise as a result of changes in business operations, the economic climate or potentially might offer more profitable solutions.
• Provide expertise in management team meetings to internal clients and colleagues and recommend solutions based on insights and findings.
• Provide practical commercial expertise and insights to external customers and principals as part of regular engagement and ad hoc requests.

Capital Investment

• Provide commercial input for all new investment opportunities.
• Assist with the preparation of Capex motivations to support sustainable investment.
• Report and provide recommendations regarding profitability.
• Participate in the reporting of post implementation reviews to the business.

Staff Management

• Lead and develop staff within the context of the Labour Relations Act, Employment Equity Act, Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the Skills Development Act.
• Monitor staff performance and provide regular feedback.
• Manage staff activities, ensuring service levels are met and protocols are adhered to.
• Coach and support staff where necessary to achieve objectives.
• Manage staff leave and general time management issues in line with organisational deliverables and standards.
• Manage and deliver on succession plans to enable the development of a future generation of leaders and specialists and ensure optimal turnover and retention levels are maintained.
• Champion staff training and development through the utilisation of available training opportunities or contributing to the development of new training solutions in collaboration with national training specialists.
• Conduct regular performance appraisals with subordinates.
• Establish sound staff and labour organising and communication structures and systems.
• Lead the team towards meeting the strategy and targets through regular communication and utilisation of the full organisational talent management tool set.
• Develop and manage high performance multidisciplinary teams in order to solve problems within the commercial arena.
• Conduct regular meetings and ensure that records are kept and shared across the team and that action plans agreed to within team meetings are delivered upon.