Commercial Specialist Midrand - Gauteng

Assistance with the advancement of the Commercial team, supporting the Global teams with bid support, partner management & contract management.

In this role you will contribute to the success of the company phenomenal performance, quality output, continuous improvements, and value-added contributions that enables the company to focus on its core activities.

Duties includes but are not limited to.

• Supporting the Commercial Manager to review agreements from risk point of view.
• Working closely with other departments to ensure that proposal and contracts agreed to are commercial, legally, and operationally sound.
• Drafting and looking at profitability of agreements and proposals
• Managing commercial risk on behalf of the organisation
• Ensuring effective communication channels to be followed in communicating the planning, engagements and expected outcomes with stakeholders.
• Assisting with costing for proposals an agreements
• Providing support to Sales with proposals and Customer engagements.
• Providing support to operations with regards to SLA governance on agreements.
• Assisting with Governance with agreements and proposals.
• Maintaining an up-to-date register and filling system of all agreements and proposals, this includes hardware agreements, software agreements, distributor agreements, service partner agreements, major supplier agreements, NDA and other agreements.
• Providing support with the onboarding and management of service providers and partners
• Applies effective Commercial Management processes, procedures, and methodologies to monitor and report on the quality-of-service delivery and identify areas requiring improvement.
• Lead, inspire and develop the Commercial Management Administrator through effective goal setting, performance management, timely succession planning and embedding a high-performance culture.

2. Key Performance Indicators

%

Negotiation of contracts and reviews 30%

Driving Income Growth in collaboration with Sales 20%

Administer Customer needs 15%

Provides commercial information to seniors and colleagues 20%

General Function 5%

Company Values 5%

Problem Solving 5%

Dimensions

Key Activities

Negotiation of contracts and reviews:

• Bid support on proposals and tenders, this includes but is not limited to.
• Assistance with gathering additional technical support.
• Review of Contract Profitability, Contract Leakages and Scope of work
• Drafting of contract changes and variations including scope of work changes, cancellations, and terminations.
• Management of Contract suppository
• Drafting and negotiating back-to-back agreements as well as other legal documents as required
• Legal and Commercial risk review of documents and offer and actively tracking renewal of agreements.
• Assistance with obtaining of bid bonds when needed.
• Assistance with Reviewing Risk in agreements, including Penalties & Liabilities
• Assessing the commercial risk which the organisation is exposed to in developing sales opportunities.

Driving Income Growth in collaboration with Sales

• Tracking of Tender status
• Facilitating structured discussions with stakeholders where context, purpose and expected outcomes are communicated effectively.
• Work closely with sales teams to agree bid or proposal strategy and qualify opportunities.
• Understand and assess internal financial and risk evaluations in bids and proposals. Ensure bid compliance with internal guidelines as agreed with management and propose appropriate bid responses to best achieve business objectives.
• Initiate discussions around Annual Increases and leading the process for renewals and/or increases.
• Supporting with onboarding and vetting of new partners and service providers
• Assistance with tracking of partner and service provider performance
• Liaise with Finance to ensure that Contracts are invoiced at the correct rate and timeously and payments are received.

3. Administer customer’s needs:

• Attending to clarifications, assisting with queries and requests
• Develop long term relationships with, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders.
• Negotiate with customer as required for finalisation of bid requirements and contracts.
• Providing regular updates to the customer in the event of incident escalations
• Seek ways to increase and improve customer productivity by advising customers on alternative processes through business case development
• Ensure all service contracts do not lapse or expire and are renewed timeously.
• Maintain an up-to-date list of all customers in the region and machine install base with detailed breakdown of machine set up on a configuration spreadsheet.

4. Provides commercial information to seniors and colleagues

• Report on performance of projects.
• Submit reports to customers & management as and when required.
• Ensure reporting standards of team are at the correct level and the correct reports are.
• produced by the right personnel.
• Report on the performance of projects in the monthly service report.

5. General Functions

• Ad hoc duties as required.
• To support the behaviour of working as a team, sharing best practice, and collaborating with colleagues outside of own sphere of business.
• To ensure full participation in the performance development process and maintain an up-to date record of all training and development activities/programs.
• To always act and behave in a way compliant with all company guidelines and policies, especially those relating to values and behaviours, environmental health and safety, ethics, and codes of conduct, as it is through living our values that we strengthen the culture of our business.

7. Problem Solving

The incumbent is required to deal with new problems by:

• Providing support to Service, Finance and Sales teams
• Resolving commercially related problems
• Providing alternate commercially related solutions to problems

Job Specifications

Education

• Educated to a bachelor’s degree or equivalent level, qualification to include Business Management Commerce & English This Degree is highly preferable but may not be essential if the incumbent has the experience required under the “experience” heading.
• Technical/Computer Knowledge PC literate (Fully proficient with MS office, particularly Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)

Working Conditions

• Travel required by any means appropriate (Car, Public Transport or Air)
• Use of standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines
• Work Pressures
• Submitting reports within specified deadlines (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)
• Client and employer pressure to submit bids/contracts on time; prevent contracts lapsing and expiring, ensure contracts are renewed in a timely and professional manner
• Clear understanding of the business strategy and objectives

Legal

• Valid driver’s license
• Own reliable vehicle
• Clear Credit & Criminal Record

Personal Attributes

• Commercially and financially astute, able to develop and present a clear statement of return on investment for customers
• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent interpersonal, communication skills and the ability to effectively use a number of different influencing and negotiation strategies.
• The ability to work within a competitive, challenging and changing environment is a prerequisite and should be coupled with high levels of drive and determination.
• Effective and confident in different and challenging cultural and commercial environments
• Support the behaviour of team working, sharing best practice, and collaborating with colleagues outside of own sphere of business.
• Strong relationship builder
• Highly literate and numerate
• Strong organisation and coordination skills
• Able to work under pressure and tight timescales.
• Ability to show an approach to continuous improvement.
• Results driven with proven success in developing excellent customer relationships and delivering first class customer service
• Good discipline and positive attitude.
• Proactive, self-motivated & willingness to learn.

Experience

• 5 years or more, commercial management experience
• 5 years or more, experience of working in a customer facing environment.
• Must have a good level of spoken and written English. Other language skills advantageous.
• International business experience preferred, either working overseas or for an international business.
• Previous experience in commercial environment, preferably including government sector.
• Evidence of ability to plan and deliver on strategy.
• High level of commercial acumen.
• Legal and contract negotiation skills required.