Vice President of Margin Optimisation and Analytics

Vice President of Margin Optimisation and Analytics

Location: Hybrid working – any of our European Offices

RS Group are a £multi-billion, FTSE listed global provider of products, solutions and services to industry. We stock over 750,000 products, and supply to over a million businesses across the globe.

The primary purpose of this role is to drive the strategic direction and operational excellence of pricing, margin optimization, and analytics within the Product & Supplier Management (P&SM) function across the EMEA region. You\’ll be leading multiple teams across pricing and margin optimisation, and analytics, building on an ethos of high performance, and promoting personal and team development.

As a key member of the regional P&SM leadership team and the broader EMEA as well as group matrix organization, the role directs and executes pricing strategy, leads ongoing margin optimisation and develops marketing leading analytics as well as performance management. This includes strengthening our capabilities, improving forecasting accuracy, developing a culture of high-quality performance management, and providing strategic insights to senior leadership.

The role will champion data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement by establishing effective pricing frameworks, implementing margin optimization programs, and leveraging advanced analytics to provide insights that influence business outcomes.

What you will be doing:

• Leading and developing the function and teams accountable for pricing and margin optimization.
• Leading and developing the function and teams accountable for analytics, insight and performance management across the EMEA P&SM function, including dimensions of Products, Suppliers and Margin.
• Represent the EMEA region within the Group level pricing community of practise, including assuming ownership of some aspects on behalf of the group (e.g. tools, processes and initiatives).
• Direct pricing strategies and margin optimization programs to maximize commercial performance for the region, individual markets and product categories. Influence and partner with relevant functions to deliver margin performance.
• Establish ongoing cadence of proactively identifying and exploiting margin opportunities, including a data driven approach to evaluating and reporting commercial outcomes.
• Execute pricing frameworks effectively, respond quickly to emerging business needs, drive continuous improvements to realize efficiencies and productivity gains.
• Partner with category teams to understand and optimize procurement as well as cost price management.
• Establish the necessary technical capabilities and expertise to develop, own and manage a suite of tools and processes for pricing, analytics and performance management.
• Developing in-function capabilities as well as collaborate with existing analytics hubs and centres of excellence within the group, including supporting group, APAC and Americas as applicable.
• Develop and deliver market-leading analytics, insight and performance management across the full lifecycle and business dimensions of Products, Suppliers and Margin.
• Develop and manage (e.g. as product / process owners) commercial tools and systems for pricing and margin (e.g. for quotations and bids and tenders)
• Establish and direct ongoing performance management and cadence against commercial targets and strategic KPIs.
• Build a culture of transparency and data focus, enabling high quality decision making and execution.
• Establish improved modelling capabilities to better understand margin drivers and ability to forecast margin performance over time.
• Play a key role in providing ongoing insight to SVP EMEA P&SM. Leveraging data to clearly articulate and visualize the ongoing narrative related to the full remit of the function, in partnership with finance.
• As a senior leader and the leading subject matter expert, offer counsel and advice to senior stakeholders around pricing, margin optimisation and analytics / insight.

What we are looking for from you, in order to be successful in this role:

• Significant pricing and margin optimization experience, ideally within a relevant business context.
• Strong experience with analytical tools and project management.
• Proven leadership experience with the ability to manage senior stakeholders and lead change.
• Strong team leadership skills and experience in people development.
• Storytelling and visualization skills to communicate complex ideas or insight to secure stakeholder buy-in.
• Customer-centric mindset to improve internal and external product/services.
• Experience building effective teams: fostering open dialogue; creating strong morale and spirit in your team; creating a feeling of belonging and purpose in the team.

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