Senior Commercial Excellence Manager

What makes this a great opportunity?

Suntory Global Spirits is a world leader in premium spirits with $5.5 billion in annual revenues and an ambition to become the World’s Most Admired Premium Spirits Company. We have a strong vision and strategy, an incredible brand portfolio grounded in quality and craftsmanship, an unwavering commitment to sustainability and top talent across the organization. We are focused on driving value across key priorities including American whiskey, Japanese Spirits, Scotch, Tequila and Ready-to-Drink. Headquartered in New York City, Suntory Global Spirits is a subsidiary of Suntory Holdings, which is world renowned for delivering quality and excellence across a range of products and categories.

Mission of Role 

Lead the Commercial Excellence function for Global Travel Retail by driving automation-led analytics, commercial capability, and performance management to enable sustainable, profitable growth. The role is responsible for developing reporting and decision-support capabilities, improving sales forecasting and planning processes, leading commercial excellence initiatives, and building organizational capability across automation, analytics, revenue growth management, key account management, forecasting, and outlet execution. Working cross-functionally with Commercial, Finance, IT and Global Commercial Excellence teams, the role delivers improved business effectiveness, supports strategic decision-making, and drives continuous improvement across the commercial organization.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead the Commercial Excellence agenda across Global Travel Retail, delivering automation-led analytics and business improvement initiatives that support commercial decision-making and profitable growth.
• Raise the level of insights, develop, and standardise reporting, dashboards and automated performance tracking through the Sales Analyst team to provide actionable commercial insights.
• Partner with leadership to identify and implement automation solutions that improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency.
• Lead commercial transformation projects with Global IT and Commercial Excellence teams, including initiatives such as Trade Promotion Management (TPM), Trade Term Conditionality and other automation projects.
• Deliver analytics training and presentations for internal stakeholders and external partners to improve commercial capability and adoption of data-driven decision making.
• Maintain and continuously improve the GTR performance scorecard, providing visibility of performance across regions and key customers.
• Collaborate with the Leadership Team to develop and enable the annual commercial cycle and Joint Business Planning process through structured systems and governance.
• Develop, implement and monitor best-in-class outlet execution standards to improve customer execution and commercial performance.
• Lead the commercial learning and development agenda by identifying capability gaps and developing structured learning plans for existing employees and new hires.
• Oversee the development of high-quality commercial training content covering Data & Analytics, Revenue Growth Management, Premiumisation, Supply Chain Forecasting and Outlet Execution.
• Conduct commercial capability and talent needs assessments, partnering with HR and Talent Development to support future capability building and succession planning.
• Lead the Monthly Commercial Review process alongside the General Managers and Senior Marketing Director, ensuring robust performance reviews and action planning.
• Monitor the performance, adoption and effectiveness of commercial automation tools and recommend continuous improvements.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent qualification.
• Approximately +10 years of relevant commercial experience within FMCG, beverage or consumer goods industries, including commercial excellence, sales excellence, analytics, revenue growth management or related functions.
• Experience leading commercial transformation projects and driving automation and business process improvements.
• Strong commercial, financial and analytical acumen with experience using sales forecasting and business intelligence tools including Excel, Tableau and other industry-standard analytics platforms.
• Experience in sales forecasting, commercial planning, revenue management and performance reporting.
• Previous field sales experience with demonstrated people leadership responsibilities.
• Ability to work effectively with senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders across Commercial, Finance, IT, HR and Supply Chain functions.
• Enterprise mindset with the ability to identify long-term growth opportunities and translate strategy into execution.
• Excellent communication, presentation and facilitation skills with the ability to influence stakeholders at all organizational levels.
• Experience developing commercial capability through training, coaching and structured learning programmes.