Senior Manager, Marketing Services & Operations

At Suntory Global Spirits, we craft spirits of the highest quality and deliver brilliant experiences to people around the world. We are seeking a Senior Manager, Marketing Services and Operations to strengthen the operating foundation behind Trade Marketing by improving how teams plan, buy, produce, manage vendors, and execute across a complex commercial environment.

Suntory Global Spirits (Beam Suntory)

Chicago, IL

Trade Marketing is evolving how it supports Commercial Marketing, Strategic Accounts Marketing, Field Marketing, and Partnerships and Events. This role will help build the vendor management, POS buying, process, and systems infrastructure needed to improve speed, consistency, visibility, and execution quality.

This is a high-influence individual contributor role with no direct reports. The ideal candidate is a disciplined operator, strong communicator, and practical problem-solver who can lead cross-functional work through credibility, clarity, and follow-through.

• Own and maintain the preferred vendor roster for print, point-of-sale, and promotional services, including operating standards, approved partners, and quality expectations.
• Directly manage centrally overseen vendors, including briefs, timelines, deliverables, service levels, issue resolution, and performance reviews.
• Define and manage vendor service-level agreements covering production timing, quality, responsiveness, accuracy, and escalation expectations.
• Administer promotional fulfillment partners and platforms for rebates, digital offers, loyalty programs, sweepstakes, and related promotional mechanics.
• Lead vendor onboarding and offboarding in partnership with Procurement and other required stakeholders, and support consolidated sourcing opportunities where appropriate.
• Partner with Procurement on vendor cost analysis, including bid comparisons, pricing reviews, cost drivers, benchmarking, and consolidation or savings opportunities; provide operational input while Procurement leads formal sourcing, contracting, and negotiations.

• Own and communicate the end-to-end POS buy timeline, including briefing, assortment decisions, quantity confirmation, approvals, ordering, production, and delivery milestones.
• Establish and maintain a clear POS buying process that defines required inputs, decision points, roles, handoffs, and deadlines across Brand Marketing, Commercial Marketing, Field Marketing, Sales, and approved vendors.
• Coordinate the annual and seasonal POS buy calendar so brand priorities, market needs, and vendor lead times are addressed early enough to support on-time ordering and delivery.
• Create visibility to status, risks, late decisions, and dependencies across active POS buys; elevate issues and clarify required actions before milestones are missed.
• Coordinate brand compliance, final specifications, and required approvals before orders are released to approved vendors.
• Partner with stakeholders and vendors to identify practical consolidation opportunities, reduce duplicative requests, and improve consistency in how POS buys are planned and executed.
• Provide proactive ordering and delivery updates to Field and Sales teams, with clear owners and next steps when timelines change.

• Design, document, and maintain the operating workflows that connect Brand Marketing, Commercial Marketing, Field Marketing, Partnerships & Events, and Marketing Services.
• Map current-state processes, identify friction and bottlenecks, and implement practical future-state improvements in partnership with functional leaders.
• Build and maintain clear Driver, Approver, Consulted, and Informed accountability frameworks for major work streams.
• Administer the Trade Marketing execution calendar, including production deadlines, briefing dates, decision gates, and recurring review cadences.
• Maintain onboarding documentation and a current process library that helps teams navigate systems, vendors, roles, and ways of working independently.

• Coordinate Trade Marketing requirements and governance across enterprise and partner platforms, including Ariba, Salesforce, Footmarks, ePOS, Connect/SharePoint, vendor portals, and promotional systems.
• Serve as the Trade Marketing business owner for Footmarks, partnering with Field Marketing…