Vendor Warranty Manager

Vendor Warranty Manager

Bennington is the leading pontoon boat manufacturer and a wholly owned subsidiary of Polaris Industries, a Fortune 500 company. We pride ourselves on innovation, design, product quality, and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction across our Elkhart, IN operations. The Vendor Warranty Manager owns, manages, and continuously improves the vendor warranty recovery process, reviewing and resolving warranty-related cost recovery opportunities involving vendors, suppliers, and dealers.

This role reviews, validates, and manages recovery activity related to damaged parts, supplier-responsible claims and other recoverable costs, while coordinating vendor reimbursement requests and maintaining accurate claim records. This is an individual contributor role responsible for managing the vendor warranty recovery process and does not have direct people-management responsibilities.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Work with vendors and suppliers to pursue reimbursement for damaged, defective, mis-shipped, or supplier-responsible parts, track reimbursement recovery and partner closely with purchasing and operations teams to integrate into supplier score carding.
• Review and validate dealer warranty claims for labor hour accuracy, duplicate entries, incorrect coding, insufficient documentation, overcharges, and policy alignment.
• Partner with warranty, quality, purchasing, service, finance, and operations teams to validate responsibility, gather evidence, and resolve discrepancies.
• Manage and track open reimbursement activity, disputes, credits received, and follow-up items; prepare clear summaries supporting chargebacks, dealer adjustments, recoveries, and enhance recurring reporting for inclusion in weekly/monthly business leadership review.
• Identify recurring vendor, dealer, part, or process issues and support continuous improvement of vendor warranty recovery processes, standard work, and claim review practices.
• Serve as the subject matter expert and primary owner of the vendor warranty recovery process, driving consistency, accountability, process effectiveness, and continuous improvement across the organization.

Skills & Knowledge:

• Associate or bachelor's degree in business, accounting, supply chain, automotive/marine service, or related field preferred.
• Minimum of 3 – 5 years of relevant experience in warranty administration, claims auditing, supplier recovery, dealer support, accounting, service operations, or related function preferred.
• Strong attention to detail with the ability to review documentation, reconcile discrepancies, and identify inaccurate or unsupported charges.
• Working knowledge of warranty claims, labor time review, service documentation, parts returns, vendor credits, chargebacks, or dealer claim processes preferred.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to professionally interact with vendors, dealers, and internal cross-functional partners.