EVP, Group Commercial Director

Job Description:

The purpose of the Group Commercial Director is therefore to maximize revenue while optimising margin contribution, mitigate risk and maximize growth across both dentsu’s new and existing client business. This will be achieved by implementing a strategy of commercial excellence. The Group Commercial Director is a critical role within the region and will collaborate across brands, functions and geographies to implement commercial best practices and align with the global operations/efficiency agenda.

The Director is a key business partner to growth leadership, brand leadership, practice leadership, finance leadership and the Global Commercial team. Under the Director’s leadership, the Commercial team will maintain solid client Procurement and Finance relationships to allow for the negotiation and closure of industry leading risk-mitigated commercial agreements, delivery models and pricing structures to capture the value that our dentsu partnership delivers to our clients.

The role will also ensure strong governance, compliance, innovation, and talent development as well as the implementation and usage of standardized processes and tools.

• Lead a community of Client Commercial Leads to support high priority global and integrated new business pitches
• Optimize commercial structures and innovative offers to create highly competitive commercial offers for new business

• Provide executive sponsorship for priority Global and integrated clients as assigned
• Manage escalation of commercial issues to dentsu leadership
• Advise and strategize on proactive client renewals

• Lead a community of Client Commercial Leads to support high priority global and regional Client Leaders in developing cross-practice profitable growth agendas
• Translate the global commercial excellence strategy into a RACI defined and wave-bound program to enable the business to iteratively self-serve and achieve measurable progress as the strategy is implemented
• Optimize people & structure, processes and technology to support this agenda
• Define and manage interdependencies with other work streams in play in dentsu
• Support the business to ensure that short term commercial gains do not take precedence over long term commercial sustainability, when this would otherwise present unacceptable levels of commercial risk

• Develop and manage a team of strong commercial practitioners supporting existing and potential global and regional clients
• Mentor and guide junior team members on commercial practices and strategies

• Codify a cross-practice program for management of contract lifecycle management including client sales approvals with relevant associated policies to ensure that both inter and intra practice/geography contract approvals have the appropriate governance by the business
• Develop toolkits and frameworks to support the business in the management of important commercial negotiations both around the curation of new business, as well as the management of performance related and remediation related events

• Measure and drive client financial performance on new and existing business
• Provide senior commercial guidance on key client accounts when support needed by the practices or client leaders.
• Create a strong environment of governance for the functions, practices and geographical leadership through which to implement and support the enterprise level commercial excellence program and to mitigate the risks associated with the delivery of services
• Ensure that a clear program of commercial excellence training is scaled across the region to ensure that the business has a deep working knowledge of such policies
• Assist in developing and implementing key commercial policies to govern the businesses’ management of areas such as payment terms, liabilities and indemnities etc as well as being equipped to appropriately manage negotiations around these topics

• Develop methodologies and processes for client P&L reporting, business models and commercial analysis
• Define benchmarks, KPIs and reporting for pricing, client financial performance and commercial success

• Support dentsu in the realization of both its financial year and long term (5 year+) commercial goals through the…