Head Margin Management and Commercial Controlling (Interim Mandate)

Lead commercial controlling team (3 direct reports) and ensure ongoing department operations such as sales reporting, planning and budgeting, ad-hoc business analyses on improvement potentials and business partner role to address strategic challenges as well as sales steering and sales management setup (e.g. sales incentives definition and monitoring, definition of key sales processes driving performance, tracking and reporting of strategic sales initiatives)

Collaborate with key stakeholders including PE investor, P&L owners (management board, head of sales) and functional heads (head of controlling, head of SCM, head of IT)

Provide functional leadership of commercial excellence team (department head and 6 direct reports) to define, further develop and execute commercial excellence roadmap as well as critical commercial operations such as long-term transformation agenda, price steering, CRM operations, EDI system, strategic customer planning process

Reorganized divisional pricing team setup (15 direct reports) and established line management and process setup

Identified short-term profit upsides for various channels (online and offline) and brands and business segments

Defined and drove excellence projects (partly in-house, partly with an external consultancy) to transform company operations in line with set goals and area of responsibility including culture, business processes, IT tools, quality and effectiveness, speed and efficiency as member of the corporate executive staff

Led and further developed pricing and tender management activities for the DACH business (~$0.5 bn sales, 4 direct reports, 5 SBUs across 3 countries)

Drove projects and initiatives to transform company operations in line with set goals including culture, business processes, IT tools, quality and effectiveness, speed and efficiency as part of the commercial excellence leadership team

Identified price potentials and coordinated implementation for a generics business unit (global, ~$0.7 bn sales, 1 direct report, functional lead >35 people)

Led business franchise pricing board and acted as sparring partner for important price decisions and further development of the pricing setup

Recommended price methodology and supported price decision-making with price and simulation models, price corridors and price differentiation criteria

Conducted profit optimization projects

Coordinated and supported selected strategy initiatives for the business division and strategic planning within the business unit

Developed and implemented price policy for major business unit segments and acted as second-level price approver

Further developed the price management setup including skills, processes and systems via internal and external projects

Inhouse consulting: Developed concept and tools to implement price differentiation strategy (group project) including thesis

Marketing: Conducted market study and developed strategic plan on pyrogenic silica

Global sales and distribution: Analyzed market potentials for distributor network and performed mass maintenance of SAP price conditions for global distributors business

E-Business: Conducted customer and market segmentation for silicones division and created central data pool using SAP master data management

Technical procurement: Automated purchasing processes