Commercial & Operations Manager at CIO East Africa

We are looking to hire a driven Commercial and Operations Manager to maximize our company’s operating capabilities, oversee our marketing strategies and guarantee customer satisfaction and drive growth and profitability. The Commercial and Operations Manager will play a key role in identifying and evaluating commercial and strategic opportunities, working alongside internal stakeholders to formulate commercial proposals and appraise new product additions. You will manage financial policies and procedures, and generate financial reports.

The Person

The successful applicant will:

• Manage communications with partners and suppliers on day-to-day commercial matters, including financial reporting and invoicing, contractual queries and new product opportunities. 
• Assist in developing pricing approaches for new sales campaigns and initiatives, in keeping with their overall sales strategy; and support product price list refinement based on feedback from partners, prospects and business development team.
• Liaise with the Finance function to oversee the preparation of monthly performance analysis, product usage reports and commission statements.
• Support the business development, product and finance/ legal functions in the procurement process, and take ownership of formal tender submissions and on-boarding agreements prior to Partners releasing new services.
• Using a comprehensive pool of data on partner consumption and performance, plan upsell opportunities and conduct gap-analysis against competitor products.
• Manage team and team workloads in order to meet goals and deadlines
• Develop plans to increase efficiency and reduce costs
• Improve existing systems and policies
• Ensure customer requirements are met in a timely manner
• Promote and enforces safety in the workplace
• Employing strategies to ensure company’s growth

Key Relationships

• External – Operational, Marketing and Commercial staff at partner companies and suppliers to ensure we have strong communication lines.
• Internal – Sales, Business Development, Product & Operations / Finance / Legal teams to ensure communication of customer needs and to follow up actions.

Ideal Candidate Requirements

• Skill Set: Sales, Business Development & Operations
• A strong appetite to learn how commercial and strategic concepts are applied in the tech publishing industry.
• Ideally you will be able to evidence sound commercial acumen, be it through prior work placement or similar, and an interest in tech publishing.
• You will hold excellent written and numerical skills.
• You will be enthusiastic, motivated and self-confident, with the ability to form excellent working relationships with internal and external stakeholders.