Senior Manager of Pricing in Atlanta

The Sr. Manager of Folding Carton Pricing is responsible for the advancement, management and execution of the Folding Carton Division’s pricing strategies, tactics, analytics and processes. This position reports to Sr. Director of Converting Pricing and is closely involved in developing the roadmap for the transformative change in pricing and the communication and execution of the enhancements. Sr. Manager manages the full cycle of RFPs/RFQs and other pricing requests. This position’s objectives include contributing to the company’s financial goals and positioning the company for long-term growth and profitability. This role requires a lot of hands-on work, efficient team management, close partnership with multiple stakeholders up to VP and EVP levels and effective introduction of best practices. At the current state, Sr. Manager oversees one Sr. Pricing Analyst and has the opportunity to manage a larger team and receive more scope contingent on results and performance.

Functional Responsibilities

With Sr. Analyst, Sr. Manager supports the Folding Carton business, typically with the activities listed below:

• Coordinates, manages and tracks all RFP / RFQ, contract extensions and other pricing/quote requests; partners with Sales, Operations, Finance and Marketing to review opportunities and contribute to maximizing individual deal profitability and to improving win/hit rate

• Designs and performs all pricing, deal review, profitability and other business analyses that support pricing related decisions, providing data-driven analytics tailored to the specific business situation and providing thoughtful recommendations and insights to drive leadership discussion

• Assists with transfer pricing between Paperboard and converting divisions, including coordination with plants, mills and finance. Facilitates internal pricing on non-transfer price products

• Owns framework for price tracking; provides price change information to Finance for revenue forecasting

• Executes and tracks pricing related approvals and post mortem of won and lost opportunities

• Reviews and recommends commercial terms and contract language, including price change mechanisms

• Maintains and manages contracts database, contract related pricing and price change models

• Facilitates market commentary for business stakeholders in conjunction with the marketing team

• Supports other activities and ad-hoc requests as needed

In partnership with Sr. Director, Sr. Manager will conceptualize, lead, socialize and execute the transformative change within the pricing function, capabilities, framework, processes and analytics in order to actively contribute to the company’s financial goals and long-term outlook, including but not limited to below:

• Closely engage with multiple stakeholders in Sales, Operations, Marketing, Finance and others up to VP and EVP levels to identify their goals, pain points, process gaps and necessary improvements to help develop and drive the pricing transformation vision, roadmap and new capabilities and enhancements. Lead communication, secure stakeholder buy-in and support

• Improve price recommendations to grow both top and bottom lines and to optimize asset productivity by enriching with advanced pricing analytics, competitive intelligence, customer/product segmentation and other relevant information

• Establish analytical framework to develop price guidance per customer and product segmentation, competitive and other business intelligence (BI)

• Develop the framework, process and tools to collect, track and disseminate customer profiles and competitive intelligence and to advance customer and product segmentation in partnership with other stakeholders. Collect and systemize information on competitive capabilities to provide actionable data-driven pricing and strategic decisions

• Continuously elevate pricing and business intelligence analytics by enriching with important product, customer, competitive, capacity and other internal and BI data

• Engage with pricing stakeholders in sister divisions to share knowledge and best practices and to work towards process alignment where necessary

• Continuously review and improve/rationalize pricing processes to drive better data-driven decisions, increase productivity of the pricing team and other stakeholders involved in pricing and to most effectively support the pricing strategy and tactics

Accountabilities

The Sr. Manager is accountable for the following:

• Leads through the company’s behaviors:

o Recognize performance: recognizes team and individuals when performance is outstanding. Recognizes extraordinary wins of commercial stakeholders.

o Empower: empowers team to grow their capabilities. Creates an environment centered on idea sharing and continuous improvement to better serve stakeholders and enhance pricing capabilities. Encourages team to partner with other pricing teams, sales, ops, finance, marketing, etc.

o Align goals: sets team goals that align to business needs as well as pricing improvement for the business and segment. Creates individual goals to further develop individual capabilities.

o Communicate the why: leads communication with stakeholders for rationale of analytical approach and influences stakeholders for process change / improvement. Provides thoughtful, balanced feedback to both stakeholders and team members.

• Reviews work of individuals on the team as appropriate to ensure quality work product. Takes action and problem solves without prompting when issues arise

• Directs the thought process for the team’s activities. Continuously strives to augment and enhance team’s capabilities and processes to improve pricing capabilities for the company

• Draws insights and makes recommendations to improve profitability of the company

• Provides managerial oversight and leadership on pricing policy and strategy implementation

Ideal Candidate Requirements

An ideal candidate will have the following skills, qualifications and experience:

• Relevant experience in paper converting industry, with B2B model, preferably in a large public company

• High business acumen and a track record of effective partnership with key stakeholders

• Strong leadership skills combined with executive presence and proven experience of team development with proficiency to manage a team of professionals that develop pricing models and tools, perform advanced analyses, articulate and explain analyses, present results to all levels of the organization

• Experienced in conceptualizing, gaining stakeholder buy-in and implementing transformative change and process improvements in pricing, finance, procurement, operations or similar

• Outstanding analytical mindset and skills; capacity to teach and grow the team’s skills and capabilities

• Relevant background developing sophisticated pricing frameworks, models and tools that drive value-based pricing and that reduce the dependence on discounting to win business. A track record of helping sales team effectively communicate the value and defend the price

• Proven record of building sophisticated pricing models, analytical tools and frameworks in Excel

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Advanced Excel skills required

Work Experience Requirements

• 12+ years of overall work experience

• 5+ years of relevant pricing, analytical experience; pricing and/or function transformation experience

• 4+ years of relevant manufacturing industry and B2B environment experience

• 2+ years of direct supervisory experience