Rainbow Chicken & Animal Feed Epol is seeking a Commercial Operations Manager based at their Centurion/Hammarsdale. The incumbent will be responsible for enhancing business profitability and providing detailed costing information aimed at identifying profit opportunities, supporting strategic decision-making, and driving profitability.
The role further entails fostering robust commercial engagement within the Business and across the Mills, managing and coordinating commercial and financial aspects across the Mills, providing accurate and timely operational financial reporting, and ensuring compliance with corporate governance across the Feed operations.
The successful incumbent will also be required to provide insights and recommendations for system integration improvements and acting as the primary business lead for system implementations and upgrades.
Qualification & Experience
- CA or CIMA or Equivalent
- A minimum of 10 years’ experience, including commercial costing, profitability optimisation and people management
- SAP experience would be advantageous as would exposure to a manufacturing environment
Key Responsibilities
Strategy Contribution and Execution
Together with the Feed Managing Director and Feed commercial executive co-create and drive the formulation and implementation of the Feed mill strategy that supports the overall Rainbow Strategy and:
- Ensure that assigned commercial strategic targets are operationalised and achieved.
- Provide and promote the commercial and financial perspective in the growth strategy.
- From engagement with Mill leadership, drive the provision of strategic commercial and operations financial support and constantly evaluate alignment and execution against Business requirements.
- Drive strategic commercial and operations financial support at the Mill operations and constantly evaluate alignment and execution against overall Feed strategy
Profitability Analysis
- Optimise business profitability through comprehensive analysis of commercial and operational information.
- Ensure capability to apply and use costing and profitability tools/systems in the Feed business unit.
- Monitor operational performance with a view to directing GMs and National Engineering Manager on trends and gaps.
Budgeting and Forecasting
- Coordinate and control the Mills budget process and delivery within deadlines.
- Oversee the consolidation of the budget input from the various Mills and sense check reasonableness and ensure supports overall Rainbow strategy.
- Ensure that CAPEX budgets support the prioritisation of projects based on return on investment and risk and are in terms of the overall Feed growth strategy.
- Report the budget in the required format and present it to the Executive team.
- Draft the executive summary and ensure that the final budget document / presentation reflects the strategic intent and adequately communicates the year’s ‘story’ and explains major variances.
- Provide reporting against budgets and forecasts to ensure that any overspend or under recovery are addressed.
Capital investment
- Lead the commercial input for all new investment opportunities and work closely with the Mill managers to ensure optimal allocation of available capital.
- Evaluate capital investment projects as and when they arise by reviewing the financial indicators and ensuring that projects yield the required return.
- Evaluate return on investment information to assist with the prioritisation of projects.
- Identify sound investment opportunities for the business and communicate such to the appropriate role-players.
- Lead the reporting of post implementation reviews to the business.
Cost control and management
- Continuously work with the Feed Managing Director and Feed commercial executive to identify KPI and cost saving opportunities or areas where waste/inefficiencies can be eliminated and influence corrective action.
- Drive decision-making in commercial contracts that will impact on and benefit the Business.
New Project Appraisal and Feasibility Assessment
- Drive the appraisal and feasibility assessment of all new projects and provide commercial insight and capacity to the Customer, Operations and Finance functions.
- Challenge the apparent opportunities offered by new projects.
- Use back of match box calculations to determine feasibility and shoot down unfeasible project proposals at the "what if" stage.
- Ensure projects are costed accurately and profitably.
Reporting
- Deliver accurate month end and year end results that are in terms with IFRS.
- Together with the Financial Executive ensure appropriate external and internal audit arrangements are in place and assist in managing audit process to meet deadlines.
- Together with the Financial Executive/Feed commercial executive ensure that all year end and other reporting financial deadlines are met.
- Perform comparative analyses of results to budget, forecast and last year to test accuracy and demonstrate a clear understanding of reasons for variances.
- Provide monthly feedback on the financial performance and clearly articulate the impact of Front-end performance, key KPIs and cost management.
- Identify opportunities for value added reporting to improve the quality and content of reporting and messaging into senior management.
- Compile and analyse various reports for the month-end reporting as well as other ad hoc reports and presentations for leadership and Executive meetings
Commercial Insight and Technical Expertise
- Provide calculations, detailed analysis and associated recommendations emanating from any and all queries that arise as a result of changes in business operations, the economic climate or potentially might offer more profitable solutions.
- Provide expertise in management team meetings to recommend solutions based on insights and findings.
- Provide practical commercial expertise and insights to external customers and principals as part of regular engagement and ad hoc requests.
Staff Management
- Lead and develop staff within the context of the Labour Relations Act, Employment Equity Act, Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the Skills Development Act.
- Monitor staff performance and provide regular feedback.
- Manage staff activities, ensuring service levels are met and protocols are adhered to.
- Coach and support staff where necessary to achieve objectives.
- Manage staff leave and general time management issues in line with organisational deliverables and standards.
- Manage and deliver on succession plans to enable the development of a future generation of leaders and specialists and ensure optimal turnover and retention levels are maintained.
- Champion staff training and development through the utilisation of available training opportunities or contributing to the development of new training solutions in collaboration with national training specialists.
- Conduct regular performance appraisals with subordinates.
- Establish sound staff and labour organising and communication structures and systems.
- Lead the team towards meeting the strategy and targets through regular communication and utilisation of the full organisational talent management tool set.
- Develop and manage high performance multidisciplinary teams in order to solve problems within the commercial arena.
- Conduct regular meetings and ensure that records are kept and shared across the team and that action plans agreed to within team meetings are delivered upon.