Commercial Planning, Senior Manager

Silversea Cruises is looking for a Commercial Planning, Senior Manager to join our local team in Sydney, Australia.

The Commercial Planning, Senior Manager is the key function for the coordination of commercial strategy and optimization of resources in the market, reporting to the Managing Director APAC.

The goal of this department is to optimize total cost of sales and align local market goal and actions to headquarter strategy and priorities. The Senior Manager Commercial Planning is responsible for the data integration and analytical activities to support all commercial planning initiatives and sales operations in APAC. This role ensures a data-driven approach to the commercial development and resource optimization of the company. The Senior Manager Commercial Planning will work alongside the regional MD to drive the commercial planning decision-making process with his/her business acumen and deep analytical skills.

KEY GENERIC AND SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES:

STRATEGIC

•            Annual and Five-Year Plan – work with the Revenue Management, Commercial Planning and the regional MD  to develop, present and execute the market’s annual and five-year strategic plans.

•            Budget – work with the Commercial Planning Team and the regional MD to define the trade partners’ annual revenue/pax budget and commission program.

•            Commercial analysis – conduct analysis of internal and external business trends to drive the commercial activities of the regional office.

•            Identify risks and opportunities to commercial performance;

•            Initiate and lead new commercial projects and initiatives focused business and revenue improvement

REPORTING & FORECASTING

Collection, organization and analysis of all key data for commercial planning and sales operations activities

•            Revenue reporting – develop and run daily, weekly and monthly reporting of the trade

channel booking performance. Provide regular updates to the regional MD and HQ teams on travel agents/trade partners’ performance identifying successes, risks and opportunities.

•            Distribution reporting – develop and run monthly reporting of travel agent booking performance, commission and overrides. Monitor contracted travel agent partners versus annual growth targets.

•            Sales team reporting – set the quarterly revenue targets for the Sales Team/Sales Managers’ sales territories; regularly track and report on their performance.

•            Forecasting – Support to the regional MD, HQ Commercial Planning & Sales Operations, and HQ Revenue Management in budget and forecast definition (revenues, commission, travel agent growth targets and sales & marketing costs)

•           Development and ownership of business cases to support strategic and commercial decision

SALES, MARKETING & REVENUE MANAGEMENT

•            Travel Agent Database – work with the Sales team to regularly update and clean the travel agent database.

•            IT projects – support IT projects related to the commercial activities of the business.

•            Ad hoc analysis – work with the leaders of the Sales, Marketing and Reservations functions to provide ad hoc analysis as required.

•            Work with Sales Directors and Marketing Director on design and implementation of area sales & marketing plans to ensure their alignment with the regional and global strategies

•            Other – execute other tasks and projects as directed by Revenue Management Team as needed.

LEADERSHIP

•            Build on and strengthen existing internal relationships to drive collaboration and embed the data-driven sales approach

•            Drive regional priority-setting and collaborative decision-making to support better outcomes

•            Engage and partner with senior stakeholders within APAC and HQ to understand their vision and to define and recommend practical pathways for both growth and operational improvements

EDUCATION:

•            A Bachelor degree in a commercial/business fields

•            Professional qualifications (certificates/diplomas/other) in business strategy, commercial planning, analytics or similar

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE:

•            5+ years of experience in a commercial role (e.g. revenue management, business analytics)

ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS:

•            Analytical and structured

•            Self-starter, able to work with little supervision

•            Flexible approach to responsibilities and remit

•            Proficiency in MS Excel (advanced), Word and PowerPoint

•            Able to present data and findings concisely and simply to a broad audience

•            Able to simultaneously balance short- and long-term priorities

•            Strong written and verbal communications

•            Strong interpersonal skills at all levels of the business, a team player

•            Approachable and helpful

•            Experience of working for a local branch of a global business preferred