Director of Commercial Operations (Hybrid)

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Company Description

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 600 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Finland and beyond.

Job Description

Fastmarkets seeks a dynamic and strategic Director of Commercial Operations to drive the execution of our ambitious growth strategy in partnership with the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). This role is pivotal in transforming our commercial operations, optimizing performance, and enhancing revenue generation across all commercial activities.

As a key leader in our organization, you will develop and implement a comprehensive commercial transformation strategy, focusing on improving processes, systems, and organizational design to achieve our revenue and profitability targets. You will align commercial operations with broader business growth objectives, acting as a change agent to foster innovation and operational excellence.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned leader with expertise in commercial strategy, sales operations, and process optimization within B2B environments. Experience in Private Equity-backed organizations is highly desirable.

This role reports directly to the Chief Revenue Officer and will operate as their second in command in transformation, M&A diligence and execution as well as commercial strategy and go-to-market.

Key Responsibilities:

Revenue Growth and Commercial Excellence

• Drive adoption of strategic sales initiatives to maximize revenue growth.
• Collaborate with Sales Directors to expand client accounts and increase revenue through upselling and cross-selling.
• Oversee quarterly business reviews, target setting, territory planning, budget allocation, and performance forecasting.

Commercial Transformation

• Lead the execution of commercial transformation strategies, focusing on achieving revenue, customer retention, and market penetration goals.
• Implement and embed new sales rhythms, including territory planning, account planning, quarterly reviews, and forecast submissions.
• Foster cross-functional collaboration across client services, marketing, product, technology, and editorial teams to enhance commercial outcomes.

Data-Driven Decision Making

• Leverage the Revenue Operations team to provide actionable, data-led insights for sales strategy and target setting.
• Analyse sales data to inform strategic decisions, improve performance, and optimize resource allocation.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Align commercial transformation initiatives with sales leadership to ensure cohesive execution of the business strategy.
• Collaborate with finance and Sales Directors to develop financial forecasts, set commercial targets, and track progress.

Change Management and Performance Optimization

• Drive change management initiatives to ensure seamless transitions to new processes, systems, and ways of working.
• Establish performance metrics and dashboards to monitor the effectiveness of commercial strategies and transformation efforts.

Customer Retention and Experience

• Partner with customer success and support teams to enhance customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and improve retention metrics.
• Identify and address pain points in the customer journey to optimize overall client experience.

Reporting and Stakeholder Engagement

• Prepare and present performance updates to senior leadership and shareholders, highlighting commercial outcomes and growth opportunities.
• Lead commercial readiness efforts for business exit strategies, crafting a compelling sales narrative and outlining future growth potential.

Qualifications

Proven Track Record: Demonstrated success in driving revenue growth, executing commercial transformations, and delivering measurable business impact.

Strategic Leadership: Strong strategic thinking with the ability to develop and implement actionable plans.

Change Management Expertise: Experience leading successful change initiatives across complex organizations.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Strong analytical skills with a focus on data-led strategies and insights.

Commercial Acumen: Deep understanding of B2B subscription models and professional risk analytics (PRA) markets.

Private Equity Experience: Prior experience in Private Equity-backed organizations is highly desirable.

Core Competencies:

• Exceptional leadership, team-building, and interpersonal skills.
• Strong communication, negotiation, and presentation abilities, including experience with senior leadership and shareholder reporting.
• Adaptability and resilience in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.

Additional Information

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It's this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common - and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers' experience and our business performance
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

You've read a little about us - now it's over to you!

If you like what you've read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it's time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it's used to determine whether or not you'll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we'll ask you on the day.

It's vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you're great.