Manager Retail Commercial & Operations

Key Job Duties & Responsibilities

1. Own end-to-end P2P governance for Retail, covering PRC, PR, PO, vendor allocation, execution, GRN/service confirmation, invoice processing and payment closure, ensuring 100% process compliance and timely transaction closure.

2. Drive PRC and PR planning and governance for all retail activities, ensuring requirements are accurately captured, budgets are validated, approvals are secured, and PRs are raised within defined timelines.

3. Coordinate closely with CPO/Procurement for commercial negotiations and rate closure, ensuring competitive pricing, benchmark validation, cost optimisation, and timely finalisation of vendor rates before PO release.

4. Lead vendor coordination from PO issuance to final payment, ensuring vendors execute as per approved scope, commercial terms, timelines, quality standards, and SLA requirements.

5. Monitor the complete PR-to-PO lifecycle, proactively identifying approval, commercial, vendor, or process bottlenecks and driving timely resolution to avoid execution delays.

6. Own retail spend tracking and control, monitoring Plan vs Forecast vs Actual vs Provision, with regular identification of deviations, unutilised budgets, overspends, and potential financial risks.

7. Maintain detailed budget governance across activities, vendors, zones, and locations, ensuring spend is aligned with approved AOP/monthly budgets and business priorities.

8. Track committed and pipeline spends in addition to actual spends, providing forward visibility on budget utilisation and enabling timely course correction.

9. Drive vendor-wise spend and execution tracking, ensuring work allocated, PO value, actual execution, GRN value, invoiced amount, and payment status are fully reconciled.

10. Ensure timely GRN/service receipt and invoice validation against approved PO, actual execution, and supporting documents, minimising invoice ageing, payment delays, and commercial disputes.

11. Coordinate with Finance/AP, Procurement, vendors, and business teams for payment closure, ensuring aged invoices and pending GRNs are proactively tracked and resolved.

12. Conduct pre- and post-analysis of retail marketing activities and spends, evaluating investment against business outcomes and identifying high-ROI and low-ROI activities.

13. Own activity-level ROI and effectiveness tracking, linking marketing investments with relevant business outcomes to support future budget allocation and investment decisions.

14. Identify and drive cost optimisation opportunities through vendor rate benchmarking, scope rationalisation, spend consolidation, negotiation, and elimination of non-value-added expenditure.

15. Conduct quarterly vendor performance evaluations, covering commercial competitiveness, execution quality, SLA adherence, responsiveness, compliance, and service delivery; ensure minimum 15% of monthly executions are independently reviewed.

16. Conduct regular market/POS visits and execution audits to validate vendor delivery against PO scope, approved plans, quality standards, and actual business requirements.

17. Establish strong controls against budget leakage, duplicate/incorrect billing, scope deviation, unapproved execution, and commercial discrepancies, ensuring financial and process discipline across Retail.

18. Prepare and publish comprehensive Retail MIS and dashboards covering PRC/PR/PO status, budget utilisation, forecast, provisions, vendor spends, pending GRNs, invoice ageing, payment status, activity ROI, and execution performance.

19. Provide timely escalation and actionable recommendations to leadership and stakeholders on budget risks, vendor issues, rate gaps, P2P bottlenecks, ROI concerns, and execution deviations.

20. Partner with Zonal Retail Managers, Exclusive Business Managers, Finance, CPO/Procurement, AP, vendors, and agencies to ensure seamless execution while maintaining strong commercial and P2P governance.

21. Act as the central commercial governance owner for Retail spends, ensuring every rupee is properly planned, approved, contracted, executed, validated, measured, and closed through the P2P process.

22. Continuously strengthen P2P governance, spend efficiency, vendor productivity, and ROI discipline, ensuring Retail investments deliver measurable business value while remaining within approved budgets and compliance frameworks.

Requirements

1. Education: Bachelor's degree in Commerce (B.Com) mandatory; MBA/PGDM preferred.

2. Experience: 3–5 years of experience in Finance, Commercial, or Procure-to-Pay (P2P), preferably in a Retail/Marketing environment.

Key Skills:

Strong understanding of P2P lifecycle: PRC, PR, PO, GRN, Invoice & Payment.

Hands-on experience in SAP/SRM and MS Excel.

Strong capability in budget, spend, forecast and provision tracking.

Good understanding of vendor coordination, commercial negotiation and rate closure.

Strong analytical and ROI/spend effectiveness skills.

Strong stakeholder management and execution/closure orientation.