Contracts and Commercial Manager

at  RM Education Limited

Overview:
Do you want to be help enrich the lives of learners worldwide?
At RM, we’ve been pioneers of education technology since 1973. We provide technology and resources to the education sector supporting over 10 million students around the world. We work with 28,000 schools, nurseries, and education trusts in 115 countries to deliver customer-centric solutions that improve education outcomes worldwide.
What we do helps learners at all stages of their lives, from preschool to higher education and professional qualification, we partner with schools, examination boards, central governments and other professional institutions, to enrich the lives of learners.
Within the assessment market we are experts in providing solutions for online exam testing and marking and the management and analysis of educational data. We work with government ministries, exam boards and professional awarding bodies for high stakes assessment such as GCSEs, A Levels, and professional qualifications. Each year, our software is used globally to conduct hundreds of thousands of on-screen tests and to mark millions of paper-based scripts. For over a decade we have been partnering with the world’s leading awarding bodies to deliver intuitive, secure, and reliable e-marking solutions.
The Contract and Commercial Manager in RM Assessment supports the Business Growth team in all matters of contract and commercial management.

Responsibilities:

• This role centrally manages the life cycle management of RM client contracts to support client retention.
• Provides commercial and contract support to existing clients which do not fall within strategic growth plans but remain a source of revenue generation i.e. SaaS
• The role holder will centrally have oversight for the P&L of all accounts outside of the strategic portfolio. Liaising with the customer relationship management team on any account variations both positive or challenging.
• The role will support the bid management process, providing commercial challenge and rigger as part of the solution design. This role owns the creation of contract obligation tracker for all new contract wins.
• They will be a key leader within the internal governance forums to ensure the Senior Leadership Team are fully aligned on the solution, commercial terms and financial structures ahead of contract signature by both parties.
• The role supports commercial discussions with the customer between preferred bidder status and contract signature along with delivery of the contract obligation tracker where a Strategic Account Director is not assigned

Day to day the Contract and Commercial Manager is responsible for ensuring contract obligations are understood and delivered, along with ensuring prepared ness for all contract extensions supporting all aspects of retaining RM customers. This management role is responsible for planning, designing and leading the contractual solutions for existing customers working closely with Strategic Account Directors and CRM’s. The Contract and Commercial Manager will build strong trust and respect with both RM and customer leadership teams, ensuring both the Assessment solution and commercial offer is designed and agreed efficiently and effectively whilst managing customer expectations as well as internal RM stakeholders at all times during contractual negotiations. They will be a key customer contact up to contract signature and ensure a smooth and robust handover to the appropriate Account Management lead upon signature.
The role will centrally take the leadership for the P&L management of all accounts that are deemed not to be part of the strategic portfolio. This will include the management of any changes to budget and working in partnership with the customer relationship management team and in some cases directly with customers. Providing full reporting context of the account performances on a monthly basis so that combined with the strategic accounts the Business Growth Leadership team have full visibility of account revenue performance vs budget.
This role reports to the Head of Customer Partnerships within the Business Growth division of RM Assessment.

Experience:

• Commercial: Experience of leading and successfully completing commercial and financial contract negotiations for contracts is essential.
• Customer Relationships: Outstanding track record in building and maintaining strong, trusting customer relationships in a commercial environment. Evidence of customer focus and advocacy.
• Senior Stakeholder Management: Proven experience of working with Senior Leadership teams to manage expectations and drive positive outcomes in complex commercial programmes.
• Technical knowledge: Strong experience of complex B2B enterprise SaaS solutions is desirable.
• Assessment background: Experience of working in Assessment, either General or Professional Qualifications, is a benefit.
• Planning and organisation: Excellent understanding of what is involved in developing, communicating and delivering a project plan for a multi-disciplinary team – coordinating and tracking tasks across a team simultaneously, accurately and according to priority.
• Delegation, collaboration and influencing: Outstanding influencing skills to work with a variety of stakeholders (inside and outside RM) to ensure a positive, effective and collaborative team culture that delivers results.
• Communication: Exceptional communication skills that demonstrate professional, presentable, dependable and self-motivated. Excellent interpersonal and team working skills. Strong communication skills both spoken and written.
• Judgement and Decision Making: Making sound recommendations based on fact and experience, with a focus on tangible results-orientated outcomes. Recognising when issues need to be called out or escalated to senior leadership

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead commercial negotiations at all levels within the customer organisation for existing contracts which do not fall under a Strategic Account Director and for non enterprise new customers.
• Lead the governance process within RM for the customer solution and commercials to achieve full alignment and sign off from the Senior Leadership Team for contract extension and new non enterprise customers.
• Central owner of Contract Obligation tracker for all new contracts, producing the output and allocating ownership with RM for all new contracts through the bid management process. Tackling any misinterpretations between the customer and RM to an agreed and satisfactory solution both product and commercial.
• Support the leadership of contract renewals within the Business with a shared objective to achieve all renewal targets and expand customer accounts.
• Lead discussions with the customer to understand their challenges and needs where needed. Listen, question and validate what success looks like for them ensuring RM provides the customer with a relevant assessment solution.
• Throughout commercial negotiations, ensure the solution remains true to achieving the goals and ambitions of the customer.
• Where needs or requirements evolve from the original proposal for contract renewals, lead the commercial implications with the customer and work with them to retain the original solution or to agree changes to the solution with updated commercial structures that support these changes.
• Lead governance sessions to ensure RM leadership teams are kept informed of changes to plans, solutions, commercial and financial implications and have the opportunity to advise and align on any updated proposals before they are shared with the customer.
• Help Develop and support commercial models for our SaaS orientated solutions for the market. Putting together a framework that evolves with the market needs and a contract template that supports ease of mobilisation when RM is appointed PB.
• Responsibility of RM customer P&L for all medium and to small client which sit outside of the Strategic portfolio. Providing effect financial reporting and support CRM function with decision making where needed.
• Point of escalation for CRM function to support customer commercial, change and growth discussion where needed.

Experience:

• Commercial: Experience of leading and successfully completing commercial and financial contract negotiations for contracts is essential.
• Customer Relationships: Outstanding track record in building and maintaining strong, trusting customer relationships in a commercial environment. Evidence of customer focus and advocacy.
• Senior Stakeholder Management: Proven experience of working with Senior Leadership teams to manage expectations and drive positive outcomes in complex commercial programmes.
• Technical knowledge: Strong experience of complex B2B enterprise SaaS solutions is desirable.
• Assessment background: Experience of working in Assessment, either General or Professional Qualifications, is a benefit.
• Planning and organisation: Excellent understanding of what is involved in developing, communicating and delivering a project plan for a multi-disciplinary team – coordinating and tracking tasks across a team simultaneously, accurately and according to priority.
• Delegation, collaboration and influencing: Outstanding influencing skills to work with a variety of stakeholders (inside and outside RM) to ensure a positive, effective and collaborative team culture that delivers results.
• Communication: Exceptional communication skills that demonstrate professional, presentable, dependable and self-motivated. Excellent interpersonal and team working skills. Strong communication skills both spoken and written.
• Judgement and Decision Making: Making sound recommendations based on fact and experience, with a focus on tangible results-orientated outcomes. Recognising when issues need to be called out or escalated to senior leadership.

Responsibilities:

• This role centrally manages the life cycle management of RM client contracts to support client retention.
• Provides commercial and contract support to existing clients which do not fall within strategic growth plans but remain a source of revenue generation i.e. SaaS
• The role holder will centrally have oversight for the P&L of all accounts outside of the strategic portfolio. Liaising with the customer relationship management team on any account variations both positive or challenging.
• The role will support the bid management process, providing commercial challenge and rigger as part of the solution design. This role owns the creation of contract obligation tracker for all new contract wins.
• They will be a key leader within the internal governance forums to ensure the Senior Leadership Team are fully aligned on the solution, commercial terms and financial structures ahead of contract signature by both parties.
• The role supports commercial discussions with the customer between preferred bidder status and contract signature along with delivery of the contract obligation tracker where a Strategic Account Director is not assigne