Finance Business Partner-Commercial

Scope of Job: The Commercial Finance Business Partner leads the enterprise pricing strategy and execution across all customer segments (including Military, Government and Contract Manufacturing), translating analytical insights into profitable, scalable outcomes. This role governs pricing policies and models, integrates pricing with FP&A and revenue recognition, and drives cross-functional alignment with Sales, Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, and R&D to ensure profitability targets and strategic objectives are being met. The Business Partner manages the Pricing & Insights team and ensures high standards of accuracy, timeliness, data integrity, and continuous improvement.

Essential Job Functions and Responsibilities:

• Lead Strategic Pricing Frameworks:
  • Define, implement, and govern the company's strategic pricing frameworks, policies, guardrails, and tiering across channels, customers, and product portfolios.
  • Establish price-setting and price-change methodologies (list price, net price, tiers/discount ladders, price waterfalls, surcharges, indexation, deal guidance, and overrides).
  • Ensure competitive positioning and sustainable margin outcomes through market, customer, and cost-based models.
• Drive Profitability & Insight Translation
  • Convert analytical insights (cost structures, pricing trends, margin performance, price realization, and PPV-Purchase Price Variance) into actionable strategies that improve profitability.
  • Partner with Commercial leaders on pricing for new bids, renewals, and contract compliance; quantify impact on revenue, gross margin, and contribution margin.
  • Lead price realization tracking and margin bridge analysis (price, mix, volume, cost, FX) for executive decision-making.
  • Implement scenario modeling for proposed price actions, elasticity, and competitive response.
  • Act as the finance lead for customer commercial agreements by reviewing and interpreting customer contracts / SLAs, supporting the development and implementation of new agreements and pricing structures, ensuring accurate setup and governance of contractual terms, and managing customer billings related to R&D activities, incremental services, surcharges, and other non-standard commercial charges.
• Executive Reporting & Financial Integration
  • Own executive-level pricing reports, dashboards, forecasts, and scenario models; present weekly in Price Boards, monthly in Business Reviews and quarterly to the Board as needed.
  • Align pricing forecasts with FP&A targets, Annual Operating Plan, and Strategic Plan deliverables; partner closely with Accounting on revenue recognition compliance and price-related accruals/rebates.
  • Integrate pricing assumptions into long-range planning, budget cycles, and performance management cadence.
  • Monitor and analyze new business performance against budgeted targets by tracking volume, revenue, margin and pricing assumptions, identifying variances and risks, and partnering with the Commercial teams to support achievement of financial and strategic growth objectives.
• Process Governance & Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Standardize pricing processes (quote-to-contract, approvals, discount governance, deal desks) and strengthen data integrity across ERP/CPQ/CRM systems.
  • Ensure seamless integration with Sales, Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, and R&D for consistent execution and decision-making.
  • Partner closely with site operations and operations finance to develop accurate new business costings by validating labor, material, overhead, capacity and operational assumptions, and ensuring all manufacturing and supply chain costs are appropriately captured and reflected in pricing models and customer proposals.
  • Establish KPIs, SLAs, and audit trails for pricing approvals, customer profitability reviews, and policy adherence.
• R&D Pricing Strategy
  • Partner with R&D/Product Management to establish pricing frameworks for new products and innovations, including lifecycle cost structures, target margin, market positioning, and price corridors.
  • Build NPI (new product introduction) pricing business cases; validate willingness-to-pay and value-based pricing with VOC research, competitive intelligence, and pilot testing.
  • Monitor post-launch price realization, mix, and profitability vs. business case.
• Team Leadership & Development
  • Lead, mentor, and develop the Pricing & Insights team; define roles, goals, development plans, and succession.
  • Coordinate customer reporting requirements, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and a "single source of truth" approach.
  • Foster a culture of curiosity, operational excellence, and continuous improvement in pricing analytics and governance.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Education: CPA or MBA required.

Experience: 10 years of experience in manufacturing accounting, including managing a business partnering finance function, preferably in the multi-site food manufacturing industry. Experience with Oracle financial system is desired, but not critical. Advanced excel user. Finely tuned presentation and communication skills, able to present information clearly and succinctly to a range of stakeholders.

Competencies : Business Valuation, Capital Budgeting, Capital Management, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Financial Analysis, Financial Forecasting, Financial Modeling, Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), Financial Reporting, Investment Management, Profitability Analysis, Trend Analysis, Strategic Planning, Financial Analysis Software, Financial Research and Analytics Software, Relationship Management, Succession Planning, Project Management, Detail Oriented, Presentation and Presenting Skills, Strong Communication Skills, Results Driven, Initiative, Integrity, and Operational Excellence.

Physical Requirements: Requires prolonged sitting and continuous use of computer. May lift, carry, push, or pull objects up to 10 lbs.

Flexibility to travel.