Manager, Commercial Excellence

Novolex is a leading manufacturer of food, beverage, and specialty packaging supporting industries such as foodservice, restaurant delivery and carryout, food processing, grocery and retail, and industrial sectors. With expertise spanning resin, paper, molded fiber, aluminum, and more, Novolex provides customers a broad array of stock and customized solutions across 120 product categories, 250 brands, and over 39,000 SKUs.

Sustainability Commitment

The Novolex sustainability vision is built upon three pillars: our products, our operations, and our people. These pillars form the foundation of our company-wide commitment to sustainability, driving ambitious goals through wide-ranging initiatives.

About the Role

The Manager, Commercial Excellence will serve as an analytical owner and emerging commercial leader, supporting and increasingly owning pricing analysis, RFQ economics, deal-review preparation, customer/SKU profitability, price realization, margin-improvement actions, and process improvements. This role is critical to repositioning IIB Commercial Excellence into a business-critical margin-growth engine.

We seek a high-performing individual with strong analytical skills, ownership, and confidence to deliver actionable recommendations and drive projects to financial impact. The ideal candidate can transition from detailed data analysis to strategic recommendations and implementation.

Responsibilities

• Prepare pricing analyses, RFQ economics, quote comparisons, price walks, margin bridges, and deal-review materials for assigned customers, products, sites, or workstreams.
• Support bid/no-bid and deal-review discussions by summarizing economics, issues, sensitivities, and open questions.
• Provide Sales and ComEx leaders with fact-based insights for customer negotiations, including economics by option, customer impact, price-change rationale, and risk considerations.
• Assist with price loading, price realization tracking, and recurring pricing processes while improving accuracy and efficiency.
• Analyze customer, SKU, product-family, and plant-level profitability to identify pricing gaps, negative-margin exposure, cost-to-serve issues, freight leakage, mix concerns, and improvement opportunities.
• Prepare customer, product, and account views to support price increases, contract changes, freight recovery, rebate discussions, volume commitments, and other commercial terms.
• Create clear summaries explaining drivers of margin performance, ensuring materials are accurate, practical, and tied to business decisions.
• Own commercial costing methodologies for quotations, RFQs, pricing decisions, customer profitability analysis, and deal evaluations.
• Develop, maintain, and improve cost models incorporating materials, labor, waste, machine utilization, freight, production complexity, and other key cost drivers.
• Partner with Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, and plant teams to validate assumptions, understand cost drivers, and ensure costing practices are accurate, consistent, and scalable.
• Analyze the financial impact of cost changes, operational assumptions, product modifications, tariffs, freight, and other cost drivers to support commercial decision-making.
• Conduct scenario and sensitivity analyses, maintaining well-documented, auditable analytical models to support repeatable business decisions.
• Contribute to the development of playbooks, scorecards, RFQ intake forms, deal-review packs, pricing trackers, and standard operating routines.
• Document recurring issues, process gaps, and inconsistent assumptions; propose improvements rather than working around them.
• Support adoption of new ComEx processes by preparing training materials, reference guides, and concise user instructions.
• Work closely with Sales, Finance, Operations, Customer Service, and plant contacts to collect inputs, validate assumptions, and understand commercial implications.
• Escalate issues with clear facts, recommended next steps, and ownership needs.
• Participate in recurring ComEx routines such as pricing reviews, RFQ reviews, opportunity tracking, realization reviews, and margin-improvement follow-ups.
• Develop credibility by being responsive, accurate, curious, and recommendation-oriented.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in pricing, commercial analysis, finance, FP&A, sales operations, manufacturing analysis, consulting, supply chain analysis, or related analytical roles.
• Experience creating repeatable analytical models, dashboards, templates, and process documentation.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to work through complex data, assumptions, and margin calculations.
• Ability to communicate analysis clearly through concise slides, summaries, and decision-oriented commentary.
• Ability to transition from report to insight, from insight to recommendation, and from recommendation to action.
• Strong ownership, attention to detail, organization, and follow-through.
• Ability to work cross-functionally and manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• Practical working knowledge of AI-enabled tools to improve analysis, summarization, drafting, templates, and repeatable work products.

What Success Looks Like

• Pricing and RFQ analyses are accurate, timely, and clearly tied to commercial decisions.
• Customer/SKU profitability insights lead to specific actions or informed decisions.
• Recurring process improvements reduce rework, improve consistency, and strengthen decision quality.
• The role demonstrates visible growth from analytical support toward commercial ownership.

Candidate Attributes

• Curious, structured, pragmatic, and comfortable challenging legacy assumptions respectfully.
• High ownership and follow-through; does not stop at analysis when the business needs action.
• Able to balance strong standards with practical stakeholder partnership and change adoption.
• Motivated by building something better, not only maintaining existing routines.

Pay

The estimated salary range for this role is $102,000 - $171,000, plus bonus and benefits. The range reflects the minimum and maximum target salaries for the position across all US locations. Individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Benefits

• 401(k) plan with company match
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible spending and health savings accounts
• Paid vacation and sick days
• Paid parental leave
• Paid holidays
• Wellness program
• Community engagement opportunities through the Focused Giving Program, supporting sustainability initiatives and food/hunger needs
• Training and development programs, including skills development, advanced education, and tuition reimbursement (Non-Union)
• Learning Management System to support and enhance employee skills