Vice President, Head of U.S. Commercial Operations Excellence

Position Summary

Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, North America, the Vice President, Head of U.S. Commercial Operations Excellence will play a pivotal and highly visible role in building and leading a best-in-class Commercial Analytics/Insights and Operations function for our fast-growing U.S. innovative medicines pharmaceutical business.  This role is responsible for shaping commercial strategy, through deep market understanding, transforming data and predictive analytics into actionable insights, and generating meaningful market intelligence to inform decisions that will drive performance across our U.S. innovative medicines portfolio.   Additionally, leading collaborative U.S. and India-based global capability center (GCC) teams that provide commercial-operational support for North America, the role also oversees CRM management, salesforce performance metrics and incentive compensation, fleet and sample management, Commercial Learning and Organizational Development, Meeting/Conference management and Project Management.  The Vice President, Head of U.S. Commercial Operations Excellence will be a member of the North America Leadership Team, bringing a strong background in pharmaceutical analytics and forecasting methodologies, a passion for developing and sharing insights to enhance commercial performance, and an execution excellence mindset.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy, Leadership and Collaboration

• Set the vision and operating model for Commercial Analytics, Insights and Operations, building and leading a high-performing, cross functional team.
• Establish a clear operating model and lead the India-based Global Capability Center (GCC) – define scope and role expectations, SLAs and KPIs, staffing model and governance to ensure timely, high quality support to North America commercial teams.
• Act as a senior advisor and thought partner to SUN’s NAM leadership across Commercial, Digital, Medical, Access and NPP, shaping strategic decisions.

• Deliver clear, concise, and compelling data narratives to leadership and stakeholders, highlighting actionable implications and key assumptions to inform strategic decisions and data-driven insights.

• Immersion in strategic and tactical plans of the U.S. innovation medicines businesses to proactively support performance measurement and reporting needs.
• Establish data governance protocols to ensure data accuracy, timeliness, and relevance.
• Collaborate with IT, compliance, and external vendors to ensure data integrity, privacy, and regulatory adherence.
• Serve as a thought leader and change agent for digital transformation within the organization.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, continuous improvement and champion adoption of analytics and AI/ML powered products and embedment into workflows and decision-making processes.

Data Analytics and Insights

• Identify, consolidate, and harmonize commercial, operational, and market-related data from disparate sources to provide meaningful insights to different levels of the organization.
• Lead the development and execution of advanced analytics strategies to support commercial and market access teams.
• Translate complex data sets into clear, actionable business insights for sales, marketing, and market access teams to support the business planning process and to inform strategy and tactics.
• Utilize various claim data sources to identify patients at different stages of their journey.
• Oversee the design and implementation of dashboards, KPIs, and reporting tools to monitor brand performance and commercial effectiveness for cross-functional stakeholders.
• Leverage advanced analytics, to optimize customer targeting, segmentation, and marketing spend, evaluate and improve promotional strategies, and generate insights on patient journey and buying process.
• Evaluate emerging data sources and analytical methodologies to continually elevate our Commercial Analytics function.

Market Research and Competitive Intelligence

• Lead the design, execution, and analysis of primary and secondary market research to support brand strategy, customer segmentation, and product positioning.
• Translate market research findings into strategic recommendations for commercial, medical, and executive leadership teams.
• Vet market research vendors and manage relationships with external research vendors to ensure high-quality, compliant research practices.
• Monitor competitive intelligence and market trends to identify opportunities and threats across therapeutic areas.

Forecasting and Modeling

• Own long-range forecasting models for pipeline and in-line products across the U.S. innovative medicines portfolio.
• Oversee development of scenario planning and sensitivity analysis to support investment decisions and risk management.
• Partner with Commercial leaders, Market Access, Medical Affairs, BD, R&D, and Finance to align forecasts and insights with broader business objectives.
• Serve as key contributor to business development evaluations and strategic partnerships.

Commercial Systems & Data Infrastructure

• Accountable for CRM data quality and integrations, commercial reporting stack, dashboards and self-service analytics for field sales and commercial leaders.
• Drive continuous improvement in data hygiene and vendor relationships.

 Sales Force Effectiveness, Commercial KPIs and Incentive Compensation

• Define and operationalize salesforce effectiveness metrics -- call/activity metrics, territory alignment, and targeting.
• Build KPI dashboards to include but not limited to time-to-insight for launch analytics, salesforce KPI adoption rates, ICP payout accuracy and timeliness, GCC SLAs met, and training completion and pre and post training proficiency to objectively measure outcomes and define areas for continuous improvement.
• Oversee benchmarking, design, implementation and administration of incentive compensation plans (ICPs), ensuring alignment to commercial objectives and compliance with internal controls.  Collaborate with Finance, Human Resources and Compliance for budgeting and governance purposes.

Project Management

• Oversee product/asset or new-indication launch project management team, ensuring strategic alignment, cross-functional coordination, and flawless execution of launch plans.
• Drive operational excellence, mitigates risks, and accelerates the successful introduction of high-impact therapies to patients.

Fleet and Promotional Sample Management; Meetings & Conferences

• Oversee fleet operations -- vehicle program, vendor management, cost controls, and compliance.
• Oversee commercial sample management including but not limited to compliant handling, tracking and distribution of promotional product samples to ensure accuracy, efficiency, and alignment with regulatory requirements.
• Plan and execute commercial meetings, national sales meetings and scientific congresses end-to-end -- logistics, budget, vendor selection, on-site execution, and post-event measurement.

Commercial Learning and Organizational Development

• Build and operationalize a competency-based commercial learning strategy to include but not limited to onboarding product and sales skills training, product launch education, and ongoing capability development for sales and marketing, market access, integrated delivery network and medical teams.
• Collaborating closely with Human Resources, build and execute a competency-based, sustainable commercial leadership development strategy.

Cross-functional Partnership & Compliance

• Partner across Medical, Regulatory, Legal, Finance, Human Resources and IT to ensure compliant commercial operations and effective cross-functional execution.
• Maintain high standards for compliance in promotional activities, speaker programs, and data privacy.

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Marketing, Data Science, or related field is required; Candidate's with a Master’s or MBA are preferred.
• A minimum 15 years in commercial analytics and/or operations, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role within the pharmaceutical or biotech industry is required.
• Demonstrated track record of leading an offshore/onshore capability center or managing distributed teams across time zones is preferred (experience with India-based delivery centers strongly preferred).
• Fluency with various industry data sources such as IQVIA Rx data (xPonent, xPonent Plantrak, DDD, and HCOS) or Symphony Rx data (Prescriber, Prescriber/Payor, PHAST), Patient Claims data, Patient Longitudinal data or other types of patient and physician level data is required.
• Deep technical fluency with CRM platforms, sales force productivity tools, territory design, incentive compensation systems is required.
• Experience with analytics tools (SQL/R/Python) is preferred.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical dynamics, the regulatory environment and product life cycle is required.
• Demonstrated expertise in leading cross-functional pharmaceutical launch programs, with proven ability to translate complex clinical, regulatory, and commercial requirements into integrated, execution-ready project plans is required.
• Excellent communication, presentation, leadership, and stakeholder management skills are required.
• Ability to organize, prioritize, meet deadlines, make decisions, and change course of action quickly is required.
• Highly collaborative and energized to work across functional boundaries both internally and externally.
• A bias toward action and outcomes and ability to thrive in a dynamic, fast paced, high-growth environment.