Specialist - Commercial Standards Claims & Contract

Job Description :

Specialist — Commercial Standards, Claims & Contracts is a Business Analyst and SME on the Customer Operations Transformation programme. The outcome is a clear, governed set of commercial policies — credit, claims, pricing and trade terms — and customer agreements that are standard, compliant and correctly executed in the systems; fewer and cleaner customer claims; lower invalid deductions and trade-spend leakage; and The scope spans Commercial Standards, Claims and Contracts end to end — formulation and governance of credit, claims, pricing and trade-terms policies, policy exceptions and delegation of authority, the customer agreement and contract lifecycle (drafting, approval, activation, amendment and renewal), pricing, rebate, discount and promotion setup, accruals, claims intake, validation and settlement, proof of performance, and the controls that link agreed terms to what is invoiced and paid. The role designs across this scope as one process rather than as separate contract, promotion and claims solutions. It works with market Commercial, Revenue Growth Management, Sales Finance, Credit, Legal, Internal Control, Customer Service and Collections teams, GBO, D&T, the SAP and Control Tower (Claims and Deduction platform) teams and third-party vendors.

The role combines 5 capabilities in one person. As an SME, they formulate, document the global commercial policies — credit policy (credit limits, payment terms, risk categories, blocks and releases), claims policy (eligibility, evidence, time limits, approval and write-off thresholds), and pricing governance (price-setting and approval, discount and rebate guardrails, price-change control) — and the standards and controls that make them work in practice. As a business analyst, they interrogate contract, trade-terms, accrual, claims and deduction data, document current and target process, and write requirements to standard. As a subject matter expert, they bring the functional depth to act as design authority for the fragment and to challenge solutions that would not work in the markets. As a sprint or project owner, they take a scope fragment through design, test and deployment on a two to four week value drop cadence. As a process and technology expert, they translate commercial policy, contract terms and controls into working design on SAP pricing, condition contracts and settlement management, Control Tower claims and deduction capability, and the contract and trade promotion management toolset.

The defining discipline of this role is designing claims out at source, not processing them faster. A quicker claim approval is a smaller prize than a contract term clear enough never to be disputed; a faster settlement is a smaller prize than a promotion set up correctly in the system so the customer never needs to claim. The postholder is expected to use the data to find where in the commercial process claims are created — an ambiguous contract clause, a non-standard trade term, a late or incorrect pricing or promotion setup, an accrual gap, a weak approval control — and design the fix upstream into commercial policy, standards, contract templates, deal approval and master data, as well as into the claims and settlement design.

Understanding of markets and of upstream and downstream impact is central to the role. A claim usually starts life as a commercial negotiation; a contract term becomes a pricing condition, an accrual, an invoice and, if anything is misaligned, a deduction in Collections. The postholder is expected to know what happens on either side of their own process — from deal negotiation through to cash and the P&L — and to design accordingly.

This is a transformation design and delivery role, not an operational one. The postholder does not negotiate customer deals, draft or approve individual contracts, validate or settle individual claims, or manage customer relationships; that stays with market Commercial, Legal, GBO and BPO run teams. The role changes how that work is done — including the commercial policies, standards, contract templates, reason codes, analytics and controls that let run teams find and remove causes in BAU. The role formulates and recommends policy; final approval sits with the relevant policy owners and governance forums.

The role works independently within an agreed frame set by the workstream lead, gathers its own data, forms its own view and brings recommendations rather than questions. Where a Senior Specialist is assigned on the same fragment, it works under their design direction. Decisions are expected to be based on evidence rather than opinion, and every artefact is expected to meet the programme documentation, taxonomy and quality standards, including BPQMS.

Analyse commercial terms, contracts and claims performance and baseline the problem — 25%. Document current-state credit, claims and pricing policies, commercial standards, contract lifecycle and claims processes across markets and identify variation from the global standard. Build the process, trade-terms and claim-type taxonomy and interrogate the data directly at portfolio level — customer agreements and terms, pricing and promotion conditions, accruals versus actuals, claims volume, value, ageing and rejection rates, invalid deductions, write-offs and trade-spend leakage — to baseline the problem per market and size the opportunity. Perform gap analysis between current process, commercial policy, contract terms, platform capability, controls and the target operating model, separating structural design issues from operational backlog. Support business-rule validation, master-data requirements and policy analysis. Aim for validated current-state documentation and a defensible baseline that will stand up to audit.

Formulate commercial policies and standards, and design claims out at source — 25%. Support future-state design aligned to the global standard, always designing for the cause rather than the symptom. Formulate, document and maintain the global commercial policies the design depends on — credit policy (credit limits and risk categorisation, payment terms, credit blocks and release authority), claims policy (claim eligibility, evidence and proof-of-performance requirements, submission time limits, validation, approval and write-off thresholds) and pricing governance (price-setting and approval, discount, rebate and promotion guardrails, price-change control and margin protection) — with a clear policy-exception and delegation-of-authority framework, and take them through the governance forums for approval. Translate policy into the standards that operationalise it: standard trade-terms structures, contract and agreement templates, clause libraries, deal approval and delegation-of-authority rules, and the minimum data a contract must carry to be executed correctly in the systems. Use the baseline to show where claims are created — contract ambiguity, non-standard terms, pricing and promotion setup, accruals, proof of performance, master data — and design the fix upstream. Design the interventions: standard contract-to-condition setup, automated accruals and settlement, validated claim intake, reason-code frameworks and claims workflow. Prepare business requirements, functional specifications, process flows, business rules and user stories. Facilitate design workshops and document outcomes and decisions. Assess process, policy, financial and control impacts, and define how policy compliance will be monitored.

Deliver the outcome: standard contracts, fewer claims and Design for, and evidence, policy adoption and compliance across markets, an increase in contracts on standard terms and templates, fewer policy exceptions, a reduction in claims volume, aged claims, invalid deductions and trade-spend leakage, and movement toward Own testing, deployment and adoption through the value drops — 20%. Translate requirements into working design on SAP, Control Tower and the con