Global Business Workstream Lead – Price Risk Control Tower & PRIMES Price Forecasting

Global Business Workstream Lead – Price Risk Control Tower & PRIMES Price Forecasting

Location: This role can be based in the UK, Poland, Germany or the US, with flexibility on specific site locations across these countries

The Global Business Workstream Lead is accountable for defining, delivering, and embedding strategic business capabilities within the Commercial Agility 2.0 transformation programme [CAT 2.0] [2]. The role is responsible for ensuring programme objectives are translated into fit for purpose associate utilization, sustainable business outcomes, operating model improvements, and measurable value delivery.

Acting as the primary business owner for assigned workstreams, this role will specifically focus on the deployment of the Price Risk Control Tower and capabilities supporting the PRIMES portfolio (Raw Materials, Packaging, and Co-Manufacturing). This lead will drive the business shift from static, retrospective financial reporting to proactive price forecasting automation and risk management analytics.

The role works in close partnership with digital, price risk management, data, analytics, finance, change manager, sourcing and regional Commercial teams while retaining accountability for business outcomes and organisational adoption.

What would be your key responsibilities?

Workstream Leadership

• Lead global business workstreams throughout the programme lifecycle (Design > Creation > Execution > Continuous Improvement).

• Partner with key stakeholders, including the Digital Technology Team, to define workstream objectives, scope, deliverables, roadmap, and success measures.

• Establish and manage workstream plans, dependencies, risks, issues, and resource requirements.

• Ensure alignment between workstream objectives and overall programme goals.

• Report progress, risks, decisions, and outcomes through programme governance structures.

• Drive accountability across all stakeholders contributing to workstream success.

• Fit-for-purpose programme use-case with 100% user adoption success.

Business Capability Ownership

• Define and own the business vision, objectives, and success measures for assigned workstreams.

• Establish future-state business processes, governance, operating models, and ways of working to move the business from retrospective reporting to proactive margin management.

• Define, prioritise, and validate business requirements for the Price Risk Control Tower, ensuring the platform effectively captures and visualizes key analytical dimensions:
  Portfolio Category Price Forecasting: Ability to forecast price through external benchmarks, historical actual price data, cost models, external insights.
  Commodity Volatility: Real-time and historical volatility across direct materials.
  Contract Coverage Positions: Clear tracking of fixed price coverage.
  Insights: Digitally enabled risks and opportunity insights to supplement forecasts.

• Ensure proposed solutions align with business objectives, operational requirements, and strategic priorities.

• Maintain ownership of business outcomes throughout the transformation lifecycle.

Cross-Functional Delivery Partnership

• Partner with digital, regional delivery leads, data, price risk management, sourcing, analytics, change manager, and regional Commercial teams to support successful delivery of assigned workstreams.

• Act as the bridge between commercial reality and technical execution, providing business context, commodity dynamics, and cost structures to the digital team who builds the quantitative models.

• Align predictive price forecasting capabilities directly with the Annual Operating Plan (AEP) process, working alongside procurement finance to streamline forecasting cycles and reduce manual coordination.

• Provide timely business decisions, priorities, requirements, and direction to enable effective solution delivery.

• Ensure alignment between business objectives and delivery activities across all contributing teams.

• Actively manage cross-functional dependencies and risks impacting achievement of business outcomes.

• Support testing, deployment planning, readiness, and transition activities from a business perspective.

Stakeholder Engagement & Alignment

• Build strong relationships with business leaders, regional commercial teams, regional delivery leads, functional stakeholders, digital program team, and programme leadership.

• Partner closely with key executive stakeholders (such as Commodity Directors, Finance Leaders, and regional procurement heads) to drive alignment on a "single source of truth" for strategic inflation and financial exposure forecasting.

• Drive alignment and commitment across stakeholder groups.

• Facilitate business decision-making and resolution of challenges impacting delivery.

• Champion programme objectives and future-state capabilities across the organisation.

Business Readiness & Adoption

• Ensure new capabilities are successfully embedded into business operations.

• Partner with Change Management and Regional Delivery Leads and regional commercial senior leaders to drive readiness and adoption activities.

• Support buying teams in adopting the Price Risk Control Tower, ensuring they understand how to interpret and act upon predictive forecasting and risk-scenario outputs in their daily decision-making.

• Support transition into business-as-usual operations.

• Monitor adoption and identify barriers to successful and sustained implementation.

• Drive ownership and accountability for new ways of working across impacted stakeholder groups.

Benefits Realisation

• Ensure delivery of expected business outcomes, benefits, and value drivers as per business case.

• Focus value tracking on portfolio coverage, plus improved forecasting accuracy, reduced PPV, and optimized commodity hedging execution.

• Establish measures to assess adoption, utilization, and business impact.

• Monitor achievement of targeted outcomes and benefits throughout delivery and implementation.

• Identify opportunities to maximise value realization and continuous improvement.

• Ensure capabilities deliver measurable and sustainable business outcomes.

Key Outcomes

Success in the role will be demonstrated through:

• Successful delivery of assigned workstream objectives.

• Clear business ownership of future-state capabilities.

• Strong alignment between business requirements and delivered outcomes.

• Effective management of workstream risks, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations.

• Successful business readiness, 100% adoption, and embedding of new capabilities.

• Achievement of targeted business outcomes, benefits, and value realisation.

• Sustainable improvements in organisational capability, performance, and maturity.

What are we looking for?

Required

• Experience leading business transformation, operational improvement, procurement excellence, or strategic initiatives.

• Demonstrated experience leading complex cross-functional programmes, workstreams, or major business initiatives.

• Broad understanding of commodity risk management, financial forecasting, pricing cycles, or strategic inflation planning.

• Strong understanding of business process improvement, operating model design, and organisational change.

• Experience working across business, digital, data, and technology-enabled environments.

• Strong stakeholder management, influencing, and decision-making skills.

• Experience driving adoption and implementation of business change within complex organisations.

Preferred

• Experience within procurement, supply chain, shared services, or operational transformation environments.

• Experience with data, analytics, automation, AI-enabled capabilities, or digital transformation initiatives from a business perspective.

• Experience operating within large global and matrixed organisations.

• Experience supporting enterprise-wide transformation programmes.

Functional Competencies

• Transformation Delivery: Ability to lead complex business workstreams from concept through implementation, adoption and value realisation.

• Techy Savvy: Experiments with existing and emerging technologies to enhance organizational outcomes, while encouraging others to learn and adopt new tools [2]. Partners effectively with digital, data, and analytics teams, keeping focus on business outcomes and value delivery.

• Commercial & Operational Acumen: Ability to identify opportunities to improve organisational performance and deliver measurable business value.

• Price Risk Management and Primes Forecasting: Forward-looking forecasts of raw material, packaging, and co-manufacturing costs by integrating market intelligence, coverage positions, financial drivers, and risk scenarios to guide planning and business decision-making.

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with diverse and talented Associates, all guided by the Five Principles.

• Join a purpose-driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.

• Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.

• An industry-competitive salary and benefits package, including a company bonus.

Mars is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable adjustments for individuals with disabilities, long-term health conditions, or who are neurodiverse during the application and recruitment process. To request reasonable adjustments, complete our Reasonable Adjustment Request Form here