WHAT DOES A GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER DO?
Published: Apr 24, 2025 – The Global Communications Manager drives recovery plans and resolves critical supply shortages through proactive collaboration with suppliers and stakeholders. This position builds strong relationships with senior leadership and leads strategic supplier negotiations to secure demand fulfillment and mitigate supply chain risks. The manager also executes sourcing strategies, optimizes supplier performance, and implements continuous improvement initiatives to enhance supply chain efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Global Communications Manager
1. Global Communications Manager Overview
- Team Management: Manages commodity buyers, ensures staff availability, and grows the competence
- Strategic Leadership: Leads commodity strategy activities as part of cross-functional teams (commodity strategy, technical road map, cost plan)
- Supplier Management: Builds Supplier Panel for the Worldwide/Regions operational requirements (project and production)
- Process Ownership: Gatekeeper of the panel management process (in/out/NBOH)
- Technical Expertise: Ensures the technology and market expertise of the Sub-Commodity
- Market Analysis: Keeps Garrett informed of all relevant technological and market trends and economic changes
- Stakeholder Communication: Communicates commodity strategy and ensures buy-in of interfaced organizations (Engineering, Sales, Manufacturing, Quality)
- Strategic Planning: Ensures platforms, customer teams' current and future needs are identified and answered by his sub-commodity strategy
- Cost Optimization: Builds and consolidates productivity action plans for its sub-commodity (Negotiation, VE, HLRR)
- Performance Management: Defines corrective action plans with Operations Buyers to ensure AOP objectives are met
- Negotiation Strategy: Defines yearly negotiation objectives, conducts negotiations with suppliers, or assigns supplier accountabilities to regions/Commodity Buyer
- Contract Management: Validates negotiation results and concludes commercial agreements with suppliers
2. Global Communications Manager Functions
- Crisis Management: Lead recovery plans and execution when global supply falls short of demand.
- Shortage Resolution: Resolve critical supply shortages by actively working with suppliers and internal stakeholders.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Establish and maintain close working relationships with senior management levels, both internal and outside suppliers.
- Supplier Negotiation: Lead high-level negotiations with suppliers to reach required demand levels.
- Risk Mitigation: Identify and mitigate potential supply chain risks associated with suppliers.
- Supplier Selection: Lead the identification, assessment, and selection of suppliers to meet existing and emerging business needs.
- Exit Strategy: Take responsibility for establishing and executing exit strategies.
- Supply Assurance: Define and implement initiatives to minimize future supply availability issues.
- Process Improvement: Drive continuous improvements and efficiencies within the supply chain and ensure full support throughout the product lifecycle.
- Market Monitoring: Monitor commodity market trends such as new technology developments, product cost structures, market supply conditions, and competitive supplier landscape.
- Supplier Management: Manage supplier relationships, develop supplier capability, and drive cost savings opportunities to achieve the KPI target
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Interface with cross-functional teams to support end-to-end sourcing activities
- Contract Management: Conduct contract negotiations, performance evaluations, and cost management
3. Global Communications Manager Accountabilities
- Strategic Planning: Reporting to the Global Sourcing Director and responsible for the annual plan for all indirect spend, acting directly in some commodities.
- Category Strategy: Accountable for the definition of Global and Regional Purchasing Strategy for the Category and Subcategories to meet business requirements and compliance.
- Market Insight: Provide forward-looking guidance on trends, threats, and opportunities.
- Supplier Performance: Responsible for overall Supply Base performance in terms of Cost, working capital, and performance.
- Service Quality: Ensure that the organization is receiving the best standards of service.
- Contract Negotiation: Negotiate all Global contracts and get involved/support on the Regional level (CAPEX and regular spend).
- Budget Planning: Provide input to inform the top-down target setting process and drive the bottom-up Sourcing Roadmap budget.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Engage with key spend owners on spend, budget visibility, defined roadmaps, and driving adherence to commodity strategy, pilot indirect spend containment.
- Supplier Relationship Management: Manage strategic suppliers (SRM) and deal with high-level decision makers.
- Sourcing Performance: Accountable for the Commodity spend and sourcing economic performance.
- Stakeholder Partnership: Act as a senior focal point and partner with key stakeholders, ensuring full understanding and support of strategic Category initiatives.
- Team Leadership: Provide line management support for Regional Buyers within the category.
- Corporate Collaboration: Interface with the Dover group and support corporate initiatives.
- Process Optimization: Contribute to the optimization of the organization regarding processes, policy, tools, and reporting.
4. Global Communications Manager Details
- Risk Management: Ownership, oversight of, and responsibility for Global Commodity Risk Management programs, futures, options, OTC’s and forward fixed price contract execution, price forecasting for assigned commodities, and communication to senior management.
- Strategy Leadership: Lead and direct the risk management strategy for assigned commodities to manage market inflation and deflation by providing accurate cost forecasts and PPV variances.
- Commodity Management: Manage basis, co-products, and feed credits to assigned commodities.
- Pricing Guidance: Provide guidance on which indexes to use in supply agreements, assist ingredient buyers in the development of price/cost models, with integrated suppliers.
- Market Forecasting: Own the Global commodity market outlook to increase value creation from managing market volatility and ensuring margin optimization.
- Stakeholder Communication: Actively participates in the Global Ingredient and Zone alignment meetings to inform the zones and Global Procurement teams of all Commodity positions, outlooks, and strategies.
- Budget Management: Utilize Zero-Based Budgeting to justify costs and operate in a lean manner to maximize operating efficiency and speed of execution.
- Regulatory Compliance: Take responsibility for compliance, reporting, and other duties
- Policy Adherence: Ensure full compliance with the Kraft Heinz Global Commodity Risk Management and Hedging Policy
- Procurement Compliance: Ensure full compliance with Kraft Heinz Procurement Policy and Conduct Policy
- Regulatory Alignment: Ensure full compliance with any other internal guidelines and external regulations
- Sustainability Compliance: Ensure full compliance and support for all Kraft Heinz on social, environmental, and sustainability projects
5. Global Communications Manager Roles
- Strategy Development: Develop and implement material strategies in alignment with business and location needs
- Volume Leveraging: Drive value add through leveraging of Purchasing Volume to maximize pooling opportunities across LDA and within Siemens
- Productivity Improvement: Drive material productivity through effective utilization of procurement levers (e.g., negotiation excellence, Global Value Sourcing, Cost transparency, e-sourcing, Cost and Value engineering) and support early involvement in all key projects
- Capacity Management: Actively manage the capacity allocation of LDA demands strategically to the supplier base
- Process Optimization: Support best-in-class Supply Chain Management processes to secure productivity, assets, quality, delivery reliability, and innovation, including escalation and claim management
- Network Management: Manage and drive a global network with location procurement to exchange information, as well as best practices within commodities
- Supplier Development: Lead, manage, and develop the supplier base in commercial issues, supplier qualification, development, and overall relationship management
- Market Intelligence: Apply supply market intelligence and commercial and technical trends to drive value for business, including benchmarks to competition
- Data Transparency: Ensure transparency by data and controls as well as reports relevant to procurement KPI in assigned commodities, and manage business planning
- Cost Management: Drive and implement sourcing decisions under consideration of total costs
- Supplier Sourcing: Cooperate with Regional Commodity Managers to identify and develop the best and most competitive suppliers globally, and manage their ramp-up into the factories