Head of Strategy – Global Ocean Freight

Manage Strategic Products and Projects

• Lead and manage multiple, simultaneous strategic projects by effectively prioritizing initiatives, developing project plans, and collaborating with product and/or other teams to ensure execution of initiatives in a timely manner.
• Collaborate with senior leadership in various departments to develop and implement strategies that align and support the organization's overall vision and goals.

• Continuously assess, refine and adapt the organization's strategic plan to ensure it remains relevant and effective even within changing market conditions and organizational needs.

Product & Team Leadership

• Provide leadership, direction and serve as a role model within the Global ocean product management team. Continuously collaborate with the GFPT, GLPT and other functional units on performance improvement opportunities especially around monetization, product effectiveness and operational productivity.
• Manage, coach and develop a high performing team that meets agreed objectives, delivers and shares best practice results and works to make continuous improvements
• Constant monitorization of the performance of the ocean product (both in terms of volumes and profitability) to ensure a continuous and sustainable development over time.

Manage Key Stakeholders

• Effectively communicate strategic plans and initiatives to key stakeholders, including Managing Directors and Regional CEOs, Commercial and product teams, Operations and Digital Excellence, Finance, etc ensuring cross-functional alignment.
• Crystalize key insights from available data and present complex analyses in a clear, concise and actionable manner to a variety of internal audiences across various departments and functions.
• Provide guidance and support to cross-functional teams to ensure the successful implementation of organizational strategic initiatives.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, both within ocean product and outside of ocean product, to ensure their needs and perspectives are considered in strategic planning and execution, and to increase their buy-in.

Demurrage and Detention Management

• Create and implement a Global Demurrage and Detention Policy, roll-out the COL D&D Tariffs in Europe and drive countries to sell customer-specific COL levels.
• Thereafter implement an automation together with MDs, country leadership teams, IT and ODE to monetize and optimize D&D. Progressively roll-out this initiative across more markets in line with our SAAS provider’s roadmap.

Implement Monetization initiatives

• Drive Commercial orientation and Data Quality standardization/compliance to monetize Surcharges, Exchange Rates, customer-requested exceptions, etc instead of billing them back-to-back.
• Work with ODE to drive compliance to expected standards on data entry to ensure integrity of our system data, thereby increasing our realization of carrier incentives and improving over-all decision-making ability and execution.

Drive the successful implementation of Cloud Ocean Line as a Carrier

• Build up a tariff environment that separates the buying and selling processes for all cost items, empowering the ocean product team’s ownership over pricing strategies and steering operations.
• Lead the team responsible for ensuring the quality of Rhenus’ ocean freight tariff structure, maintaining high standards and consistency. Ensure the team rolls-out and continuously refines our Quotation Tool together with ODE and Air Freight.
• Manage a goal setting and reporting structure that fosters a high-performing culture of accountability and ownership over the accuracy of Rhenus’ tariffs while evaluating and boosting product competitiveness.
• Coordinate with sales management, the heads of FCL and LCL products, and trade managers to identify and analyse areas of potential tariff improvement and establish actionable insights that can drive customer acquisition rates.
• Align with the tender team to establish a methodical approach to analyse the competitiveness of ocean tender submissions and provide actionable insights to the product structure to adapt ocean product tariffs as necessary.
• Foster a high-performing culture of accountability and ownership within local and regional product teams in the regions, by establishing insightful metrics for tariff-related activities.

Manage Product Development Branding & Trainings:

• Collaborate with regional product and marketing teams to identify and implement internal and external marketing and branding strategies to drive the success of the Rhenus’ ocean products.
• Work with the marketing team to create customer & sales-oriented marketing material (flyers, brochures, presentations) that enhance market awareness and competitiveness of the Rhenus sales team.
• Develop user-oriented product training programs together with the training, HR, and commercial teams to enhance sales & operations’ knowledge of Rhenus FCL & LCL products and systems. Ensure that the Rhenus product and commercial teams understand how to integrate sustainability solutions in our value proposition for customers.

Lead Ocean Product Market Intelligence

• Conduct in-depth industry research, analysing market trends and competitor activity, to inform senior leadership for strategic decision-making, guiding the prioritization and resource allocation of new projects or products.
• Develop and manage an efficient communication framework between the ocean product team and the commercial team, ensuring a regular flow of high-quality content of Rhenus’ ocean product portfolio, key market insights and other relevant information.

• Minimum 10 years’ experience in the ocean freight forwarding industry, with a background in ocean freight operations and procurement role
• Minimum 5 years of experience in people management and leadership, including recruitment, training & development, coaching, conflict, and performance management
• Ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders at all levels
• Passion for service delivery and cost effectiveness
• Strong analytical and negotiation skills
• High degree of ownership
• Ability to balance operational priorities with commercial imperatives
• Outgoing personality and the ability to communicate effectively in a diverse multicultural environment
• Business fluent in English (both spoken and written)
• Able to multi-task in an intense, fast-paced, high-energy, environment
• Willingness to travel when required