Manager, Partner Excellence office

Job Description

Job Description:

Reporting to the Partner Excellence Office Senior Lead, the Partner Excellence Office Manager executes and manages the Partner Excellence Office processes, enhancing the mutual value and trust between the business and its partners. Distinct from the Analyst, this role manages complex partner relationships, coordinates across functions, and drives process improvements to support business objectives. The Partner Excellence Office Manager is adaptable, proactively supporting transition and sourcing activities to enable seamless partner integration and operational excellence in a dynamic environment.

The Partner Excellence Office Manager maximizes business value from strategic partnerships by ensuring measurable impact and alignment with Mars’ goals. Operating globally, the manager quickly understands business dynamics to drive process improvements, enhance partner performance, and ensure compliance with governance and Responsible AI policies.

This role designs, implements, and continuously improves Partner Excellence processes, embedding industry best practices in partner management and governance. The manager champions innovation and adapts to evolving needs, supporting sourcing and transition activities such as onboarding and integration to maintain business continuity.

Relying on influence and collaboration rather than direct authority, the manager works cross-functionally with stakeholders across GDO to embed the Partner Excellence program and secure alignment. Committed to continuous improvement, the manager uses data and market insights to optimize processes and foster an agile, results-oriented function.

Key Responsibilities:

Stakeholder Management

• Stakeholder Relationship Management: Build and maintain trusted relationships with stakeholders across Mars to secure buy-in for Partner Excellence Office processes, and to ensure effective communication and smooth information flow. This Includes, but It's not limited to, recurring meetings with Service Managers with Vendor Management responsibilities across all GDO teams and towers (depending on your scope).

• Global Partner Relationship Management: Support the Partner Excellence Office Senior Lead in ensuring alignment between the Strategic Partners and the Global Digital Operations objectives.

• Stakeholder Needs Assessment: Regularly engage with stakeholders to understand and anticipate their evolving needs, priorities, and concerns, ensuring vendor solutions remain relevant and effective.

• Communication & Transparency: Communicate clearly and persuasively across all organizational levels, ensuring transparency and shared understanding of Partner Excellence frameworks, partner performance, risks, and opportunities consistent with industry best practices.

• Partner Performance Management Support: Provide guidance, expertise, and training to service and project managers across regions to support partner performance management and continuous improvement.

Governance Forums Management

• Governance Model Implementation & Maturation: Implement, mature, and enforce robust governance models in accordance with the Partner Excellence Office framework, ensuring they evolve to meet changing business needs and compliance requirements.

• Stakeholder Engagement and Preparation: Engage with vendors and other relevant stakeholders ahead of governance forums to gather input, prepare discussion points, and ensure their concerns and priorities are represented and properly documented.

• Proactive Risk Management: Identify and mitigate risks within partner relationships through governance forums and data insights, ensuring operational resilience and compliance.

• Continuous Improvement: Actively collect feedback from stakeholders regarding governance processes and models. Analyze this input to propose and implement improvements that enhance governance effectiveness, adaptability, and stakeholder satisfaction.

• Operational Tools & Training Development: Develop, update, and maintain governance-related templates, tools, and training materials aligned with the Partner Excellence Office governance strategy. Share these resources with relevant internal and external stakeholders to promote consistent, effective, and compliant partner engagement.

• Governance schedule maintenance: Ensure governance models established by the Partner Excellence Office are accurately reflected in contracts with key partners. Maintain a detailed governance schedule outlining these requirements, and work with the commercial team for inclusion in current and future contracts to guarantee consistent enforcement.

SLA & Performance Monitoring:

• SLA Adoption and Advocacy: Ensure that established SLA frameworks and performance metrics from the Partner Excellence Office are embraced by vendors and internal stakeholders, promoting understanding and compliance.

• Performance Oversight and Issue Resolution: Monitor, analyze, and interpret partner performance metrics (using analyst reports where available), address SLA breaches or performance gaps by coordinating corrective actions with vendors and stakeholders, and ensure timely resolution.

• Stakeholder Coordination: Act as a liaison between internal stakeholders and vendors to ensure expectations are reflected in performance management and improvement plans.

• Continuous Improvement: Use performance data and stakeholder feedback to advocate for ongoing enhancements to SLA processes and vendor engagement models.

• Contract & SLA Change Management: Work with commercial teams and Process Excellence Office to update contracts and SLAs as needed, ensuring rigorous change management practices aligned with industry standards are followed. Maintain a detailed SLA schedule outlining these requirements and work with the commercial team for inclusion in current and future contracts to guarantee consistent enforcement.

• Run Pulse Survey: Manage the end-to-end Pulse Survey process for assigned Strategic Partners (manage recipient list, issue the survey, analyse results, share with key stakeholders, ensure partners establish improvement plans, monitor trends)

Escalation Management:

• Escalation Oversight and Coordination: Oversee the escalation process by ensuring functional teams follow established protocols when issues cannot be resolved at the operational level, and escalate appropriately to the Partner Excellence Office.

• Facilitation and Support: Act as a facilitator between functional teams and vendors during escalations, ensuring clear communication, timely information sharing, and alignment on resolution strategies.

• Documentation and Continuous Improvement: Ensure all escalations are properly documented, and use insights from escalated cases to recommend process improvements and prevent recurrence.

Other Responsibilities

• Key Personnel List Management: Ensure that, for the Vendors In your scope, you work with the Strategic Partners to maintain the key personnel list (as per contract) and flag when there are deviation from contracted change process.

• Seamless Partner Onboarding and Offboarding: If involved in a sourcing engagement, help coordinate and oversee the onboarding of new partners and the offboarding or transition of existing ones. This involvement ensures that all operational, governance, and compliance requirements are met, minimizing risks such as service disruptions, or contractual non-compliance during these critical phases.

• Change Management and Adoption Support: Facilitate stakeholder readiness and adoption of new vendor solutions, processes, or technologies through clear communication, training, and support.

• Ambiguity Navigation & Adaptability: Effectively navigate ambiguity and evolving business environments. Adapt workflows and responsibilities proactively to maintain focus on partner excellence, innovation, and transformation aligned with industry trends and Mars policies.

• Global and Cultural Awareness: Adapt engagement strategies to effectively manage global partners and stakeholders across cultures and time zones.