Executive Head: Commercial Performance

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Role Purpose/Business Unit:

• To lead the end-to-end commercial management agenda for Vodacom Wholesale across Mobile, Carrier, and Beyond Mobile, ensuring sustainable revenue growth, margin protection, pricing governance, deal quality, and disciplined PnL performance. The role provides commercial leadership across the wholesale lifecycle, from opportunity qualification, pricing, business case approvals and contract enablement through to billing, revenue assurance, forecasting, performance tracking, and commercial interventions.
   
• The role partners closely with Wholesale sales, product, technology, finance, legal, regulatory, delivery and support teams to convert strategically aligned opportunities into profitable, executable, and compliant wholesale outcomes while maintaining a single commercial view of divisional performance.

Your responsibilities will include:

Strategy Formulation & Execution: 

• Lead the Wholesale commercial performance agenda across Mobile, Carrier and Beyond Mobile, ensuring clear growth, margin, and PnL priorities.
• Chair and govern the Wholesale Pricing Steerco, ensuring pricing decisions are commercially robust, margin accretive, compliant with DOA requirements, and aligned to wholesale strategy.
• Define and maintain pricing, discounting, and margin management frameworks for wholesale propositions, including roaming, MVNO/MVNE, APN, RBD, WASP, Roaming, fixed connectivity, IP transit, backhaul, subsea, interconnect, national and international messaging, API Monetisation, and emerging wholesale services.
• Lead commercial qualification of high-value and complex wholesale opportunities, including go/no-go recommendations, risk assessment, scenario modelling, and deal-shaping support to sales leadership.
• Own the commercial review of business cases, valuations, P&Ls, NPVs and investment cases to ensure that wholesale deals are profitable, executable, and strategically aligned.
• Partner with Finance Business Partners and PnL owners on Wholesale budgeting, forecasting, revenue assurance, margin assurance, IBRO views, and monthly performance interventions.
• Identify commercial trends, revenue leakage, margin pressure, delivery constraints and billing anomalies, and convert insights into clear corrective actions for the Wholesale leadership team.
• Standardise commercial modelling, pricing packs, reporting, governance templates and performance dashboards to create one version of the truth for Wholesale decision-making.
• Support C-level customer engagements, complex negotiations, tender responses and strategic partner discussions with clear commercial positions and data-backed recommendations.
• Oversee commercial governance for wholesale agreements, service schedules, billing readiness, contract amendments, and reporting obligations in partnership with Legal, Contract Management and delivery teams.

Business Enablement 

• Identify new wholesale revenue opportunities, commercial improvement areas, and margin optimisation levers across the Mobile, Carrier and Beyond Mobile portfolios.
• Translate wholesale market, customer, technology and regulatory dynamics into commercially viable propositions, pricing constructs and operating interventions.
• Produce high-quality commercial papers, executive reports and decision packs that clearly articulate deal economics, risks, assumptions, sensitivities, customer impact and recommended actions.
• Use advanced modelling, sensitivity analysis and scenario planning to assess risk, profitability, payback, investment viability and long-term wholesale margin sustainability.
• Support deal execution by ensuring commercial commitments are aligned to executable delivery plans, approved pricing, contractual terms, billing capability and service readiness.
• Drive continuous improvement in the Wholesale commercial operating model, including simplified governance, automated insights, disciplined pipeline-to-revenue tracking and stronger accountability across the rumour-to-cash lifecycle.

Stakeholder Management

• Act as the central commercial interface between Wholesale PnL owners, Sales, Finance, Product, Technology, Legal, Regulatory, Delivery, Billing, Revenue Assurance and Group stakeholders.
• Create alignment on commercial priorities, financial planning, performance tracking, risk mitigation and intervention ownership across the Wholesale leadership team.
• Partner with PnL owners to manage strategic wholesale customers and partners, including C-level engagements, commercial escalations, renewals, rate changes and industry forums.
• Maintain commercial neutrality and transparency in Wholesale engagements, recognising Wholesale’s role in serving operators, ISPs, FNOs, MVNOs, enterprises and strategic partners that may also compete with other Vodacom channels.
• Collaborate with analytics and automation teams to improve insight quality, forecasting accuracy, commercial controls and management visibility across Wholesale.

Delivering through People: 

• Build and lead a high-performance Wholesale commercial management capability focused on profitable growth, margin discipline, commercial controls and customer-centred execution.
• Develop commercial, financial, pricing, modelling, negotiation and wholesale market capability within the team.
• Drive clear ownership of pricing governance, deal reviews, business case quality, contract enablement, billing readiness, reporting and performance interventions.
• Create strong collaboration between commercial management, sales, product, finance, technology, legal, regulatory and delivery teams to improve speed, quality and accountability.
• Embed performance management, coaching, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement practices that strengthen Wholesale execution discipline.
• Embed the Spirit of Vodacom by living the Spirit behaviours and culture codes while maintaining high engagement, accountability and ethical commercial conduct.
• When required, initiate disciplinary processes for team members with support from HR.
• Resolve grievances raised by team members and escalate where required.
• Recognise strong contribution and commercial impact through appropriate Vodacom recognition platforms.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• B Degree in Business, Finance or related field  
• Postgraduate qualifications/MBA (Desirable)
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in wholesale telecoms, carrier services, ICT commercial management, enterprise connectivity, mobile wholesale, MVNO/MVNE, roaming, interconnect, fixed connectivity or related environments, with demonstrated experience in:
  
  • Wholesale PnL ownership, commercial governance, budgeting, forecasting and performance interventions.
  • Pricing, margin management, business case development, bid economics, DCF/NPV analysis and deal approval governance.
  • Structuring, negotiating and governing high-value wholesale agreements, service schedules, renewals, rate changes and commercial amendments.
  • Driving profitable growth while managing revenue assurance, margin assurance, delivery constraints, regulatory considerations and customer risk.
  • Working across Carrier, Mobile and Beyond Mobile technologies and understanding input costs, product economics, delivery dependencies and billing implications.
• 5+ years’ management experience leading commercially focused teams or cross-functional commercial programmes.

Technical Competencies

• Strong wholesale commercial acumen across Mobile, Carrier and Beyond Mobile propositions.
• Deep understanding of wholesale customer models, including MNOs, MVNOs, MVNEs, ISPs, FNOs, content providers, aggregators, enterprise partners and strategic resellers.
• Advanced pricing, margin management, bid modelling, P&L analysis, DCF/NPV assessment and commercial risk evaluation.
• Ability to translate customer strategy, market dynamics and technology capability into profitable wholesale propositions and commercial terms.
• Strong understanding of wholesale contracts, service schedules, billing, revenue assurance, margin assurance, regulatory considerations and governance controls.
• Ability to operate in a complex multinational matrix environment and influence Finance, Technology, Legal, Regulatory, Product, Sales and Delivery stakeholders.
• Strategic thinking with the ability to convert Wholesale strategy into clear priorities, measurable interventions and accountable execution plans.

Behavioural Competencies

• Wholesale Customer Focus: Balances customer competitiveness, service experience, neutrality and long-term partnership value with Vodacom’s financial and compliance requirements.
• Commercial Accountability: Takes ownership of commercial outcomes, margin quality, governance discipline and the integrity of financial recommendations.
• Collaboration: Builds strong cross-functional alignment across Wholesale, Finance, Technology, Legal, Regulatory, Product, Sales and Delivery teams.
• Commercial Resilience: Remains disciplined and solutions-focused in complex negotiations, margin-pressure environments, escalations and high-value deal decisions.
• Influencing and Negotiation: Uses evidence, stakeholder mapping and executive engagement to influence internal decisions and external commercial outcomes.
• People Leadership: Creates clarity, accountability, coaching and performance ownership across a commercially focused team.
• Organisational Savvy: Understands how to navigate Vodacom’s matrix, governance forums and approval pathways to deliver compliant and commercially sound Wholesale outcomes.

Closing date for Applications: 10 July 2026

The base location for this role is Midrand, Vodacom Campus. 

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.
Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates, and values diversity & inclusion.