Interim Chief Customer and Revenue Officer — Delivery

One rhythm for three kinds of evidence

Demand, service and margin are usually reviewed in different rooms. Demand belongs to sales and marketing and is discussed in terms of volume and share. Service belongs to operations and is discussed in terms of availability, lead times and complaints. Margin belongs to finance and arrives a month later, by which time the decisions that shaped it are long made. Each conversation is competent on its own terms, and together they produce an organisation that can grow revenue while eroding its own economics without anyone noticing until the quarter closes. The Interim Chief Customer and Revenue Officer exists to put the three in the same room, on the same cadence, using measures everyone has agreed to trust.

That is a design task and an authority task at once. The officer holds executive authority under the Group Chief Executive Officer, and will set how customer and revenue choices are made, writing down which thresholds remain with leaders in each market. They will decide which demand, service and margin measures count when spending, capacity and control are argued over in any market. They will decide which inherited commitments carry on, which are parked and which stop. A proposal that slides cost or risk onto a colleague without that colleague's agreement will be halted; a case for investment that cannot say whether customers and staff will take the change up, what else it leans on and how badly it could go wrong will be declined. The officer approves the leadership structure for the customer and revenue organisation, arbitrates when the Group Chief Executive Officer and operating leaders pull in different directions, and runs the board's regular review of progress, exceptions and decisions still open.

The person who does this well has usually learned the hard way that incomplete evidence is the normal condition, not an excuse. They make a reversible decision on what is known, then tighten it as the facts improve. They have refused funding when nobody could say who would use a change or what would happen if it failed, and they have then rebuilt the commercial capacity to do the work properly. For this seat that means having done it somewhere with at least $760 million in revenue, 2,000 people and three countries to answer for, and having lived through a culture reset, buy-side M&A and a professionalisation effort. The culture reset matters because joining up three functions' evidence changes how people behave in meetings long before it changes a number. Commercial economics is required at level 4; revenue architecture, channel partnerships and the handling of boards and stakeholders at level 3 each.

Two years from three reviews to one

Within the first ninety days there should be a single agreed way of making customer and revenue choices, and shared measures of demand, service and margin that the commercial, operational and finance leaders all accept. Around month nine one operating cadence should be reviewing all three together, with every exception assigned to someone accountable and every inherited commitment ruled on. By month 24 customer and revenue decisions should be taken from one evidence base and reported to the board as a matter of routine, with successors leading the cadence rather than the interim.

Answering for all 24 months

The officer answers for the full 24 months and can halt a commercial commitment even when some country leaders object. If that balance suits you, expect seven weeks of selection. It begins at the start of week one with the Group Chief Executive Officer, in a video discussion held in confidence. In the third week, the Regional President works through with you how a shared cadence would run across markets. In the fifth week you meet in person the executive leaders of the very functions whose evidence the cadence must join, and the seventh week brings you before the full board. We aim to give you our view in writing within five working days of each stage.