Sr. Manager, Business Development & Strategy

Job Description

What You Will Do

The Standex Engraving Strategy Development and Business Analyst Senior Manager role shapes the strategic direction of the overall company and its segments, with a strong focus on driving profitable growth and evolving the portfolio towards higher margin business. The manager serves as an advisor to business leaders and addresses the key questions facing senior management, the board of directors, and other internal and external stakeholders. The role leads critical strategic initiatives including supporting the company’s strategic plans, anticipating opportunities and threats, and prioritizing business initiatives and investments.

Primary Roles & Responsibilities:

• Growth Strategy: Help drive and implement the holistic growth strategy for the Standex Engraving segment. Serve as a thought partner to the leadership team, as well as an expert resource on growth, operational, and innovation processes and tools. Provide advisory to all functions inside the Regional Engraving organization (APAC, EMEA, NAM) in developing their strategy. Develop actionable business strategies and facilitate deployment in the organization.
• Project Management: Lead cross-functional strategic projects. Support, structure, and manage the development of key growth projects that drive market evolution, product strategy and/or overall business growth. Projects are highly analytical in nature, require structured stakeholder alignment and management, need distinctive and thorough work planning capabilities, and are built on close collaboration with product, marketing, sales and operations groups.
• Financial Acumen: Have a strong working knowledge of financial statements and financial modelling capabilities. Projects require direct interaction and alignment with the Finance function within Engraving and Standex, such that the financial implications and outcomes of projects are understood well within the organization.
• M&A: Financially evaluate potential new business fields and their strategic fit. When the instance may arise, conduct rigorous analysis including valuation and business case modeling to provide detailed guidance and insight regarding inorganic growth initiatives and potential acquisitions.
• Problem Solving: Structure projects and provide problem-solving leadership, conduct analysis and research, develop recommendations, and communicate well-articulated recommendations to the company’s leadership team. A proven track record of decision making and problem solving based on analytics. Conceptual thinking skills must be complemented by a strong quantitative orientation, given that a large part of the business is based on rigorous analytics.
• Analysis: Perform quantitative and qualitative analyses of competing strategic opportunities, analyze market activity and competitive dynamics in support of key business opportunities. Develop operational business cases through data-driven analytics that incorporate financial growth and investment plans. Analyze financial data and create financial models in support of business strategy, acquisitions, market analysis, and identify levers to help improve business performance. Increase productivity by developing automated reporting/forecasting tools. Prepare top management presentations.

What You Will Bring

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree (Engineering, Business, Economics, or Science preferred)
• Master's in business administration (MBA) from a top-tier educational institution.

Critical Competencies / Critical Success Factors:

The individual will be embedded within the Standex Engraving organization. Within this context, he or she will interface regularly with the entire executive and functional leadership. In addition, this position will have regular interaction with the most senior executives in the company.

Professional Qualifications (CORE COMPETENCIES):

• Relevant Functional Experience: The ideal candidate has focused primarily on includes growth strategy (overall strategy, growth opportunities, pricing, etc.), project management (PMOs) and strategic due diligence / integration while in consulting.
• Structured & Logical Thinking: The ability to identify and define business problems and issues, and demonstrate a ‘nose for value’ to discern what is important.
• Analytical Rigor: Scope and plan underlying analyses that will yield critical answers to the questions at hand. Understand the required data sets to complete the analysis and procure them accordingly. Deliver timely execution of analysis. Leverage Excel and other quantitative tools for the analytical "heavy lifting.” Analyze data and translate findings into meaningful insights and recommendations.
• Impactful communication: Strong executive communication skills. Impeccable written and oral communication credentials, coupled with strategic influencing skills and the ability to drive agreement through intellect, interpersonal and negotiation skills.
• Collaboration: Demonstrated experience in building partnerships and working with a diverse group to meet shared objectives; ability to help balance the need for structured analytics with innovative thinking in a way that best serves the organization.

What We Value

The candidate selected for this position will be a creative, out-of-the-box thinker who is intellectually curious with a demonstrated interest in learning. This person will also need to be a self-motivated, high-energy individual who can easily function in a high demand, performance-driven environment. He/she must be accustomed to working on multiple tasks in parallel with a strong desire to succeed in a demanding, innovative, and entrepreneurial environment. This professional must demonstrate strong leadership skills, best demonstrated by the individual’s ability to gain credibility with team members and senior management.

The successful and ideal candidate will:

• Be modest in nature, recognizing the accomplishments of the team before the individual.
• Be highly motivated and possess vision and enthusiasm.
• Be action-oriented, with the desire to “roll up sleeves” and excited to jump into projects.
• Be collaborative and team-oriented, while being comfortable acting as an individual contributor and as a team manager (Player/Coach).
• Understand how to deliver on short time frames and be committed to meeting deadlines “no matter what” and be flexible to the changing needs of the business.
• Communicate in an open and honest way that quickly builds trust and respect.
• Possess an entrepreneurial spirit; comfortable with ambiguity and able to develop logical recommendations without data.
• Be comfortable on his/her feet making presentations.