Job Description Summary

The Field Incentives & Operations Excellence Manager drives field force effectiveness, incentive excellence, and operational performance through trusted data, analytics, automation, and governance. The role owns incentive execution, CRM and performance reporting, targeting and resource-allocation processes, and actionable insights, partnering with Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, IT, Analytics, and Compliance.

 

Job Description

Major accountabilities: 

Field Force Effectiveness & Operations

• Own and improve CRM, dashboards, reporting, data quality, and field-system adoption.
• Lead targeting, segmentation, territory alignment, capacity and product allocation, call and account planning, performance measurement, and field-force ROI.
• Identify productivity gaps and support launch and post-launch tracking through actionable field insights.

Incentive Management & Automation

• Own end-to-end incentive implementation, including data validation, calculations, governance, communication, issue resolution, and payment coordination.
• Automate calculations, controls, exception reporting, approvals, simulations, and dashboards using AI, analytics, and workflow tools.
• Ensure incentive schemes are accurate, timely, transparent, affordable, fair, compliant, and fully documented.

Insights & Business Partnership

• Convert CRM, sales, activity, customer, and market data into clear recommendations for Sales and Business Unit leadership.
• Deliver dashboards, business reviews, and strategic analysis covering productivity, coverage, execution, incentives, resource allocation, territory optimisation, and launch readiness.
• Lead cross-functional improvement projects with Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, IT, Analytics, and Compliance.

Governance & Compliance

• Maintain governance, documentation, audit trails, approvals, version control, data privacy, and compliance across incentive and field-operations processes.
• Report product complaints, adverse events, and special cases within 24 hours,

Skills & Experience

• 5 - 8 years experience in sales operations, commercial excellence, field force effectiveness, incentive compensation, or business analytics, preferably in a field-force-intensive industry.
• Strong knowledge of incentive calculations, CRM, dashboards, targeting, segmentation, territory alignment, call planning, and performance management.
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving ability, with experience translating complex data into business decisions.
• Practical experience with business intelligence, advanced Excel, workflow automation, and AI-enabled or rules-based controls; predictive analytics or simulation is advantageous.
• Strong stakeholder, communication, presentation, project-management, and continuous-improvement skills.

Minimum Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Analytics, Statistics, Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, Life Sciences, Pharmacy, or a related discipline.

Novartis South Africa is committed to promoting equity (race, gender, and disability) through the filling of this post with a candidate whose transfer/promotion/appointment will promote representivity in line with the numerical targets as contained in our Employment Equity plan. While we are prioritizing designated groups, our selection process will still be based on the most suitable candidate, with the necessary skills and experience, as outlined in the job description.

 

Skills Desired

Business Dashboards, Capacity Planning, Customer Service, Data Extraction, Data Quality, Merchandising, Performance Measurement