This role serves as the custodian of trade investment funds, ensuring that trade spend is effectively managed, optimized, and aligned with approved budgets and business objectives.

The position sits within the CCD (trade marketing) function and partners closely with Sales, CCD and Finance to provide visibility, governance, and commercial insights on trade spending performance. Beyond budget tracking and claims governance, the successful candidate will evaluate the effectiveness of trade investments, identify opportunities for optimization, and support better decision-making to maximize sales returns on trade spend.

Responsibilities:

Trade Spend Governance & Budget Stewardship

• Act as the custodian of Malaysia trade investment funds and ensure spending remains within approved budgets.
• Consolidate and monitor trade spend across channels, customers, and promotional activities.
• Track budget utilization against allocated activity buckets and provide visibility on available funds and spending commitments.
• Ensure trade claims are submitted, reconciled, and accounted for accurately in collaboration with Sales, Trade Marketing and Finance teams.
• Identify potential overspend, budget risks, and governance issues while ensuring compliance with internal controls and approval processes.

Commercial Performance Analysis

• Analyze trade investment effectiveness by evaluating the relationship between spend and sales performance.
• Assess whether trade promotions, discounts, and customer investments are generating expected business outcomes and incremental sales.
• Monitor spending trends and provide recommendations to improve return on trade investments.
• Investigate spending anomalies, inconsistencies, or performance gaps and recommend corrective actions.
• Translate data into actionable insights that support commercial decision-making.

Business Partnering

• Partner closely with Sales and Trade Marketing team to understand planned customer activities, promotional investments, and trade spend requirements.
• Collaborate with Finance to reconcile claims, validate spending, and maintain accurate financial reporting.
• Provide management with timely updates on budget utilization, spending performance, and funding availability.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to commercial stakeholders on trade fund allocation and investment decisions.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to streamline trade spend management processes and improve governance effectiveness.
• Enhance reporting capabilities, analytical frameworks, and decision-support tools.
• Support the evolution of the function from a transactional monitoring role toward a more strategic commercial planning capability.
• Drive greater visibility, efficiency, and value creation through improved trade investment management practices.