The Role

This is an exciting opportunity for a commercially astute individual to own a key driver of TalkTalk Group performance: Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS) for Fibre to the Premises (FTTP).  Reporting to the Head of Supplier Strategy for the Supply & Partnerships division and working closely with the Direct and Wholesale divisions, this role will develop and implement plans that deliver a step change in underlying profitability, through the optimisation of supplier mix.

To deliver services to its 4m retail and wholesale consumers, the Group utilises its own UK network (the largest unbundled network in UK) but relies on third party network suppliers to supply “last mile” connectivity to customer premises.  For legacy, copper based broadband products there was little choice regarding supply other than the incumbent, Openreach.

We are now in the midst of a Full Fibre revolution – the biggest change in the broadband industry for a generation.  Full Fibre allows end customers to enjoy speed and reliability that totally changes how they interact with the digital world, whether that be as consumers, home-workers, or businesses.  And the good news for TalkTalk is that there are many suppliers rolling out Full Fibre networks that are willing to wholesale – at last there is real “Competitive Supply”.

Leveraging TalkTalk’s significant scale, this industry pivot from copper to Full Fibre connectivity provides an opportunity to develop a compelling mix of supplier partnerships that will improve the underlying economics and enhance the capabilities of both our Direct and Wholesale businesses. The objective is to provide unique commercial & competitive advantage for TalkTalk.

Team

This role reports to the Head of Supplier Strategy, within the Commercial area of the newly formed Supply & Partnerships division.  The team is responsible for:

• Optimising the overall commercial position for TalkTalk by through competitive supply and ensuring TalkTalk customers (and Partners) gain access to great value Full Fibre (or closely equivalent) products as soon as practical.
• Negotiation of commercial terms with Suppliers (both the initial set-up and the ongoing monitoring, benchmarking, and evaluation of commercial offers).
• Co-ordination of the commercial aspects of the Copper to Fibre programme (the removal of legacy network infrastructure, as the industry pivots from copper to Full Fibre connectivity).

Key to this role will be:

Taking accountability and ownership for driving a reduction in Group CoGS via supplier mix.  To achieve this by:

• Taking a data led approach, working with our Insight teams to ensure we understand current and future footprint availability and overlap. 
• Recommending for senior approval the commercial logic behind the supplier hierarchy for TalkTalk Group in such a way as to optimise both unit economics and contractual commitments, across all customer journeys (new acquisition, migrations).
• Being the Commercial lead for information required on the agreed supplier hierarchy and sign-off of its the implementation into business operations.
• A growth mindset and a clear focus on value creation.  Collaborating and coordinating with the Direct, Wholesale and Technology divisions to ensure both trading and change delivery plans are designed to maximise the value from supplier relationships and are aligned to the proposed hierarchy.  This would include, for Wholesale, working on how we optimise in a way that is “win-win” for both TalkTalk and our key Partners.
• Driving improvement in the relevant Commercial KPIs e.g. unit economics, CoGS, contractual compliance.
• Working closely with Finance on the Group Supply model including identifying and highlighting opportunities, i.e., options/scenarios that if implemented by the trading teams within the Direct and Wholesale divisions could improve the overall group position.

This role requires the following skill set and expertise:

• Commercial and analytical acumen to deliver the optimal result for TalkTalk.
• Ability to make recommendations and communicate them to senior stakeholders for agreement/approval.
• Ability to quickly assimilate complex information and concepts and then simplify for communicating to others (including complex legal/contractual and regulatory documentation).
• Work in a highly collaborate way with other business areas and where required use a matrix management approach to help deliver the strategy. 
• Ability to understand and interpret financial statements (P&L, cashflow etc.) and Commercial KPI.
• Ability to work with complex data and be able to articulate what is needed to answer a problem statement to the relevant teams (e.g., the Insight Team).
• Experience of dealing with external parties, ideally in relation to Commercial matters would be viewed favourably.

If this role sounds of interest to you please apply today!

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