Profitability Manager - Labels and Packaging Platform

About the job

• The Profitability Manager drives business profitability through rigorous management of pricing execution, contract escalation, and margin recovery initiatives. Acting as a strategic partner to Finance, Operations, and Sales, this role transforms complex cost data into actionable commercial strategy. The manager will proactively optimize account portfolios by correcting negative-margin accounts and enforcing price pass-throughs, ensuring the business sustains long-term profitability post-implementation. The ideal candidate blends deep operational knowledge with commercial acumen, serving as a partner to sales teams to navigate pricing adjustments and protect margins.
• Key Responsibilities:
• Margin Optimization & Price Pass-Through Management
• Conduct rigorous portfolio reviews to systematically identify, triage, and improve profitability for margin-challenged accounts. This process effectively 'weeds the garden' by correcting underperforming portfolios, remediating accounts impacted by market inflation, and driving operational margin improvements.
• Monitor raw material cost trends, supply chain fluctuations, and operational inflation to execute systematic price pass-through updates and enforce contract escalation terms, CPI adjustments, and material cost-sharing clauses.
• Develop and maintain dynamic pricing models and acceptable margin thresholds to guide ongoing profitability for existing product lines and support account reviews.
• Sales Alignment & Commercial Strategy
• This role focuses on post-win execution and ongoing commercial management rather than pre-sales activities, deal structuring, or initial pricing strategy.
• The position engages with accounts post-implementation to ensure long-term profitability through diligent margin maintenance and contract optimization.
• Responsibilities include translating complex cost structures into actionable post-production pricing adjustments, recovery plans, and articulating value propositions during contract renewals or price increase renegotiations.
• Analytics, Dashboards & Reporting
• Maintain and expand existing analytical models and dashboards, while building new models as needed to track price realization, pass-through compliance, and margin expansion progress.
• Monitor contract expiration dates and track historical price adjustment implementation to proactively trigger renegotiation workflows.
• Utilize data to track account profitability trends and highlight high-risk accounts requiring immediate action.
• Provide weekly/monthly executive summaries detailing total margin recovered, outstanding price increases pending pass-through, and remaining negative-margin exposures.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Serve as the primary commercial point of contact for Operations and Finance to align pricing execution with real-time cost shifts and manufacturing efficiency goals.
• Facilitate regular reviews with Sales leadership to identify margin recovery opportunities and resolve account-level profitability gaps.
• Collaborate with Business Unit leadership on strategic margin improvement initiatives to drive continuous improvement in commercial performance.

• Education: HS diploma or equivalent required, Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Finance, Economics, Supply Chain, or a related field preferred.
• Experience: Minimum 3–5 years of progressive experience in pricing management, commercial operations, business analysis, or sales operations.
• Industry Knowledge: Proven understanding of internal company workflows, manufacturing/packaging cost drivers, and experience directly supporting or working within a sales environment.
• Core Competencies & Skills
• Analytical Acumen: Capability to leverage, expand, and maintain existing analytical models, with the ability to aggregate data and build new actionable reporting dashboards in Excel or Google suite.
• Commercial & Negotiation Skills: Strong understanding of sales workflows, client contracting terms, price elasticity, and customer negotiation dynamics.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence sales behavior, hold team members accountable, and drive change across operational and commercial groups.
• Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills with the confidence to present recommendations directly to senior business leadership.
• Problem Solving: A proactive, creative problem solver capable of translating complex operational cost data into clear commercial action steps.

RRD is a leading global provider of marketing, packaging, print and supply chain solutions that elevate engagement across the complete customer journey. The company offers the industry’s most trusted portfolio of creative execution and world-wide business process consulting with services designed to lower environmental impact. With 17,000 clients, including 93% of the Fortune 100 and 32,000 employees across 30 countries, RRD brings the expertise, execution, and scale designed to transform customer touchpoints into meaningful moments of impact.