Position Purpose Summary: The Senior Cost Manager is responsible for overseeing vendor cost changes, assessing financial impact, and minimizing margin loss through disciplined analysis, pricing actions, and cross-functional coordination. This role serves as the central owner of cost change governance, ensuring cost increases are accurately evaluated, communicated, and implemented while protecting profitability and enforcing pricing discipline.
Key Tasks/Responsibilities:- Own and oversee the end-to-end vendor cost change process, including intake, validation, impact assessment, and execution
- Analyze vendor cost increases to quantify margin impact at the SKU, category, customer, branch, and regional levels
- Partner with Pricing, Category Management, Sales, and Finance to ensure timely and effective margin recovery actions
- Develop and maintain cost change tracking tools and dashboards to monitor approved, pending, and implemented cost changes
- Identify, quantify, and report margin leakage resulting from delayed, incomplete, or waived cost recovery actions
- Establish standard methodologies for evaluating cost change impact, including gross margin, price realization, and override behavior
- Provide pricing guidance and recommendations to support margin preservation following cost increases
- Monitor post-implementation performance to validate margin recovery and identify gaps or corrective actions
- Investigate and escalate risks related to excessive discounts, overrides, or non-compliance with cost change pricing guidance
- Serve as a subject matter expert on vendor cost dynamics, cost inflation trends, and category-level margin exposure
- Build executive-ready reporting and insights on cost change impact, margin erosion, and recovery effectiveness
- Support continuous improvement initiatives to strengthen cost governance, pricing discipline, and margin accountability
- Collaborate with data and analytics resources to enhance automation, scalability, and visibility of cost change reporting
- Mentor and guide analysts or junior team members supporting cost and margin analysis efforts
Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:- Strong analytical skills with the ability to translate complex cost data into actionable insights
- Advanced proficiency in Excel and experience working with pricing, ERP, or analytics tools
- Proven ability to manage cross-functional processes and influence without direct authority
- Experience in distribution, manufacturing, or materials-based industries
- Familiarity with pricing governance, approval workflows, and margin compliance controls
- Experience building or enhancing cost change and margin tracking tools
- Background in supporting large SKU counts and multi-region pricing environments
- Strong communication skills with comfort presenting to senior leadership
