Position SummaryThe Manager or Director, Sales Reporting & Data Strategy will lead the development and execution of the Employee Benefits data, reporting, and insights strategy, beginning with sales operating reporting and commercial performance management.
This leader will establish the reporting capabilities, metrics, and operating rhythms needed to help Distribution and Employee Benefits leadership understand performance, identify opportunities, and take action. Initial priorities will include creating an integrated view of sales results, pipeline, activity, persistency, product and segment trends, producer performance, and progress against business plans.
Building from this commercial reporting foundation, the role will oversee the broader Employee Benefits data and reporting strategy, governance model, and portfolio of data, analytics, AI, and automation priorities. This individual will serve as the primary business liaison among Employee Benefits leaders and Technology, Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI teams-ensuring business needs are translated into clear requirements, prioritized against enterprise capabilities, and governed through a transparent roadmap.
This is a business strategy and enablement role, not a technology delivery or data engineering function. The role will define what the business needs, establish priorities and governance, and partner with technical teams responsible for architecture, platforms, engineering, and solution delivery.
The successful candidate will combine commercial and operational acumen with data and reporting expertise. This individual must be able to establish a long-term vision while also driving practical improvements that increase confidence in the information used to run the business.
This is initially a highly visible individual contributor role with the potential to build and lead a broader reporting and data strategy team as the capability matures. The final level-Manager or Director-will be determined based on the selected candidate's experience, demonstrated leadership, and scope of prior responsibility.
Key Responsibilities Sales Operating Reporting and Commercial Insights - Own the strategy and roadmap for sales operating reporting across Employee Benefits.
- Establish an integrated view of commercial performance across sales results, pipeline, activity, persistency, product, segment, region, broker, producer, and representative performance.
- Define the reporting and insights required by sales representatives, regional leaders, Distribution leadership, and senior Employee Benefits executives.
- Develop a consistent hierarchy of commercial reporting, from individual representative dashboards and regional business plans through executive-level performance reporting.
- Partner with Sales Operations and Distribution leaders to establish KPIs, targets, scorecards, reporting cadences, and performance-management routines.
- Translate commercial data into actionable insights that help leaders identify performance gaps, prioritize opportunities, and drive specific sales behaviors.
- Ensure reporting supports sales planning, pipeline management, coaching, performance discussions, and resource allocation.
- Reduce manual, duplicative, and inconsistent sales reporting by establishing common definitions, reporting standards, and trusted data sources.
- Move commercial reporting from retrospective performance updates toward forward-looking insights, opportunity identification, and decision support.
- Drive adoption of dashboards and reporting tools by embedding them into business processes and leadership routines.
Employee Benefits Data and Reporting Strategy - Develop and own the Employee Benefits data, reporting, and insights strategy and multiyear roadmap.
- Build upon the initial Distribution focus to support product, underwriting, operations, customer, financial, and workforce priorities.
- Maintain an integrated view of Employee Benefits reporting needs, data dependencies, capability gaps, and modernization opportunities.
- Assess the current data and reporting landscape, including key data sources, platforms, reports, integrations, and business dependencies.
- Identify opportunities to simplify, consolidate, automate, modernize, or retire existing reports and tools.
- Establish the data and reporting foundation required to support advanced analytics, AI, and automation.
- Identify opportunities to use data and insights to improve profitable growth, customer experience, operational performance, and strategic decision-making.
- Ensure the data and reporting roadmap remains aligned with Employee Benefits priorities and enterprise data and technology strategies.
Strategy Governance and Prioritization - Establish and lead a governance process for Employee Benefits data, reporting, analytics, AI, and automation priorities.
- Create a transparent intake and prioritization model that evaluates initiatives based on business value, strategic alignment, feasibility, risk, dependencies, and available capacity.
- Own and maintain an integrated portfolio and roadmap of Employee Benefits data and reporting initiatives.
- Facilitate governance forums that bring together business, Technology, Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI leaders to make prioritization, investment, and sequencing decisions.
- Establish clear initiative owners, decision rights, milestones, dependencies, risks, and expected business outcomes.
- Create transparency into priorities, delivery status, resource constraints, and unresolved decisions.
- Track progress against the roadmap and escalate delivery risks or competing priorities when necessary.
- Establish measures to assess adoption, business impact, and return on data and reporting investments.
Business, Technology, Data and AI Partnership - Serve as the primary strategic liaison between Employee Benefits and Technology, Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI teams.
- Translate business strategies, operating challenges, and user needs into clearly defined capabilities, use cases, and requirements.
- Represent Employee Benefits priorities in enterprise technology, data, architecture, analytics, and AI planning.
- Partner with technical teams on solution design, platforms, architecture, integrations, and modernization decisions while maintaining clear accountability for business strategy and prioritization.
- Ensure proposed technical solutions address defined business outcomes and can be effectively adopted within business workflows.
- Establish clear roles and responsibilities across business and technical teams.
- Create transparency into demand, delivery capacity, sequencing, dependencies, ownership, and progress.
- Connect emerging enterprise data, analytics, and AI capabilities to practical Employee Benefits business opportunities.
Data Governance and Business Ownership - Establish and operationalize an Employee Benefits data governance framework aligned with enterprise standards.
- Define business ownership, stewardship, accountability, and decision rights for critical data domains.
- Establish common business definitions and authoritative sources for sales, operational, customer, product, and financial metrics.
- Partner with business functions to identify data owners and improve accountability for data quality and integrity.
- Define processes for identifying, escalating, prioritizing, and resolving data-quality issues.
- Ensure Employee Benefits governance aligns with enterprise data governance, privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
- Promote consistent adoption of data standards, definitions, and governance practices across business functions.
Data Enablement and Capability Development - Serve as a strategic advisor to Employee Benefits leadership on reporting, analytics, AI, and emerging data capabilities.
- Improve data fluency and help business leaders effectively interpret and use available information.
- Lead change management and adoption for new dashboards, reporting capabilities, metrics, governance practices, and tools.
- Establish standards and reusable practices for business requirements, reporting development, testing, implementation, and ongoing management.
- Develop the operating model, capabilities, and resource plan for a broader Employee Benefits reporting and data strategy function.
- Provide leadership and oversight to internal resources, external partners, and cross-functional teams supporting the roadmap.
- Build and lead a formal reporting and data strategy team as the function matures and business needs evolve.
Initial Priorities During the first 12 months, this leader will focus on:
- Defining the sales operating reporting strategy and prioritized delivery roadmap.
- Establishing a standard commercial performance framework, including agreed-upon KPIs, definitions, data sources, targets, and reporting audiences.
- Advancing representative, regional, and executive dashboards that connect activity, pipeline, sales results, persistency, and business-plan performance.
- Creating an inventory and assessment of existing sales, commercial, and management reports.
- Identifying opportunities to consolidate, automate, modernize, or retire duplicative reporting.
- Establishing trusted data sources and common definitions for priority commercial metrics.
- Implementing an intake, governance, and prioritization process for Employee Benefits data, reporting, analytics, AI, and automation initiatives.
- Developing an integrated Employee Benefits data and reporting strategy and multiyear roadmap.
- Clarifying roles, decision rights, ownership, dependencies, and delivery expectations across business and technical teams.
- Partnering with Technology and Enterprise Data teams to define the future-state data capabilities required by Employee Benefits.
- Identifying and advancing the highest-value data gaps and use cases affecting commercial and operational decision-making.
- Establishing the data and governance foundation necessary to accelerate analytics, AI, and automation use cases.
- Defining the future operating model and talent requirements for the broader reporting and data strategy capability.
Qualifications - Bachelors Degree required; Minimum of seven years of experience in sales analytics, business intelligence, reporting strategy, data strategy, commercial operations, analytics, or a related discipline.
- Demonstrated experience developing sales or commercial reporting that supports frontline performance management and executive decision-making.
- Strong understanding of sales metrics, pipeline management, performance scorecards, business planning, and commercial operating rhythms.
- Experience developing data and reporting strategies and translating business needs into scalable capabilities and requirements.
- Experience establishing or supporting governance structures, prioritization models, ownership frameworks, and common business definitions.
- Working knowledge of data architecture, data models, data quality, governance frameworks, reporting environments, and analytics platforms.
- Experience partnering across business leadership, Technology, Data Engineering, Analytics, AI, and other technical teams.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives and influence outcomes without direct authority.
- Strong business acumen and the ability to connect reporting, data, and technology investments to measurable business outcomes.
- Ability to operate effectively as both a strategic leader and a hands-on individual contributor.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and prioritization skills.
- Strong executive communication skills, including the ability to translate technical concepts for business audiences and business needs for technical teams.