Specialist - Commercial Standards Claims & Contract

Specialist — Commercial Standards, Claims & Contracts is a Business Analyst and SME on the Customer Operations Transformation programme. The outcome is a clear, governed set of commercial policies — credit, claims, pricing and trade terms — and customer agreements that are standard, compliant and correctly executed in the systems; fewer and cleaner customer claims; lower invalid deductions and trade-spend leakage; and <1 Day Resolution wherever the process allows: fewer claims arising in the first place, and faster, controlled settlement for those that remain. Everything this role does serves that outcome.

The scope spans Commercial Standards, Claims and Contracts end to end — formulation and governance of credit, claims, pricing and trade-terms policies, policy exceptions and delegation of authority, the customer agreement and contract lifecycle (drafting, approval, activation, amendment and renewal), pricing, rebate, discount and promotion setup, accruals, claims intake, validation and settlement, proof of performance, and the controls that link agreed terms to what is invoiced and paid. The role designs across this scope as one process rather than as separate contract, promotion and claims solutions. It works with market Commercial, Revenue Growth Management, Sales Finance, Credit, Legal, Internal Control, Customer Service and Collections teams, GBO, D&T, the SAP and Control Tower (Claims and Deduction platform) teams and third-party vendors.

The role combines 5 capabilities in one person. As an SME, they formulate, document the global commercial policies — credit policy (credit limits, payment terms, risk categories, blocks and releases), claims policy (eligibility, evidence, time limits, approval and write-off thresholds), and pricing governance (price-setting and approval, discount and rebate guardrails, price-change control) — and the standards and controls that make them work in practice. As a business analyst, they interrogate contract, trade-terms, accrual, claims and deduction data, document current and target process, and write requirements to standard. As a subject matter expert, they bring the functional depth to act as design authority for the fragment and to challenge solutions that would not work in the markets. As a sprint or project owner, they take a scope fragment through design, test and deployment on a two to four week value drop cadence. As a process and technology expert, they translate commercial policy, contract terms and controls into working design on SAP pricing, condition contracts and settlement management, Control Tower claims and deduction capability, and the contract and trade promotion management toolset.

The defining discipline of this role is designing claims out at source, not processing them faster. A quicker claim approval is a smaller prize than a contract term clear enough never to be disputed; a faster settlement is a smaller prize than a promotion set up correctly in the system so the customer never needs to claim. The postholder is expected to use the data to find where in the commercial process claims are created — an ambiguous contract clause, a non-standard trade term, a late or incorrect pricing or promotion setup, an accrual gap, a weak approval control — and design the fix upstream into commercial policy, standards, contract templates, deal approval and master data, as well as into the claims and settlement design.

Understanding of markets and of upstream and downstream impact is central to the role. A claim usually starts life as a commercial negotiation; a contract term becomes a pricing condition, an accrual, an invoice and, if anything is misaligned, a deduction in Collections. The postholder is expected to know what happens on either side of their own process — from deal negotiation through to cash and the P&L — and to design accordingly.

This is a transformation design and delivery role, not an operational one. The postholder does not negotiate customer deals, draft or approve individual contracts, validate or settle individual claims, or manage customer relationships; that stays with market Commercial, Legal, GBO and BPO run teams. The role changes how that work is done — including the commercial policies, standards, contract templates, reason codes, analytics and controls that let run teams find and remove causes in BAU. The role formulates and recommends policy; final approval sits with the relevant policy owners and governance forums.

The role works independently within an agreed frame set by the workstream lead, gathers its own data, forms its own view and brings recommendations rather than questions. Where a Senior Specialist is assigned on the same fragment, it works under their design direction. Decisions are expected to be based on evidence rather than opinion, and every artefact is expected to meet the programme documentation, taxonomy and quality standards, including BPQMS.

Analyse commercial terms, contracts and claims performance and baseline the problem — 25%. Document current-state credit, claims and pricing policies, commercial standards, contract lifecycle and claims processes across markets and identify variation from the global standard. Build the process, trade-terms and claim-type taxonomy and interrogate the data directly at portfolio level — customer agreements and terms, pricing and promotion conditions, accruals versus actuals, claims volume, value, ageing and rejection rates, invalid deductions, write-offs and trade-spend leakage — to baseline the problem per market and size the opportunity. Perform gap analysis between current process, commercial policy, contract terms, platform capability, controls and the target operating model, separating structural design issues from operational backlog. Support business-rule validation, master-data requirements and policy analysis. Aim for validated current-state documentation and a defensible baseline that will stand up to audit.

Formulate commercial policies and standards, and design claims out at source — 25%. Support future-state design aligned to the global standard, always designing for the cause rather than the symptom. Formulate, document and maintain the global commercial policies the design depends on — credit policy (credit limits and risk categorisation, payment terms, credit blocks and release authority), claims policy (claim eligibility, evidence and proof-of-performance requirements, submission time limits, validation, approval and write-off thresholds) and pricing governance (price-setting and approval, discount, rebate and promotion guardrails, price-change control and margin protection) — with a clear policy-exception and delegation-of-authority framework, and take them through the governance forums for approval. Translate policy into the standards that operationalise it: standard trade-terms structures, contract and agreement templates, clause libraries, deal approval and delegation-of-authority rules, and the minimum data a contract must carry to be executed correctly in the systems. Use the baseline to show where claims are created — contract ambiguity, non-standard terms, pricing and promotion setup, accruals, proof of performance, master data — and design the fix upstream. Design the interventions: standard contract-to-condition setup, automated accruals and settlement, validated claim intake, reason-code frameworks and claims workflow. Prepare business requirements, functional specifications, process flows, business rules and user stories. Facilitate design workshops and document outcomes and decisions. Assess process, policy, financial and control impacts, and define how policy compliance will be monitored.

Deliver the outcome: standard contracts, fewer claims and <1 Day Resolution — 20%. Design for, and evidence, policy adoption and compliance across markets, an increase in contracts on standard terms and templates, fewer policy exceptions, a reduction in claims volume, aged claims, invalid deductions and trade-spend leakage, and movement toward <1 Day Resolution for appropriate claims and queries. Shape the build-out of SAP pricing, condition contracts and settlement management, Control Tower claims and deduction functionality, and contract and trade promotion management tooling as the primary levers on the outcome. Define the measures with the business owner, monitor post-go-live performance against the baseline, and recommend and, where owned, implement continuous improvements to the design. This is the accountability every other accountability serves.

Own testing, deployment and adoption through the value drops — 20%. Translate requirements into working design on SAP, Control Tower and the contract and trade promotion management toolset with D&T, system integrators and vendors. Define and review test scenarios, support SIT and UAT, and manage defect resolution with business users. Break the work into fragments that can be delivered on the value drop cadence, and own the backlog, dependencies and risks for the fragment. Support deployment, hypercare and business readiness, and hand over up-to-date commercial standards, contract templates, process documentation, SOPs, controls and training materials to the run teams. Aim for SIT and UAT completed with minimal post-go-live defects and a clean handover into run.

Manage delivery discipline and enable across the programme — 10%. Track requirements, risks, assumptions, dependencies and decisions throughout the lifecycle, and escalate early and precisely when the frame is wrong. Act as a trusted partner to market Commercial, Revenue Growth Management, Sales Finance, Credit, Legal, Internal Control, Customer Service, GBO, D&T and vendors, and coach business users through testing, deployment and adoption. Enable the adjacent workstreams — Order-to-Invoice, Collections, Claims & Receivables, Customer Service and Supply — by surfacing cross-boundary impact before it becomes a deployment defect, and by handing design-level root causes to the workstream that owns them.

1. Commercial Standards, Claims & Contracts domain depth and business analysis, on a broad Customer Operations base. Real SME depth in commercial policy and customer contracts — credit policy and credit risk, claims policy, pricing governance, trade-terms structures, rebates, discounts and promotions, contract lifecycle management, accruals, and claims validation and settlement — sufficient to act as design authority and to write policy that is clear, enforceable and auditable, combined with strong business-analysis craft: process mapping, requirements gathering, gap analysis, functional-specification writing, user stories and workshop facilitation. Understands how claims and deductions are created across the commercial and Order to Cash process, and how contract wording, deal approval, pricing and promotion setup, master data and accruals drive them. Built on a general understanding of Customer Operations end-to-end (Order to Cash, Commercial and Supply) and of how markets actually work, including upstream and downstream impact. Knows Consumer Products industry standards and the realities of Beer, Wine & Spirits — distributor and wholesaler concentration, complex customer agreements, promotional and trade-spend claims, and route-to-market and regulatory constraints on trade terms. Working knowledge of Diageo BPQMS standards.

2. Data, technology and delivery discipline. Comfortable interrogating contract, trade-terms, accrual, claims and deduction data directly, and translating requirements into working design on SAP pricing, condition contracts and settlement management, the Control Tower claims and deduction platform, and the supporting contract and trade promotion management toolset. Understands the platform, the data model, the business rules, workflow and approval logic, and the operating model — retained, GBO and BPO — beneath the process. Strong on test planning and defect management (SIT / UAT), business readiness and hypercare, and on risk, issue and dependency management. Data-driven by instinct — baselines the problem, quantifies the opportunity and lets the evidence settle the argument. Able to prioritise across concurrent workstreams and deadlines.

3. Design-for-prevention rigour, stakeholder influence and adaptability. Relentless about cause over symptom in design — not satisfied with automating a workaround when the claim could be designed out through a clearer standard, contract or setup. Strong stakeholder management and influencing across a global and local matrix, including senior Commercial, Finance and Legal stakeholders and policy governance forums, and consultative by default: frames the problem before prescribing and drives stakeholders toward aligned design decisions. Clear communicator, and able to manage conflict to a resolution rather than let it stall a decision. Comfortable being redeployed: arrives in an unfamiliar market or process, orients fast, and adds value quickly. Resilient, collaborative, and a visible role model for Diageo’s values.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in Finance, Business, Commercial, Law, Operations, IT or a related discipline.

• Working knowledge of Diageo BPQMS standards. Business-analysis, Agile / Scrum or Lean Six Sigma credentials are an advantage; familiarity with SAP pricing, condition contracts or settlement management, Control Tower or similar claims and deduction platforms, or contract lifecycle or trade promotion management tools is a plus.

Experience — essential

• Overall. 10+ years spanning transformation, business analysis and consultative experience, with a strong core of business analysis and SME design work in large-scale process transformation.

• Subject matter expertise. Deep functional understanding of credit, claims and pricing policy, commercial terms, customer contracts and agreements, trade promotions and claims within a Commercial and Order-to-Cash environment — someone who knows how claims and deductions are created by contract terms and commercial setup, and how standards and process should be designed to prevent them, not only the tooling. Operational exposure is useful context; the requirement is designing the process, not running it.

• Transformation. Experience in business process transformation, including current-state assessment and future-state operating model design, across the full lifecycle from design through testing, deployment and post-go-live stabilisation. Evidence of reducing claims, deductions, trade-spend leakage, cycle time or manual effort against a defensible baseline.

• Consultative. A track record of acting as a trusted business partner — framing the real problem, facilitating design decisions, aligning global and local stakeholders — and being measured on whether the business changed, not only on whether the deliverable shipped.

• Technology. Experience translating business requirements into functional specifications and solution design with D&T, system integrators and vendors, including test planning and defect management (SIT / UAT). SAP pricing, condition contracts or settlement management, Control Tower, or comparable contract, trade promotion or claims platform exposure is an advantage.

• Industry. FMCG or Consumer Products experience is essential. Beer, Wine & Spirits experience is strongly preferred.

• General understanding of Customer Operations end to end — OTC, Commercial and Supply — and of how markets actually operate, including upstream and downstream impact.

Experience — desirable

• Experience formulating and governing commercial policy — credit, claims and pricing governance — and the standards beneath it: trade-terms frameworks, contract templates, clause libraries and deal approval policies — across multiple markets.

• Exposure to contract lifecycle management, trade promotion management, or claims and settlement automation, including AI-led claim validation and matching.

• Experience designing reason-code frameworks and claims analytics that let run teams identify and remove the causes of claims and deductions.

• Experience defining what must be global standard versus what requires market localisation.

• Experience working in a pooled, on-demand or competency-based delivery model across multiple workstreams.

• Prior experience of a GBO or shared services transition or operating model consolidation.

About us

With over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries, Diageo is home to some of the world’s most iconic drinks. From Johnnie Walker and Guinness to Tanqueray, Smirnoff and Don Julio, we craft brands chosen for life’s moments — from everyday connections to landmark celebrations.

Bring your talent, curiosity and ambition, and strive for your personal best alongside people who challenge, support and learn from each other. Together, as one outstanding team, we keep learning, improving and raising the bar for our brands, our business and each other.

Join us and play your part in making life’s moments mean a little more.

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Working with us
Flexibility is key to our success. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you, so that you’re supported to manage your wellbeing and balance your priorities from day one. 

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Our purpose is crafting iconic drinks chosen for life’s moments. And it’s our people, with their different experiences, perspectives and talents, who make that possible.

We value diversity in its broadest sense and want everyone to feel they can belong, contribute and strive for their personal best. You’ll work alongside people with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives — challenging, supporting and learning from one another as one outstanding team.

Together, we’re constantly learning and improving, combining the strength of our people, capabilities and iconic brands to raise the bar, grow and win. Wherever you join us, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute, make an impact and play your part in making life’s moments mean a little more.

Ready to bring your best? This could be your opportunity. 

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