Commercial Excellence Lead (m/f/d)

Job Description

Within the Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EEMEA). Commercial Operations & Strategy Organization, the Commercial Excellence Lead will elevate commercial excellence across the region, enable strong alignment across multiple functions and divisions, and lead commercial-capability readiness for our emerging launch pipeline in EEMEA. Strong, trusted partnership with cluster commercial operations teams is essential to the success of this role. Key stakeholders will be the EEMEA Leadership Team (LT), HHI Commercial Operations, regional Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) & Regional Commercial Leads (RCL), and market Commercial Operations Directors (CODs.)

This is a Band 400 individual-contributor role. The primary location is Switzerland, with secondary locations in the Europe or Middle East time zones may be considered upon further discussion with the hiring manager. The role includes approximately 25% travel within Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Responsibilities:

Commercial Capabilities: Drive customer engagement evolution in partnership with Digital Engagement teams, ensuring commercial capabilities, segmentation, omnichannel execution and customer insights are translated into improved customer experience and business outcomes.

Relevant focus areas include:

• Sales Force Effectiveness: Ensure proper Sales Incentive Plan (SIP), target setting, CRM operations and upgrades, and Sales Force of the Future (SFOF) deployment in select markets. Ensure an ongoing focus on segmentation and targeting and Multichannel Cycle Plans (MCCP) efforts in the region. Leverage data, analytics and business insights to improve sales force effectiveness in the region.
• Key Account Management: Ensure the roll out of Key Account Management and Top Customer programs in the region. Ensure successful capability roll-out and work with Market Access and Franchises to increase access at account level.
• Commercial Trade Channels: Align with HHI on new capability roll-out and support markets in uncovering Commercial Trade Channel (CTC) opportunities.

Operational Governance & Execution: Work with all relevant stakeholders to secure the EEMEA Commercial Operations & Strategy (CO&S) vision and business strategies and proactively identify and execute projects and programs of strategic importance to the region and our customers in a timely, effective, and efficient fashion. Be the communicator / connector / catalyst for cross-functional projects managed by extended regional stakeholders. Relevant focus areas include:

• CO&S Governance: Manage all governance activities for the CO&S department, including setting the agenda for virtual and face-to-face meetings and periodic forum calls with market leads and other relevant stakeholders.
• Business Impact Measurement: Establish measurement frameworks to evaluate the impact of commercial capability investments, ensuring visibility to adoption, effectiveness, customer outcomes and business value realization.
• Continuous Improvement: Continue to identify opportunities to drive simplification and harmonization across the region in collaboration with CO&S stakeholders including Digital Human Health (DHH). Support markets and the region in Objective & Key Result (OKR) transformation projects where requested. Bring external industry best practices and innovative approaches into the region to continuously elevate commercial excellence.
• Marketing Capabilities: Partner with regional Learning & Development (L&D), CMOs, and RCLs to build and scale marketing capabilities with a focus on L3 next deployment and sustainment.
• Regional Projects: Ensure the successful deployment of projects associated with regional initiatives, priorities, and experimentations.

Launch Excellence: Lead commercial-capability readiness that carries our emerging pipeline to flawless launch execution across markets. Relevant focus areas include:

• Launch Capability Readiness: Partner with RCLs and market teams to ensure markets have the appropriate Go to Market (G2M) planning, segmentation, targeting, field-force sizing, training, forecasting support, and launch playbooks are in place well ahead of launch.
• Launch Framework & Tracking: Establish a repeatable EEMEA launch-excellence framework and toolkit, with launch tracking that gives leadership visibility to timelines, milestones and risks.

AI-Enabled Commercial Excellence: Champion the responsible adoption of GenAI across commercial workflows — helping teams work faster and smarter while safeguarding compliance and quality — and explore opportunities to embed AI into sales, marketing, field-force and launch ways of working, in partnership with key stakeholders.

Talent Development: Build & support commercial-operations talent and capability development across the region.

We are looking for a commercially minded leader with 10+ years across sales, marketing, commercial operations and launch readiness who has successfully deployed commercial excellence capabilities in a complex, multinational environment. Combines strategic thinking with execution discipline, excels at influencing without authority, and has a strong track record of leading change, building capabilities, and translating data and technology into measurable business outcomes.

THE COMPANY

Our Company is a leading biopharmaceutical company employing over 1,000 people in Switzerland at three sites. The company’s headquarters are in Lucerne. At the site in Zurich, the company operates a global innovation and development hub. In addition, we manufacture medicines for global clinical trials and operate a forensic laboratory in Schachen (Canton Lucerne). We conduct around 40 clinical trials annually in Switzerland. The main therapeutic areas include oncology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases. We also have a broad portfolio of vaccines for the prevention of diseases in children, adolescents, and adults and we are one of the leading companies in veterinary medicine. Furthermore, we take our responsibility to the local community seriously and have been involved for many years in initiatives such as the «Trendtage Gesundheit Luzern» and the «Alliance Health Competence».

We are proud to be certified as a “Top Employer Switzerland” and “Top Employer Europe” showing the company’s commitment to our employees and the community around us.

One Roof is our new Swiss headquarters in Lucerne designed to bring teams together and make collaboration easier. Across 15,000 m² of modern office space, we unite colleagues from national, regional and global functions within different functions under one roof to strengthen cross‑functional cooperation and a ONE Team culture. The site is centrally located, a short walk from Lucerne train station, supporting sustainable commuting.

Required Skills:

Commercial Excellence, Cross-Functional Teamwork, Customer Engagement, Marketing, Marketing Operations, Project Management, Sales Force Effectiveness, Stakeholder Engagement, Strategic Market Analysis, Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking, Talent Development

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Job Posting End Date:

09/10/2026

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