Commercial Process Manager

Caterpillar Inc.•Peoria, IL

About The Position

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc. When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. Caterpillar Customer Solutions Core Region Division is seeking a US-based Commercial Process Manager for this exciting opportunity! Role Summary: The Commercial Process Manager is responsible for designing, implementing, and scaling best‑practice commercial processes that enable efficient, compliant, and repeatable customer‑backed solutions across CI Core. This role focuses on process velocity, quality, and throughput of secured wins by establishing standardized commercial frameworks, proposal models, and contract-aligned playbooks that support long‑term solutions growth — moving opportunities from intake through a structured, compliant, and scalable commercial proposal framework. This position is not part of the core contracting organization. Contract execution, legal negotiation, and final contracting authority remain within the centralized contracting team. Instead, this role acts as an enterprise process architect and enabler, ensuring that commercial best practices, standards, and governance are embedded upstream and consistently applied across customer segments and solution types.

Requirements

Customer Focus: Knowledge of the values and practices that align customer needs and satisfaction as primary considerations in all business decisions and ability to leverage that information in creating customized customer solutions.
Industry Knowledge: Knowledge of the organization's industry group, trends, directions, major issues, regulatory considerations, and trendsetters; ability to apply industry knowledge appropriately to diverse situations.
Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.
Effective Communications: Understanding of effective communication concepts, tools and techniques; ability to effectively transmit, receive, and accurately interpret ideas, information, and needs through the application of appropriate communication behaviors.
Negotiating: Knowledge of successful negotiation concepts and techniques; ability to negotiate successfully across the organization and with external vendors and clients in a constructive and collaborative manner.
Relationship Management: Knowledge of relationship management techniques; ability to establish and maintain healthy working relationships with clients, vendors, and peers.
Business Development: Knowledge of business development tools, techniques and approaches; ability to explore and develop potential areas of business growth for the organization.
Value Selling: Knowledge of the principles and practices for selling products, technology and services; ability to provide overall product/service 'value' and to differentiate support offerings that address clearly understood customer needs.

Nice To Haves

Strong background in commercial proposals, deal structuring, and contract‑adjacent work
Solid understanding of: Commercial terms, contracting principles, enterprise compliance and standard terms & conditions
Demonstrated experience mapping, owning, and enforcing processes
Ability to bring structure where ambiguity exists
Comfortable influencing senior stakeholders and holding teams accountable
Experience supporting customer‑facing commercial discussions

Responsibilities

Develop and scale commercial best practices for customer‑back solutions, focused on speed, quality, and repeatability from opportunity qualification through commercial close.
Design standardized commercial frameworks for proposals, pricing structures, contract-aligned terms, and customer agreement principles that enable efficient solution wins.
Establish and maintain a suite of scalable proposal and commercial templates, aligned with enterprise standards, compliance requirements, and approved terms and conditions.
Partner closely with Sales, Solutions, Finance, Legal, and Contracting teams to ensure clear handoffs, role clarity, and governance, while avoiding duplication with the core contracting function.
Enable consistent commercial execution across all CI Core customer stratifications, ensuring scalability from pilot solutions to broader portfolio deployment.
Define and implement commercial process governance, including stage gates, decision rights, and escalation paths to support disciplined deal execution.
Drive continuous improvement by leveraging enterprise best practices, lessons learned, and performance insights to optimize commercial processes over time.
Support solution business management structures that ensure clarity of ownership, accountability, and lifecycle management for ongoing customer agreements.
Support commercial and contractual discussions from a structure, process, and framework perspective, while deferring legal negotiation authority to the contracting team