Head of Commercial Operations (CommOps) EMEA

Company Description

Santen is a global ophthalmology-focused pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan, employing over 4,200 individuals worldwide. With a heritage spanning more than 130 years, the company is committed to enhancing patients' lives by combining a patient-first philosophy with deep expertise and advanced technologies in eye care. Santen’s product portfolio is robust, featuring treatments for glaucoma and dry eye across international markets, and for allergy and retinal conditions within Asia.

In 2023, Santen introduced a medium-term strategic plan designed to fully leverage its current product offerings while laying the groundwork for future innovations in prescription medicines. The strategy, titled "Maximise the Pharmaceuticals Business," is structured around two key phases:

• 2023–2025: Enhancing Regional Sales & Profitability
  The focus during this phase is on boosting performance across various markets by capitalising on existing products and improving operational efficiency. These efforts have already delivered strong results for the fiscal year 2023.
• Beyond 2026: Growth Through Innovation
  The next phase centers on launching new therapies, including pipeline products in areas like myopia and ptosis. Notably, the company recently received a positive CHMP opinion for a myopia treatment in Europe, with regulatory approval expected soon. This follows two successful product introductions for glaucoma in the EMEA region.

Santen achieved impressive financial performance in 2023, with revenues nearing 300 billion JPY (approximately $1.9 billion), representing 8% year-on-year growth. Operating profit reached 38.5 billion JPY (around $245 million). Results for 2024 are pending as the fiscal year concluded in March 2025.

With a footprint in over 50 countries across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Santen continues to lead in ophthalmology while undergoing a period of significant transformation and expansion in these regions.

Location

UK preferred.

Secondary locations: France (FR), Germany (DE), Spain (ES), Italy (IT), and the Netherlands (NL), Switzerland (CH).

Purpose of Role

The Head of Commercial Operations EMEA is responsible for delivering industry-leading Commercial Excellence for Santen across the EMEA region. This includes setting the strategy, tactics and supporting execution with countries. The role focuses on driving performance through. strengthening sales force effectiveness (SFE), enabling enhanced customer engagement, and delivering best-in-class commercial systems and performance measurement frameworks. The successful candidate will serve as a key partner to country and regional leadership teams, ensuring consistent execution, fostering accountability, and helping to create a high-performing commercial organization.This is a pivotal role for shaping how we measure success, optimize fieldforce impact and deliver value across markets.

Job Description

Key responsibilities

• Align commercial execution with portfolio and marketing strategy
• Collaborate with marketing and omnichannel engagement teams to ensure reps have the best tools and capabilities to engage with HCPs
• Support marketing and country organizations in coordinating the execution of marketing campaigns across brands and country sales force structures
• Collaborate with region heads and country managers to optimize sales force allocation to address growth potential and align with portfolio strategy
• Work with countries to improve targeting and segmentation to make it a highly integrated and valued business process for priority brands, focusing on major markets
• Design sales incentive plans to drive performance, focusing on inspiring the sales force to achieve portfolio strategy priorities and growth drivers
• Drive development and execution of strategies and tools that enhance sales force capabilities and customer engagement across EMEA
• Develop and evolve sales force training and learning culture across all EMEA countries, ensuring reps use tools and processes effectively, with a focus on launch products
• Assess sales force competitiveness vs the market and design/implement solutions for continuous improvement
• Embed omnichannel engagement mindset and skills among the sales force in alignment with the Omnichannel Engagement and Marketing teams
• Collaborate with Business Intelligence to develop sales analytics at key account and rep-level to identify performance gaps and opportunities
• Manage the CRM system and work with business users to continuously improve its capabilities to maximize customer engagement
• Collaborate with Marketing, Business Intelligence, and countries to ensure brand-specific KPIs are clear, enforced, and monitored
• Conduct regular audits to identify operational strengths and areas for improvement at both country and regional levels
• Advocate for high-value commercial operations activities to senior leaders across Santen EMEA

Qualifications

EDUCATION

• University degree in a relevant field is required (i.e. life sciences, Economics, Math, or highly analytical subject)
• Masters or PhD in analytical or scientific subjects – desirable

EXPERIENCE

• Minimum of 7-10 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry including experience in sales management or sales leadership position
• 3+ years’ experience in Sales Force Effectiveness, CRM and system management
• Experience in sales force excellence methods and uplifting sales force capabilities

OTHER COMPETENCIES

• Leadership and influence
• Proven track record of delivering strong, consistent results
• Ability to lead and influence cross functionally to provide solutions to the customer facing organization Excellent written and verbal communication skills to senior leaders and more junior employees Potential to work in or with multiple country markets
• Fluency in English
• Ability to engage with internal and external stakeholders
• Other European languages as an asset
• Knowledge of ophthalmology is a plus

Additional Information

Grow your career at Santen

A career at Santen is an opportunity to make a difference. Through our long-term vision outlined in Santen 2030, we are committed to be a Social Innovator - addressing the social and economic needs of people with visual impairments. We have team members around the world using their diverse talents to unlock new modalities and drive innovations for patient outcomes, education and treatment. At Santen, we believe in empowering all our team members with flexible ways of working and a highly inclusive work environment.

The Santen Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to building diverse teams and ensuring a safe and inclusive physical and virtual workplace for every one of our team members. All employment decisions are based on business needs, role requirements and individual qualifications regardless of race, color, ethnicity, national origin/ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/ expression, age, disability, medical condition, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you require any kind of accommodation during our recruitment process, please let the recruiter from our team know.