The Platform Lead is accountable for the overall success of an assigned customer account or contract. The role ensures that the customer relationship, contracted service, operational delivery, financial performance, people, carrier and supplier ecosystem, risks and governance work together as one healthy account.
The Platform Lead is the senior day-to-day owner of the account. The role translates customer commitments and portfolio strategy into clear priorities, ownership, measures and operating rhythm, and ensures that issues are solved at the right level rather than escalating everything upward.
Under the Platform Lead, Operations owns day-to-day execution of the service, while the Solution Performance Lead owns solution performance, value realisation and the prioritisation of changes required to improve outcomes. The Platform Lead holds both accountable and ensures the account works as one connected system.
Carrier and supplier performance is a core part of account success. The Platform Lead maintains senior relationships with critical carriers and suppliers, participates in strategic sourcing and major commercial or service decisions, and ensures supplier performance, capacity, cost, resilience and risk are actively governed.
The Platform Lead is accountable for the account P&L, budget, forecast, billing and cash performance, service and contractual commitments, customer confidence and account resilience. The Customer Portfolio Lead owns the longer-term strategic relationship, renewal, expansion and annuity agenda; the Platform Lead provides the account performance, value evidence and customer insight that make that growth possible.
The critical responsibilities of this role are described below. They may be subject to reasonable changes from time to time in line with business need.
- Customer relationship and account ownership
- Own the overall day-to-day success of the assigned customer account and act as the senior Transnova contact for operational, delivery and account-performance matters.
- Build trusted relationships with key customer stakeholders and maintain a clear understanding of their priorities, concerns and changing business context.
- Ensure customer commitments are translated into clear outcomes, owners, measures and actions across the account team.
- Lead the account governance rhythm and ensure that performance, value, risks, financials, decisions and actions are transparent and followed through.
- Identify deterioration in customer confidence or relationship health early and act before it becomes a renewal or retention risk.
- Keep the Customer Portfolio Lead informed of account health, strategic developments, risks and opportunities that affect retention, renewal, expansion or annuity.
- Operational delivery and service performance
- Hold Operations accountable for reliable day-to-day execution of the contracted service, including planning, execution, carrier coordination, POD, settlement and other in-scope activities.
- Ensure service levels, customer KPIs and operating controls are understood, visible and actively managed.
- Resolve cross-functional delivery issues that cannot be solved within one operational area and remove organisational blockers.
- Ensure material service failures are investigated to root cause, corrective actions are owned and repeat failure is reduced.
- Maintain sufficient operational resilience, backup coverage and escalation paths so that the account does not depend on one individual.
- Ensure operating standards are applied consistently while allowing teams to use judgement within agreed guardrails.
- Financial and commercial performance
- Take full accountability for the P&L and cash performance of the assigned account, including revenue, direct and allocated cost, margin, billing and collections.
- Own the account budget and forecast and ensure financial risks, variances and corrective actions are identified early.
- Ensure accurate and timely billing and work with Finance to resolve disputes, aged debt or revenue leakage.
- Protect commercial discipline by ensuring scope, pricing, service commitments and resourcing remain aligned to the contract.
- Identify material over-servicing, under-recovery or cost-to-serve issues and take corrective action.
- Provide the Customer Portfolio Lead with clear commercial insight and value evidence to support renewal and growth conversations.
- Carrier and supplier relationship management
- Build and maintain strong senior relationships with key carriers and other critical suppliers supporting the account.
- Ensure carrier capability, service, cost, compliance, capacity and risk are aligned to customer and contract requirements.
- Review carrier performance, cost versus budget and material service issues with the relevant carrier or sourcing lead.
- Participate in strategic carrier sourcing, major negotiations and supplier decisions where these materially affect customer value, account performance or risk.
- Act as the senior escalation point for significant carrier or supplier relationship issues.
- Ensure supplier performance is considered as part of customer governance, value realisation and account risk management.
- Promote collaborative supplier relationships that improve service, cost, resilience and innovation over time.
- Solution performance and value realisation
- Hold the Solution Performance Lead accountable for making solution performance, customer value and improvement priorities visible and measurable.
- Ensure each account has clear success measures and an active value-realisation plan linked to customer priorities.
- Challenge activity that consumes effort without creating customer or business value.
- Ensure material solution-health risks or recurring problems are routed through the Solution Performance Lead, Solution Specialist and Service Integration at the correct level.
- Use proven value and customer outcomes as evidence for retention, renewal, advocacy and expansion.
- People leadership and account capability
- Lead, coach and hold accountable the Solution Performance Lead(s) and Operations leadership assigned to the account.
- Create clear ownership, decision rights, priorities and escalation paths across the account team.
- Build leadership depth, succession and backup coverage so that the account is not dependent on one person.
- Address persistent underperformance directly and fairly while creating the conditions for capable people to think, act and grow.
- Ensure knowledge, standards and ways of working are captured and shared through the TMS Playbook and capability model rather than held by individuals.
- Promote collaboration across accounts and central capabilities so that good practice is reused rather than rebuilt.
- Contract, risk and governance
- Ensure compliance with contractual obligations, service commitments, agreed controls and relevant regulatory requirements.
- Maintain clear visibility of operational, commercial, customer, people, technology and supplier risks and ensure each has an owner and mitigation.
- Ensure incidents, complaints, financial failures and material service issues are investigated and acted on at the correct level.
- Maintain clear governance records for key decisions, commitments, risks and actions.
- Escalate material risks to the Customer Portfolio Lead and relevant enablement or executive functions early.
- Transition, improvement and growth support
- Work with Implementation to ensure new or materially changed solutions transition cleanly into Customer Success and reach a stable operating state.
- Ensure acceptance criteria, measures, documentation, training, support readiness, ownership and governance are in place before normal operations take over.
- Support the Customer Portfolio Lead with account insight, customer needs, value proof and opportunity identification for renewal, expansion and annuity growth.
- Connect recurring customer needs and successful operating patterns into Service Integration, Product and Engineering so that they can become reusable capability.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
• NQF Level 7 or above
• Relevant degree or diploma in Logistics, Transport, Supply Chain, Engineering, Business or a related field
• 7+ years relevant logistics / transport / managed-services experience, including meaningful customer and team leadership
| DESIRED, NON-ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS |
| • Postgraduate business, supply-chain or leadership qualification • Formal finance / commercial-management training • Project, change or programme-management certification • TMS / supply-chain technology certification |
Minimum Requirements
Behavioural
- Strong ownership mentality with the ability to take accountability for outcomes beyond direct personal control.
- Customer-focused and commercially minded, able to balance customer value with sustainable Transnova economics.
- Clear, direct and courageous in decision-making, including difficult performance and commercial conversations.
- Able to create clarity, delegate meaningful ownership and avoid becoming the operational bottleneck.
- Strong judgement and ability to prioritise competing issues based on value, risk and strategic importance.
- Builds trust, coaches capability and actively reduces dependency on individual leaders.
- High integrity, resilience and consistency.
Skills and experience
- Strong experience leading complex logistics / transport operations or managed-service contracts.
- Demonstrated accountability for customer relationships and contract performance.
- Strong financial and commercial capability, including budgets, forecasts, P&L, margin, billing and cash.
- Experience managing and developing managers, analysts or professional teams.
- Ability to understand and challenge performance across planning, execution, carrier management, finance and customer service.
- Strong stakeholder engagement, negotiation and presentation skills.
- Ability to connect operational performance to measurable customer and business value.
- Experience managing contract risk, service governance and commercial commitments.
- Good understanding of TMS, digital supply-chain solutions, data and analytics.
- Strong analytical, root-cause and problem-solving capability.
DESIRED, NON-ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE
- Consumer Goods / FMCG transport experience.
- Cross-border road-freight or complex multi-carrier network experience.
- Experience with e2open, BluJay or another enterprise TMS.
- Experience in customer-success, managed-services or outsourcing environments.
- Experience with AI, automation, BI and decision-intelligence tools.
- Experience with strategic carrier sourcing and senior supplier relationship management.
- Track record of delivering validated transport savings or productivity improvements.
- Knowledge of relevant industry bodies, regulations and transport governance frameworks.
About Transnova
Transnova is an independent logistics advisory, technology and managed services firm established in 2012 with staff of over 100 supply chain professionals. Our main area of expertise lies in the design, implementation, operations and / or transfer of 4PL solutions or Logistics Control Towers.
How To Apply
Interested candidates should submit a cover letter and CV to careers@transnova.co.za