Business Operations Manager

Business Operations Manager | Palmerston North

Ready to make a real impact in a growing local business?

Auto Interiors Ltd is a well-established, family-owned Palmerston North business with a strong reputation for quality workmanship and genuine customer service.

We’re looking for a commercially minded, customer-focused person to become a key part of our business and help us improve the way we operate.

This is a hands-on role combining customer service, quoting, workflow management, financial administration and business improvement.

We’re not simply looking for someone to keep the office running. We’re looking for someone who can help make the business run better.

A New Chapter for Auto Interiors

This opportunity comes at an important time for our business.

Our long-standing Office Administrator, Carol, will be retiring at the end of September after providing outstanding service and support to Auto Interiors, our team and our customers.

Carol has been an important part of the day-to-day running of the business, and we’re extremely grateful for the contribution she has made.

Her retirement gives us a natural opportunity to look at what the business needs for its next chapter.

Rather than simply replacing Carol’s existing position, we’ve decided to develop the role to reflect where Auto Interiors is heading.

As the business continues to grow, we want to strengthen our customer experience, commercial management, workflow, financial administration and systems while making better use of technology and business information.

The new Business Operations Manager will take responsibility for many of the important day-to-day functions Carol has looked after so well, while also taking on a broader role in helping us improve and develop the business.

We’re not starting again. We’re building on strong foundations and preparing Auto Interiors for its next stage of growth.

The Role

You’ll work closely with the owner and alongside our workshop foreman, becoming an important link between our customers, office and workshop.

You’ll need to be comfortable dealing with what is happening today while also looking ahead and asking how we can improve tomorrow.

Customers & Sales

• Manage phone, email and face-to-face enquiries
• Understand customer requirements and help guide customers toward the right solution
• Prepare and follow up quotations
• Manage bookings and customer communication
• Set realistic expectations around price, scope and completion dates
• Ensure variations and additional work are communicated, approved and charged appropriately
• Build strong relationships with customers and identify genuine sales opportunities

Workflow & Capacity

You’ll work closely with our workshop foreman, who remains responsible for workshop production, technical decisions, staff allocation and quality.

• Coordinate forward bookings
• Match incoming work to actual workshop capacity
• Monitor job progress
• Identify scheduling issues and bottlenecks early
• Adjust plans when circumstances change
• Keep customers informed
• Help ensure we don’t over-promise and under-deliver

Commercial Management

We’re looking for someone who understands business and makes sound commercial decisions with the long-term sustainability and profitability of the business in mind.

As you learn about our business, you’ll become increasingly involved in quoting and commercial decisions.

You’ll need to understand labour, materials, complexity, risk and value — and recognise that the right price for a job isn’t necessarily just the hours worked plus the materials used.

• Understand the importance of margin and cash flow
• Be comfortable discussing price and value with customers
• Recognise commercial risk
• Avoid discounting simply to win work
• Ensure variations and additional work are charged
• Understand that sometimes the right commercial decision is to say no

Great customer service doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It means setting the right expectations, pricing work appropriately and delivering what we’ve promised while protecting the interests of the business.

Finance & Business Administration

• Preparing and issuing customer invoices
• Processing EFTPOS and customer payments
• Entering supplier invoices and material purchases
• Coding and monitoring business expenses
• Bank reconciliations
• Maintaining customer and supplier accounts
• Preparing creditor accounts for 20th-of-the-month payments
• Monitoring accounts receivable
• Following up overdue accounts professionally and consistently
• Maintaining accurate financial and customer records
• Providing useful day-to-day financial information to the owner
• Working with our external accounting support when required

Experience with MYOB, Xero or similar accounting software is strongly preferred, along with confidence handling day-to-day business accounts and financial administration.

Systems & Business Improvement

Once you’ve learned how we currently operate, we’ll want you to start asking: “How can we do this better?”

• Customer communication
• Quoting and quote follow-up
• Workflow and scheduling
• Job tracking
• Administration processes
• CRM and customer information
• Lead management
• Business reporting
• Technology and automation
• Internal communication

Marketing & Business Performance

You’ll work alongside our Marketing Assistant and owner to improve our understanding of where enquiries come from, marketing spend, lead quality, outstanding quotations, quote conversion, booked work generated and which activities are producing worthwhile results.

Your role isn’t to manage the day-to-day marketing activity. Your role is to help connect marketing activity with actual business results and ensure we’re getting value from our investment.

Who We’re Looking For

You might come from business or operations management, retail management, service management, office management, automotive, trades administration, customer service, sales or business improvement.

• Excellent with customers
• Strong communication and sales skills
• Commercially minded
• Understands profit and cash flow
• Comfortable discussing price and value
• Good financial administration skills
• Highly organised
• Takes ownership
• Enjoys solving problems
• Thinks in systems and processes
• Confident with technology
• Can manage competing priorities
• Works collaboratively with tradespeople and management
• Constructively challenges how things are done
• Follows things through

Automotive experience would be useful, but it isn’t essential. Commercial thinking, capability and attitude are more important to us than industry experience.

What We Offer

• A Monday-to-Friday role
• Attractive remuneration based on experience and capability
• A key position within an established local business
• Genuine responsibility and autonomy
• The opportunity to influence how the business operates
• Support to introduce new ideas and better systems
• Professional development
• Future performance incentives as the role develops
• The opportunity for the position to grow with the business

Interested?

If you enjoy working with customers, understand the importance of making a profit and naturally look for ways to make businesses operate better, we’d like to hear from you.

Please send your CV to Sign in to view email and a cover letter answering these three questions:

1. Tell us about a system, process or business improvement you’ve been responsible for and what result it achieved.
2. Give us an example of when you’ve had to balance looking after a customer with protecting the commercial interests of the business.
3. What accounting, CRM, quoting or business-management software have you used, and how confident are you using it?

Auto Interiors Ltd | Palmerston North