Senior Category Manager

This industry was heavily affected by the pandemic, but has bounced back significantly and is embarking on a bold transformation and expansion programme.

Procurement has been at the forefront of driving supply-chain value over the last few years, whether it’s been rightsizing operational services during Covid or driving the sector’s carbon zero agenda.

There has never been a better time to join this company as it builds back stronger and better.

As Senior Category Manager, reporting to the Category Lead, you will work closely with business stakeholders to create and execute short and long-term category and sourcing strategies across OPEX spends.

This is a critical area of the business and you will be juggling a diverse group of stakeholders from a range of business units, therefore you need to have exceptional business partnering and stakeholder management experience. 

This respective category area also owns very large and complex contracts spanning over 8+ years and therefore this individual needs to be excellent at building strong supplier relationships and creating SRM strategies. 

As Senior Category Manager you will be responsible for:

1. Understand the strategic intent and objectives of the business and create and deliver procurement strategies which drive the delivery of organisational strategies.
2. Develop and maintain well-informed, long term effective category plans demonstrating market intelligence, clear priorities, strategy and pipeline.
3. Develop new innovative strategies which will be presented to relevant senior stakeholders, using creative commercial models, market leading technology and trends that will drive competitive edge for the business.
4. Manage their category strategic sourcing activities for large value, complex spend areas which align with the business and the broader business / market strategies.
5. Challenge business plans and strategy documents to ensure robustness of approach that maximises commercial opportunity and mitigates risk for each relevant endeavour
6. Work closely across the procurement team(s) with peers, leaders and stakeholders to drive collaboration and share best practice for synergies across common categories driving value add activities.
7. Collaborate, influence and champion close stakeholder relationships to drive governance through the Supplier Relationship Management (‘SRM’) process and uphold best practice SRM with key suppliers to extract value and manage risks.
8. Proactively engage teams, peers, leaders and stakeholders across the business to align to both procurement strategy and governance for delivery of business objectives.
9. Lead key contractual and commercial negotiations, engaging with relevant internal advisors (legal, insurance) upholding the best interests of the business with the ability to assess and articulate risks.

Benefits: 
– £66,500
– £4k Car Allowance
– Up to 25% bonus
– Private Medical 
– Extremely competitive pension match (12% employer, 8% employee)
– Life assurance
– A suite of other benefits available