Exceptional people person required with a proven track record of delivery in Procurement Category management for Marketing & Professional Services in a fast paced service environment. You will be leading a small team through a period of expansion and transformation and have autonomy across the entire category spend reporting directly to the CPO.

Blended working approach with 2 days per week in London and 3 days per week at home.

You will:

• Design, Develop and implement the Procurement strategy for the Marketing & Professional Services category
• Lead the development and implementation of procurement policies and system strategies conducting tendering, contract management, spend analytics and supplier performance management for the category also supporting the wider Procurement function.
• Be responsible for structured engagement with all required business functions to ensure that all contracts have suitable cover and protection, meet the requirements of the business and deliver expected value
• Implement and improvem best practice processes
• Identify, realise and report cost-saving and waste-reduction opportunities
• Support the CPO
• Conduct/support senior level negotiations and implement appropriate tactics to achieve a favourable outcome
• Responsible for conducting and leading regular reviews of the spend categories through benchmarking, rationalisation and aggregation opportunities
• Define and Implement the Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) strategy for the category
• Identify the relevant business leads and agree appropriate SRM supplier segmentation for the category
• Work with the business owners in the category to define and agree appropriate supplier performance measures in line with the defined SRM process
• Agree a formal engagement plan with key stakeholders to ensure that procurement is at the heart of the business decision making process
• Provide a point of escalation for key contacts to ensure that the category is meeting the timelines and targets agreed with the business
• Provide a single point of contact for customers on all category related matters becoming the trusted advisor for the category
• Train and educate customers on the procurement process and policy to increase and maintain adoption
• Be responsible for creating and leading a high performing category team, to ensure delivery of effective service across the whole business
• Effectively manage the category team's workload to deliver against deadlines
• Encourage and motivate team members to 'work as one' on procurement activity, to deliver a seamless service to internal customers
• Ensuring adherence of departmental and company procurement procedures and policies
• Effectively manage the relationship with the Finance team on budgets, cost saving, consumption and spend reduction targets/reports
• Ensure that Category team expertise is created/trained and maintained

Interviews will take place asap and the client is in a position to move at pace. Therefore please contact sally.davis@1st-executive.com asap