Are you an experienced Procurement Manager looking for a new challenge?
Join our team in Marlow and act as a procurement business partner for our relevant category stakeholder community.
As Procurement Manager, you'll deliver comprehensive sourcing and supplier development strategies across a defined range of spend categories or sub-categories, driving targeted value and enhancing organisational capability.
If you have approximately 2-3 years of experience in a similar role with a track record of negotiating high-level contracts and are ready to make a significant impact, we want to hear from you.
Core Responsibilities
- Develop comprehensive sourcing strategies for spend categories, considering internal and market risks and opportunities and aligning with business objectives.
- Identify long-term savings opportunities through strategy creation, exploring all potential value levers.
- Create compelling business cases for change in collaboration with stakeholders.
- Contribute developing an education, communication, and engagement plans for end users, business units, and functional teams.
- Act as the commercial expert in the relevant spend categories.
Benefits Delivery:
- Deliver identified benefits through effective strategy execution and category stakeholder engagement, focusing on risk management, quality, service, cost, and innovation.
- Ensure financial benefits are managed in line with procurement and finance processes, securing agreement on the financial value delivered.
- Contribute to overall procurement benefit targets.
External Supplier Relationships
- Build strategic relationships with key suppliers at a senior level, leveraging the Business Review Meeting process.
- Manage supplier relationships to minimise risks.
- Negotiate, create, execute, and manage effective contracts with suppliers to maximise opportunities and minimise risks.
- Implement robust performance management processes for category spend suppliers, ensuring performance measurement.
- Develop Operational Excellence strategies for key suppliers to drive improvement against KPIs.
- Build collaborative relationships with suppliers to position Whistl as a preferred customer for innovation and minimise disruption.
- Contribute to supply chain transformation for cost control, complexity reduction, simplification, best practices, and KPIs.
- Identify and manage significant supply chain risks, ensuring appropriate mitigation plans and communication within impacted business units, procurement, and the supply base.
We welcome applications from candidates with any of the following skills or attributes: procurement, sourcing, supplier, strategy, Finance, eRFx, eAuctions, Spend Analytics, performance data, and supply chain.
Benefits
- Enhanced annual leave entitlement, starting at 31 days
- Access to our prestige Benefits and Rewards Portal
- Long service rewards, both financial and leave-based
- Health cash plan
- Life Assurance Scheme
- Private medical insurance
- Car allowance
- Career development opportunities
- Access to a well-established Employee Assistance Programme
And other excellent benefits you'd expect from a market leader.
Additional Information
This Procurement Manager role will involve travel to our other sites and off-site meetings. You will need to hold a valid driving licence.
Essential Skills
- Excellent communication skills - verbal and written, to influence internal and external stakeholders at all levels
- A good technical appreciation of the range of procurement categories and familiarity with procurement tools, including eRFx, eAuctions, & Spend Analytics
- Proven ability to negotiate with suppliers with an analytical and commercial approach
- Able to interpret financial and performance data to draw conclusions, identify opportunities for improvement and recommend solutions
- Excellent organisational skills with the ability to prioritise workload and work to conflicting, frequently demanding deadlines
- Up-to-date and detailed understanding of areas of responsibility and professional and technical best practice to be a credible representative of the business
- Sound commercial judgment with an understanding of budgeting, financial planning, and business case production
- An understanding of project governance and management tools and techniques
Desirable Skills
CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply) qualification or equivalent is preferred but not essential.
Why Whistl?
We are the UK's leading delivery management company, providing efficient, high-quality and competitively priced services across business mail, parcels, fulfilment and doordrop media in the UK and internationally. Distributing more than 4 billion items annually, we are market leaders in Downstream Access Mail (DSA) services, handling over 50% of bulk business mail in the UK.
We are in the top 100 privately owned companies with 23 locations across the UK. Our success is down to our people and the values we all follow to deliver excellence to our customers.
We think as part of a team, act with a can-do attitude and do the right thing. Following these simple values has resulted in our people delivering and exceeding our business and personal development goals.
We are a disability confident employer and embrace Well Being, EDI and ESG to make ourselves and our environment the best it can be.
Due to the nature of our business, this role may be subject to a DBS check.