Interim Professional Services Category Manager

• Interim Category Manager - Professional Services - £350-400p/d
• London

An Interim Professional Services Category Manager at £350-400p/d is required for a global FTSE100 Oil & Gas Supermajor based in Greater London. A 12 month contract, likely to extend, this is an exciting opportunity within leading sourcing events and negotiations across all professional services, for a candidate with a strong background in Indirects and Professional Services Sourcing and proven high-level savings experience, who is looking to develop their experience within a global, diverse and fast-paced function.

Role:

The Professional Service Category Lead is responsible for Professional Services category management with a total spend in excess of $100M, specialising in Tax, Audit and FS. The region is made up of 15 Countries the largest spend for these categories being the UK, Ireland, Italy Germany and Luxembourg. The candidate should have solid procurement background, experience in managing relationships at a Senior level and sound program management skills to effectively operate without strict supervision across all phases of the sourcing process. The candidate should have direct experience of one or more of these categories ideally Tax, Audit and FS.

• Interact with local and regional stakeholders to understand procurement needs and pipeline and provide operational and strategic support
• Define regional strategies in alignment with the Global Category Leads
• Act as regional coordinator for a predefined set of sourcing categories
• Analyse spend & contribute to savings generation; review EMEA reporting and provide category input
• Deliver end-to-end sourcing projects
• Support third party vendor risk management process and spend management program
• Contribute to improve sourcing operating model and procedures and support implementation of transformation initiatives
• Track the status of assigned projects, communicating progress, changes and issues with the project team
• Use e-Procurement and e-sourcing tools, and incorporate corporate and social responsibility concepts to drive sourcing projects
• Drive compliance with Global Procurement Policy within region
• Negotiate large dollar, complex sourcing events to obtain the highest value in the commodities and services purchased. Manage RFx activity, from preparation to analysis
• Drive adoption with Vendor Management policies, to ensure compliance with both audit requirements and external regulation

Required Experience:

• Strong professional services experience across an international environment in multi-cultural environments.
• Broad sourcing experience - experience of indirect categories, with a strong preference for working across complex professional services agreements
• Previous financial services industry experience would be advantageous
• Demonstrated success in negotiating with Vendors
• Working knowledge of Emptoris, Ariba and SAP highly beneficial