Category Manager - Operational Services

It is an exciting time to join us!

Here at Southern Water, there has never been a better time to join us than now. As the Category Manager you will strategically and proactively develop category and sourcing strategies to support business need.

Your role in relationship management is key to developing and implementing your strategies, engaging with internal customers to understand requirements, volume demands, and specifications. You will be supporting all associated commercial activity to achieve value creation by working closely with the Sourcing Manager to execute the full sourcing lifecycle and deliver against our procurement vision.

You will drive value through standardisation, aggregation of demand and actions to minimise tail spend and continuously work to improve and translate external best practices, innovation, and ideas into actionable proposals and plans for the business based on analytical data and market intelligence. Your approach to proactively seeking opportunities for value maximisation through collaborative working and analysis of market trends is a great contribution in this role.

Southern Water are on the pinnacle of change and this role is your chance to truly make a difference by bringing your own talents and skills to the table. You will be an ambitious self-starter with excellent stakeholder and people management skills. You will be open minded to understand (if you don’t already) the regulatory environment for which we are working.

You will have the ability to challenge in an articulated way and have great business acumen, knowledge and skills. You will use your strategic thinking to mould and make a difference to how the business operates with a continuous improvement mindset.

You will be:
• An experienced category manager with strong business acumen
• Confident in using Microsoft Office suite including advanced MS Excel and PowerPoint
• Proficient with good knowledge of leading-practice tools, techniques and processes covering category strategy development
• Having an in-depth category experience for at least one of the below categories:
o Asset purchase and hire (process & hire)
o Indirect (IT, telecoms, HR, professional services, facilities & business services)
o Operational service delivery
• Demonstrating evidence of successful development and delivery of category strategy
• An excellent communicator – including verbal, written and presenting to a group
• Delivery orientated with strong focus to achieve common goals
• An excellent planner, with great analytical, organisation and problem-solving skills
• Strong project management ability (including use of relevant tools)
• Knowledge of UCR requirements and ABC (Anti-Bribery & Corruption) legislation
 
Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.

Privacy Statement:
Please note: If you are an existing Southern Water employee, you will need to confirm within your application that your Manager is aware of your application.
All applicants must be eligible to live and work in the UK. You will need to provide evidence of eligibility (e.g. a passport or long birth certificate and proof of NI) and current proof of address (dated within the last 3 months), will be required as part of the recruitment process. If you do not meet these criteria, your application will not be considered

By submitting your details to this position at Southern Water, you are also agreeing to share your details with Gattaca PLC who are the managed service provider for all recruitment with Southern Water