Senior Strategic Sourcer / Category Manager for IT

The mission of the Procurement department is to ensure the sustainable development and profitability of VUB by driving competitive advantage from our external supply markets.

The main objectives are:

• To deliver cost savings in a sustainable way (TCO based) following the 7 steps strategic procurement process.
• To understand, manage and develop categories of goods and services that we procure from the different supply markets:
• To link supply market behavior to current and future business needs
• To create low cost / high value supply chains
• To manage supplier relationship especially for business critical suppliers
• To ensure compliancy for external spend with other control rules and processes (Segregation of Duties, Anti-Fraud, etc.)

For this department we are currently looking for a Category Manager/Strategic Sourcer focused primarily on complex IT categries and projects. Ideal candidate would have Category Management, Sourcing, Project Management or Controlling background.

Tasks:
Lead cross-functional Category Management teams (in accordance to sourcing models) to develop and implement category strategy, by:

• Creating spend transparency within the category vendor portfolio and development of demand and sourcing forecasts
• Continuous market intelligence / analysis to identify alternative vendors, new developments and improved solutions, prediction of price developments
• Identification of cost reduction and optimization levers for the defined sub-categories and sugesting optimization levers with regards to demand and demand specifications (Demand Shaping)
• Contribution to the development of, and alignment with, the global category strategy within a cross-functional team
• Active management of the main category-internal vendors as well as their active integration into demand and specification management processes, active monitoring of the vendor performance, gathering of customer feedback as well as active vendor development
• Manage and perform the effective and efficient sourcing initiatives
• Keep and develop senior level stakeholder relationships, support stakeholder relationship within business plans
• Perform tenders and conducting negotiations within the defined sub-categories to obtain best value (quality/price) for the company
• Conclude of local contracts - either based on available global frame agreements or single contracts for local demands
• Act as second level claim escalations with vendors
• Ensure active contract controlling for the contracts under responsibility and for management of change requests for the contracts in place
• Draft, update and communicate frame contract and templates
• Develop and drive improvement programs regarding spending, demand management or internal
• Act as procurement key account manager for defined business partners and support projects from procurement side
• Ensure compliance with procurement related company policies on process, department, company and supplier level

Strong and stable international company
Employee bank products beneficial scheme
Additional holiday days
Lunch vouchers fully reimbursed by employer
Health care allowance
3rd pillar of retirement savings scheme

University education (Master's degree)

economy/technical

English - Advanced (C1)