Strategic Sourcing Manager

Reporting to the Director of Strategic Sourcing, this role will lead sourcing efforts across multiple IT commodity areas, including Telecommunications, Software, Hardware, Peripherals, and other key technology segments. This position will be responsible for increasing spend under management, achieving cost savings, cost avoidance, and partnering with internal stakeholders and suppliers to ensure goods and services are procured at the best value in a timely manner to support the research, teaching and public service mission of the University System.

The Strategic Sourcing Manager will manage assigned projects, commodities, strategic suppliers, RFx processes, and negotiations. The Strategic Sourcing Manager is responsible for contributing to and effectively executing the University System’s defined strategic sourcing strategies in the acquisition of goods and services. The primary responsibility of the Strategic Sourcing Manager is to work with the Director of Strategic Sourcing in executing the sourcing strategies and methodology as well as fulfill large spend requests submitted by the campuses.

Duties/Responsibilities

• Responsible for comprehensive management of assigned categories and projects with an emphasis on cost optimization and value maximization. This includes overall category management including identifying cost savings and improvement opportunities, planning and executing strategic sourcing processes, effectively managing supplier relationships, monitoring contract compliance, working with eProcurement to implement and manage appropriate catalogs and forms to streamline the procure-to-pay process, and building excellent relationships with campus clients.

Business Partnering & Forecasting

• Proactively and effectively engage with campus stakeholders to build relationships, understand business needs and instill confidence that procurement is a highly capable and professional function able to add value and meet the business needs of campus stakeholders. Partners with stakeholders and builds relationships that facilitate early engagement and the realization of added value to the University system.

• Works independently and closely with functional stakeholder management teams and suppliers to develop and implement integrated sourcing strategies for managed categories including competitive landscape, technology, and business direction, supplier analysis, development and selection, pricing strategy, and cost reduction opportunities.

• Works collaboratively with customers to understand demand behavior, specification requirements, and product/service needs.

• Positively represents the Procurement Team in campus settings such as workgroups, task forces, and committees; works to achieve outcomes consistent with University and Procurement strategy and direction.

• Utilizes qualitative and quantitative data to influence stakeholders and obtain support for new or improved courses of action that maximize value to the organization.

Business Case Development

• Develops solid business cases to support recommended courses of action that rely upon quantitative and/or qualitative measures that clearly show the pros and cons of recommended courses of action and the benefit of the recommended direction.

• Present business cases both formally and informally to procurement and organizational leadership as well as stakeholders.

Strategic Sourcing & Project Management

• Oversee the development and execution of category management strategies to include risk assessments, overall market, industry and supply base analysis, and category and vendor segmentation.

• Develops and manages an annual procurement plan and multi-year portfolio strategy that aligns with strategic vision, business forecast/objectives, and annual financial plan. Oversees annual review of supplier value analysis cost reduction opportunities with the supplier base. Ensures short, medium, and long-term strategy for supplier management strategic direction.

• Defines, obtains support and approval and executes strategic sourcing initiatives aligned to category strategies. Develop, champion, and ensure implementation of strategic sourcing principles that will optimize total cost of ownership for spend categories.

• Conducts supplier research and gathers market intelligence to ensure appropriate products/services are being acquired at competitive prices.

• Manages complex RFx processes and, when assigned/available, directs sourcing specialist work related to RFx processes.

• Defines key metrics and leads the contract negotiation process for pricing, key terms, service level requirements,