Manager, Procurement

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

About the Role:

The Procurement Manager is responsible for the planning, directing, and coordination of the procurement of software, and services across the University specifically related to IT, EdTech, and SaaS agreements. They will also be responsible for sourcing, tendering, due diligence and negotiating contract rates and terms and conditions. This role supervisors related buyers.  This is a managerial position, but incumbent will also need to manage their own procurement and sourcing for high dollar value, complex and strategic contracts.

Location: This position requires you to work in office 3-4 days per week at the WGU headquarters 4001 South 700 East Salt Lake City, UT 84107

What You’ll Do:

• Prepare documents and lead stakeholders and vendors through the sourcing and bidding process for given categories. This includes coordinating the Due Diligence process to have a holistic picture of a vendor’s offerings, solutions or software including strengths and gaps.
• Lead the negotiating of contract terms and conditions, and pricing to minimize risk and ensure best value for money for WGU.
• Review and utilize planning, forecasting and trend analysis to effectively predict business needs.
• Review the development of specifications for software, services and supplies before going to market.
• Monitor the market to ensure price competitiveness of software, services, or supplies for given categories.
• Develop and contribute to the creation of procurement policies and procedures; instructions, training and webinars and communicate and share knowledge with WGU employees and the broader vendor community when needed.
• Oversee and support the Purchasing part of the Procure to Pay process including ensuring that vendors are registered, requisitions are raised, and purchase orders are issued for related categories.
• Interview, hire, and oversee related team members, direct and coordinate activities across teams, and supervise the performance of assigned buyers.
• Maximize the use of the Procurement modules in the WGU ERP system (Zycus) and other purchasing systems and tools.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities You’ll Need to be Successful:

• Strong negotiation and organizational skills required including excellent decision-making skills.
• Must be able to learn new technologies and adapt to moving priorities.
• Ability to communicate skills to improve and promote teamwork, decision making, and problem solving. Listens and responds effectively to the reactions and positions of others and encourages the expression of diverse ideas and opinions. Adjusts message and style to fit the audience. Provides timely and helpful feedback. Communicates appropriately to gain support with all audiences.
• Works cooperatively with others across the organization to achieve shared objectives and represents their own interests while being fair to others and their ideas.
• Manages Ambiguity – Deals comfortably with uncertainty of change, effectively handles risk, and can decide to act without knowing all the details. Ability to be calm and productive even when things are uncertain and deals constructively with problems that do not have clear solutions or outcomes.
• Is Resilient – Confident under pressure, handles and manages crisis effectively, maintains a positive attitude despite adversity, bounces back from obstacles and setbacks, and grows from hardships and negative experiences.
• Drives for Results – Has a strong outcomes-based orientation, persists in accomplishing objectives, has a track record of successfully achieving goals, pushes self and helps others achieve results, and has a continuous improvement mindset.
• Builds Effective Teams – Forms teams with appropriate combination of styles, perspectives, and experience, establishes shared mindset, creates a feeling of belonging and strong team morale, shares team accomplishments and rewards team effort, fosters open dialogue and collaboration among te