Global Category Head – Market Insights & Global Supplier Accounts

Job Description Summary

The Global Procurement Category Head, plans and leads all strategic aspects within the category of across divisions, on a Global level and develops proposals for strategic business decisions. The role provides high value procurement solutions to the business and category strategies; support third party vendor selection, vendor development, technology management and performance measurement activities. Also ensures best-in-class delivery of external services and products in the category to support projects and to realize year-on-year productivity improvements, cost savings, and process improvements in close collaboration with the stakeholders in the business.

Job Description

Major Accountabilities:

Implement category strategic goals from overall Procurement strategy / Ecosystem management

• Planning, organizing and managing projects taking into account priorities, resources, budgets, issues and constraints to achieve desired results; defining clear project scope and objectives; utilizing software and tools to plan, track and report status.
• Mapping the value chain, analyzing it and deriving potential scenarios. Includes the understanding and application of total cost of ownership, and should cost modelling.
• Participating in and / or leading financial discussions. Applying financial knowledge to participate actively, e.g. in budgeting process, including tax aspects in sourcing strategies and structuring sophisticated deals with ecosystem partners.
• Compliance & risk management: supporting reports to determine appropriate compliance level. Monitoring end-to-end compliance (budget, payment, vendor PO, contract invoice, buying channel, etc.) and deriving corrective actions to improve compliance. Applying risk management processes including identifying and evaluating risks, and defining and executing a risk mitigation plan.
• Projecting the dynamics and impacts (e.g. mergers and acquisitions). Extracting, cleansing and consolidating information to fact-based insights for further usage e.g. in category strategies.
• Maintaining and updating Procurement applications accordingly to the Procurement content (e.g. e-catalogs, user portal). Continuous improvement of procurement content and automation.
• Managing data analysis and reporting, e.g. analyzing spend, demand, supply markets and competitors. Extracting, cleansing and consolidating information to fact-based insights for further usage e.g. in category strategies.

Demand management 

• Responsible to ensure the right balance between business needs and Novartis’ strategy.
• Accountable to work with stakeholders to identify the most cost-effective ways to deliver business objectives. 

Sourcing and supplier relationships management

• Executing the Source-to-Contract process including respective strategies, approaches and methods: Preparing and conducting fact-based negotiations. Adapting tactics from a broad portfolio of negotiation strategies to achieve results that support business and Procurement objectives.

​Manage relationships with stakeholders

• Analyzing specifications for optimization. Linking specification to customer value, challenging specification confidently. Conveying messages clearly and convincing stakeholders.
• Achieving results by proactively building long-term, sustainable and effective relationships, understanding the stakeholder landscape and demonstrating political astuteness across business structures and networks.

Minimum Requirements:

• 10 years of relevant business experience (industry specific experience).

• University/Advanced degree is required. Master’s Degree/other advanced degree in the business, marketing, finance or engineering is preferred.

• Preferably > 5-10 years of experience in Procurement or other related experience within the Pharmaceutical industry, preferably in category management, supplier management, or related area, with a focus in the Commercial and Insights domain.

• Strong project management or other leadership experience.

Skills Desired

Effective Communication, Finance Management, Internal And External Customer Needs Analysis & Satisfaction Studies, Managing Resources, Negotiating