About the role
We have a great opportunity for a Procurement Excellence Manager – Functional Excellence role here at DS Smith. The role is responsible to drive and embed functional excellence, ensuring the day-to-day operational efficiency and effectiveness of the whole Procurement community.
As the Procurement Excellence Manager - Functional, you will report to the Head of Procurement Excellence within the Group Procurement Function.
As the successful candidate you will be responsible for building and operating functional ways of working to ensure the efficient and effective day-to-day operation of the function, focusing on simplicity, quality and engagement across the whole Procurement community.
You will collaborate with your procurement colleagues to:
Drive process excellence: defining and leading initiatives to simplify, improve user experience and reduce non-value add activity, across the function
Procurement Community and colleague engagement: foster an integrated business partner culture, valued across the function
Evolve the maturity of Procurement practices in line with external benchmarks and functional needs.
Simplify: Drive towards clear, consistent and logical processes, tools, templates and policies which are easier to navigate
Bring the best of the outside practices in: defining and driving the execution of a multi year improvement roadmap, endorsed by the Procurement leadership. Includes setting ambitious and measurable KPIs and targets to improvement vs benchmarks
Developing strategies to enhance compliance and reduce risk, in alignment with group priorities, whilst make it easier to comply with controls, policies and standards
Key responsibilities:
Functional Governance and Operation
Deliver and coordinate the Procurement Governance plan and process
Drive initiatives to simplify, improve colleague experience and reduce non-value add activity across the Procurement community
Improving Maturity
For functional process areas, develop and define a 1-3 year functional maturity roadmap in partnership with the business and procurement leaders. Align on target setting: KPIs and goals, leveraging external best practice insights.
Lead the adoption of best practices and improved process maturity- bringing the best of the outside in. Enlist support, innovation and commitment from across the Procurement community.
In collaboration with the Technology function, support the definition of key requirements and the successful deployment of digital solutions for procurement teams and business stakeholders. Partner with Technology to develop compelling investment business cases and to align on investment slate priorities and investments
Generate insights and opportunities from internal and external benchmarking across key processes, embed governance to regularly review and improvement of core processes, tools and templates
Functional Improvement Programme Delivery
Collaborate with the team to prioritise and deliver a programme of enablement initiatives, in alignment with agreed priorities
Accountability to ensure that core process requirements are effectively digitised (per aligned Digital Roadmap), with support from Technology and Programme Delivery teams.
Functional Communications
In partnership with the Internal Comms team, plan and deliver the functional comms plan
Drive and maintain colleague engagement, including through the timely creation and distribution of Procurement Leadership summaries and updates
Maintain all Procurement Community channel(s) e.g. SharePoint
Procurement Programme Delivery and Performance Management
Design, build and deliver a fit for purpose Procurement Performance environment e.g. Procurement delivery pipeline governance, challenger sessions and schedules
Develop new performance reporting / scorecards – in partnership with Finance and the Procurement Services Hub
Procurement Learning and Development
In partnership with the Learning and Development (HR) team, plan and deliver the functional L&D plan
Build new and refresh current functional playbooks
Build and deliver new digital learning tools and platforms for Procurement, in line with the 3-year plan
Develop required Procurement e-learning and training modules materials
Functional Risk Management & Controls
Partner with stakeholders to enhance functional compliance and reduce risk, whilst make it easier to comply with controls, policies and standards
Manage functional risk and governance practices, including the delivery of regular functional education sessions across procurement teams to enhance awareness and understanding of requirements and standards
About you
Project Management, Continuous Improvement (eg Lean, 6 Sigma), Change Management. Procurement / Purchasing background ideal
At least 5-8 years relevant experience at the same or similar level
Experience with e-learning tools
Bachelor’s Degree Preferred
Graduate or equivalent qualification and member of professional body, e.g., CIPS
About us
We are DS Smith, together with International Paper, we are a global leader in sustainable packaging solutions and other fibre-based products. We believe a better, more sustainable tomorrow is possible with the right people, who challenge and support one another to enact positive change. We employ more than 60,000 colleagues in North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), who are experts in innovation, manufacturing, design, sales, sustainability, supply chain, and much more. Together with our customers, we make the world safer and more productive, one sustainable packaging solution at a time. Become part of a world-leading organisation and do your best work with us!
“To fulfil our purpose of redefining packaging for a changing world, we aim to build a diverse, motivated, and engaged workforce. Our goal is to create a culture of inclusion where everyone is treated fairly, differences are valued, and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
Our people come from diverse backgrounds, bring different perspectives, ideas and experiences to generate unique solutions focused on present and future sustainability challenges. We welcome all candidates to apply, even those not meeting all criteria.”
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