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Manager - Procurement Cost Optimization
Strategic Sourcing | Cost Take-out, Category Management & Savings Delivery
EXPERIENCE : 7-10 years
ROLE SUMMARY
The Manager will support procurement cost optimization, strategic sourcing, category management, and procurement transformation initiatives. The role focuses on delivering measurable savings, improving procurement performance, driving sourcing excellence, and supporting broader transformation programs. The ideal candidate will bring strong analytical, commercial, and stakeholder management skills, with experience identifying savings opportunities, supporting category strategies, and helping deliver value across procurement functions.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Cost Optimization & Savings Delivery
- Conduct spend analysis and identify savings opportunities across procurement categories.
- Support cost reduction initiatives through strategic sourcing, supplier consolidation, demand management, specification optimization, and negotiation programs.
- Develop savings tracking mechanisms, value capture plans, and benefits realization frameworks.
- Support cost governance activities, including savings validation, initiative tracking, risk monitoring, and progress reporting.
- Prepare opportunity assessment outputs, cost reduction business cases, and prioritization recommendations for procurement leadership.
Category Management & Strategic Sourcing
- Develop category strategies for indirect and direct spend categories, with focus on commercial value, supplier performance, and business alignment.
- Execute sourcing events, supplier evaluations, commercial assessments, bid analysis, and negotiation support activities.
- Analyze supply markets, internal demand patterns, supplier landscapes, and pricing trends to identify category-specific improvement opportunities.
- Support supplier performance and category governance programs, including scorecards, review cadences, and improvement actions.
- Bring category expertise across areas such as professional services, business services, technology, facilities, logistics, operations support, and other enterprise spend categories as relevant.
Procurement Analytics & Value Realization
- Use procurement analytics, spend reporting, and savings dashboards to support fact-based decision-making.
- Analyze baseline spend, supplier fragmentation, contract coverage, purchase price variance, and compliance gaps to identify value opportunities.
- Support development of savings pipelines, initiative trackers, performance reports, and executive-level procurement updates.
- Translate data insights into practical sourcing, negotiation, and procurement performance improvement actions.
- Support benefits realization tracking to ensure identified savings are implemented, measured, and sustained.
Procurement Transformation Support
- Contribute to procurement operating model improvement initiatives, including process redesign, governance enhancement, and sourcing excellence programs.
- Support implementation of Source-to-Pay transformation and process improvement programs.
- Assist in developing business cases, transformation roadmaps, implementation plans, and workstream deliverables.
- Support procurement policy, workflow, controls, and process standardization initiatives that improve efficiency and compliance.
- Work with digital procurement teams where relevant to improve visibility, reporting, and adoption of procurement tools.
Supplier Performance & Commercial Improvement
- Support supplier performance improvement initiatives, including performance review preparation, root-cause analysis, and corrective action tracking.
- Identify opportunities to improve supplier value, service levels, risk reduction, and commercial outcomes.
- Support negotiation preparation through supplier research, cost breakdown analysis, benchmark inputs, and scenario development.
- Partner with stakeholders to drive supplier rationalization, contract compliance, and improved procurement controls.
- Support continuous improvement initiatives focused on supplier productivity, commercial governance, and operating efficiency.
Stakeholder & Delivery Management
- Coordinate with stakeholders across business, procurement, finance, operations, and category teams.
- Manage workplans, project deliverables, risks, dependencies, status updates, and action trackers.
- Support governance forums, performance reporting, savings updates, and leadership review materials.
- Develop clear and structured deliverables, including analysis outputs, category documents, business cases, trackers, and presentation materials.
- Collaborate with senior team members to ensure delivery quality, timeline adherence, and alignment with engagement objectives.
CANDIDATE PROFILE
- 7-10 years of procurement, sourcing, category management, cost optimization, or procurement consulting experience.
- Strong category management experience across indirect spend categories, with exposure to direct spend categories considered an advantage.
- Experience delivering procurement savings, strategic sourcing, cost take-out, supplier consolidation, or commercial improvement initiatives.
- Strong analytical and commercial skills, with ability to convert spend data and stakeholder inputs into actionable savings opportunities.
- Knowledge of procurement processes, Source-to-Pay operations, sourcing methods, supplier management, and procurement governance.
- Exposure to SAP Ariba, Coupa, spend analytics, procurement reporting, and savings tracking solutions.
- Ability to manage workplans, coordinate stakeholders, and deliver structured outputs in consulting or transformation environments.
- Strong communication, problem-solving, stakeholder management, and documentation skills.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE
- Procurement cost optimization, cost take-out, and value realization programs.
- Category strategy development and strategic sourcing execution.
- Savings pipeline development, procurement analytics, spend analysis, and benefits tracking.
- Supplier performance improvement, supplier rationalization, and commercial governance.
- Indirect category exposure across professional services, business services, technology, facilities, logistics, and operations support.
- Procurement transformation, Source-to-Pay process improvement, and operating model support.
- SAP Ariba and Coupa-enabled procurement transformation or sourcing initiatives.
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