Sr Procurement Strategy & Insights Manager - MBS, Global Procurement

Position - Sr Procurement Strategy & Insights Manager - MBS, Global Procurement

Scope: Global

Location: Mumbai HO, India

ABOUT UNILEVER

With 3.4 billion people in over 190 countries using our products every day, Unilever is a business that makes a real impact on the world. Work on brands that are loved and improve the lives of our consumers and the communities around us. We are driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace, and it is our belief that doing business the right way drives superior performance. At the heart of what we do is our people – we believe that when our people work with purpose, we will create a better business and a better world. 

At Unilever, your career will be a unique journey, grounded in our inclusive, collaborative, and flexible working environment. We don’t believe in the ‘one size fits all’ approach and instead we will equip you with the tools you need to shape your own future.

CATEGORY/FUNCTION INTRODUCTION

Part of the Supply Chain’s family, Procurement is responsible for over 30B Euro of material and services spend globally with more than 50,000 suppliers. Getting the right services and materials, sustainably sourced and ensuring responsible procurement is critical to ensuring our brands with purpose grow. Our teams work closely with the business to understand brand needs, bring supplier innovation to meet changing consumer needs and drive financial value for Unilever through competitive buying. We’re at the forefront of digital procurement, bringing new tools and analytics to drive data-based decisions

The Procurement Strategy & Insights Team is a relatively newly formed team, that serves as the nerve centre of the Unilever global procurement organization, enables the procurement organization to design and deliver step-change across value chains, operating processes and tools, and business models. This team is responsible for: 

• Sensing, incubating, and enabling innovative ideas, new business models, and transformation programs for disruptive value creation across procurement teams

• Creating and implementing standardized processes and data-driven decision making to ease operating effectiveness and drive better and faster outcomes

• Developing and enabling procurement strategies with respective network PD`s, VPs, portfolio and market teams based on strategic insights

• Identifying, scaling, and spreading best practices across the global procurement organization, within and across teams

• Facilitating rapid learning, capability development, and future-fit upskilling of our people

• Responsible to bring the outside in and serving as a connector within Business Services

• This position is integral part of Business Services Sourcing Global team and owner of the Strategy creation process. Under supervision of Global Head of Business Services and line managing an analyst, this role collaborates with the Marketing and IT Strategic Insight peers and portfolio leads on a regular basis. >

JOB PURPOSE

Find your purpose at Unilever. You will lead innovations, big and small, that will make our business win and grow. You will learn from brilliant business leaders and colleagues in a truly global and diverse culture to ultimately become a better you. If you are:

Strategic, systemic thinking & entrepreneurial to push the teams 3 steps ahead towards excellence. An team player leader ready to bring the best out of people and high on influencing skills a healthy forward-looking challenger> then this role is just for you.

You need to fully understand the wider business context and you are emotionally intelligent to motivate peers to deliver leading for performance and care.

You are the right hand of the procurement director ready to track on the portfolio strategies being implemented on the ground and integral part of Business Services team leading their OKR`s helping them to focus on what matters.

You will own and drive a capability improvement project contributing for the wider MBS community ensuring your direct impact can also be measured.

WHAT WILL YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES BE

Key Accountabilities:

Integral partner to the Business Services sourcing team, provoking and bringing new thinking you would be accountable for the following key activities:

• Facilitate creation and updating of portfolio strategies and deliver analytics and guidance for negotiations and contracting applying expertise and the newly created playbooks, incorporating best-in-class solutions.

  • Co-leads with the sourcing team the key strategic activities within the portfolio, acting as a challenger, bringing fresh thinking and ideas and balancing historical knowledge

  • Co-leads MBS digitalization agenda fully intergraded with overall Procurement data and digital strategy.

  • Master's the newly created frameworks/playbooks on key procurement skills (Strategy, Negotiation, Contracting), acting as consultant to the portfolio, using the tools to upskill the sourcing team and as enablers for the execution.

• Lead the Insights creation from available data, based on a good understanding of the data architecture and guiding the mining process

  • Develops the data mining approach, together with the Digital Strategy team, to uncover valuable business insights that can be transformed into actionable plans

  • Analyses data to seek trends, patterns, anomalies, and findings that drive useful business insights

  • Translates data into insights by discovering, creating, testing, and validating hypotheses with the portfolio sourcing teams, communicating the insights and working with the sourcing teams to develop and execute strategies that leverage these insights

• Help define and Rollout strategic transformation programs, such as Resilience 2.0, Price Transparency and ZBB

• Evaluates the readiness of the MBS portfolio to implement transformation programs and defines the focus areas.

• Proceeds with on the ground execution of global initiatives, translating the frameworks into clear guidance and action plans ready for execution, incorporating all the nuances from the MBS portfolio

• Expand potential local programs/best practices across the whole MBS Portfolio

• Derive value creation opportunities based on deep Value Chain expertise, Supplier, Competitor and Industry Insights, as well as benchmarking and cost modelling

  • Executes detailed Value Chain analysis to define opportunities to intervene/intermediate at different levels, considering all the different MBS we source

  • Is closely connected with the Markets and Industry boards, acquiring the relevant Intel to identify opportunities and creates technology/Innovation roadmaps based on Mega Trends

  • Masters the Benchmarking tools and through internal and external evaluation draws conclusions to guide the sourcing team to the optimum supply base as well as assets

  • Owns and drives the development of the Cost modelling for the portfolio

• Conduct supply and demand analysis, in collaboration with the portfolio sourcing teams

  • Drive the supply and demand analysis for the different services across the portfolio

  • Work closely with the sourcing teams, S&I colleagues, and external entities to identify, forecast, and interpret supply- and demand-driven opportunities across the portfolio

• Understand the nuances of Procurement as a Service (PaaS) and business needs related to Business Services (Outsourcing, Consulting, Legal, HR and Workplace Services portfolios and bring deep expertise and insights across the value chain and supply base to translate the business requirements into effective future-fit procurement strategies.

• Act as an ambassador and connector for Business Services being the spider in the web connect strategy & execution aligned to Unilever GAP, Global MBS Procurement Team and Local Markets goals and priorities.

The Procurement Strategy & Insights Managerwill interface with the following stakeholders:

• Chief Procurement Officer, UPLT members & PCLF

• Head of Global Procurement Strategy & Insights

• MBS Procurement Leadership team

• MBS Procurement Director & LT

• Global and Market sourcing teams

• Procurement Finance Team

• Head of Supplier Operations, Sourcing Operations and team

• Key Suppliers and agencies/partners

• Industry and insights resources

WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO SUCCEED

Experiences & Qualifications

• Over 10 years’ experience in a procurement, MBS Sourcing or MBS Development role either in Unilever / FMCG industry or in a large complex organisation with strong portfolio and market expertise

• Consulting experience in Tier 1 consulting firms is a plus

• Strong business and commercial acumen

• MBS Industry Knowledge is a plus

• Change management experience of large scale / global transformation programs is preferred

• Has a good understanding of Agile principles, values, methodologies and practices that enable agility and approaches delivery with an iterative and incremental (test - do – learn) approach

• Proven experience of working in cross-functional teams within a matrix environment – both F2F and virtually

• Excellent critical thinking, analytical and story-telling skills to respond to multiple market/portfolio specific characteristics and influence change remotely

Skills

• High Initiative, Quick Learner and Self-Starter

• Ability and drive to work independently and lead diverse teams, across different geographies

• Comfortable working in conditions of ambiguity and learning through change.

• Able to support the adoption and execution of a shared vision and strategy for change

• Outstanding problem-solving and analytical skills

• Ability to interact with stakeholders effectively and efficiently functionally to understand their needs and deliver effective balanced solutions.

• Passion for continuous improvement and practical creativity

• Robust verbal and written communication skills, including creation and delivery of effective presentations as an added advantage.

D&I statement:

Equal Opportunity Employer: Unilever is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability. 

Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applicants from all walks of life. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.

Interested candidates share your resume on POG-Fatema.Khilawala@unilever.com