Category Lead Buyer – Process

For one of our clients in the Offshore Energy Industry we are looking for a Category Lead Buyer – Process.

Our clients designs, builds, installs and operates offshore floating facilities for the offshore energy industry. They are a leading technology provider and they put their marine expertise and the service of a responsible energy transition by reducing emissions from fossil fuel production, while developing cleaner solutions for renewable energy sources.

JOB PROFILE
The Category Buyer is responsible for the negotiation and contractualization of long term agreements with Strategic Partners as identified in the Category strategy, with the main objective to increase the company's competitiveness and security of supply. The category strategy is a consolidation of:

• Your market knowledge for the targeted products
• Your commercial acumen and negotiations skills
• Your expertise in Total Cost of Ownership methodology
• Your mastery in creating Cost Breakdown models
• Your good understanding of the products in your category in liaison with technical stakeholders
• Your assessment of the capabilities of the key vendors and their sub-vendors in your category including the manufacturing processes, execution and subcontracting model

In order that the Category Commercial Agreements meets both company strategic objectives, and future project and operations requirements, you are to:

• Participate to definition of the roadmap of future technological requirements for the category based on continuous collaboration with Group Engineering, Group Technology and strategic vendors.
• Provide constant input to Category Manager to develop and mature the market analysis in line with future projects requirement.
• Lead the preparation and finalization of Commercial Agreements as planned in the Category Strategy, including Sustainability goals.
• Monitor Category Commercial Agreement performance in line with Category objectives
• Lead the vendor qualification activities for the vendors identified as strategic in your category.
• Leverage the vendor network to build competitive advantages (eg strategic relationship) and assist in setting up pre-agreements during the win phase
• Provide direct support to the negotiation with vendors for key packages / services, as required, using benchmark and cost breakdown models, bringing TCO parameters into the equation.
• Ensure that best practices / lessons learned are captured, formalized, shared and implemented for continuous improvement – acting as memory keeper.

 In order that category performance achieves the Group SC objectives, you are to:

• Measure and monitor the contracted savings from the implementation of the category strategy
• Monitor and report the SC KPIs for the category (e.g. savings, % of spend under group framework agreements)

In order to develop and nurture a sustainable collaboration with strategic vendors and achieve agreed improvement objectives in terms of quality, price, reliability and/or capability you are to:

• Increase the company's attractiveness in order to achieve greater value (e.g. innovation, specific investments)
• Monitor vendor’s financial data, load level, capacity and investment plans
• Identify risks & opportunities related to the vendor (e.g. merging & acquisition) and anticipate any changes impacting the vendor relationship strategy
• Provide support to Project & Operations teams when the relationship with the vendor is at risk (e.g. dispute & claims resolution, manufacturing performance, slot allocation)

Requirements

• Commercial Profile – Negotiator – Contractual Negotiation
• 10 years experience in Procurement role in EPCI company or Sales engineer/Project Procurement Manager
• Construction Site or Manufacturing plant experience would be a +