Job Description

Our client is seeking a Buying & Category Manager to join a large aviation catering business, based at Dublin Airport.

What's the purpose of role:

The catering business is fast paced and complex, with units at airport locations across Europe and each unit operates as a mini business maintaining their individual budgets and finance. Our clients customer's needs are changing hour by hour, flight by flight. You will dynamically manage a Category Buying remit responsible for the delivery of perpetual catering programme, developing product collections and ensuring a successful delivery of the retail KPI's and strategic initiatives, which in turn feed into the business top line objectives. You will also support the development of new business opportunities and play a pivotal role in the development of new products and services pertinent to the retail business proposition.

The Procurement Manager will be responsible for the planning, direction and coordination of procurement activities in alignment with commercial and culinary teams to manage the clients catering's supply of products and services.

This includes (i) supplier on-boarding and qualification, (ii) setting category strategies and plans, (iii) managing the end to end strategic sourcing process to find cost effective deals and suppliers, (iv) setting up procurement contracts for goods, services and works, (v) management of supplier performance and (vi) functional governance and oversight in accordance to company policy, procedures, metrics and team performance. Ensures that goods, materials and services are procured in accordance with specified requirements as to quantity and quality, on time and at the best price.

Our client operates a multi-site operation and your position will provide support for all the clients operations.

Who you'll deal with:

Internal: Regional units, management teams and support functions

External: Airlines and suppliers

Objectives:

• Act as the key liaison across the client, leveraging scale and driving best practice across the business
• Discover, Develop and Initiate a 3 year strategic category plan, across our clients Catering's Irish business, in line with business and corporate targets
• Localise, implement and manage procurement governance framework including, but not limited to, stakeholder awareness and communications for policies, procedures, standard terms and conditions, local authorities manuals
• Liaises with key company employees to determine their product and service needs
• Develops and implements strategies for procuring, storing, and distributing goods or services and maintaining stock levels
• Collaborate on procurement opportunities with other client's Catering business across UK, Europe and globally
• Develop successful relationships across all levels of stakeholders, internally and externally to drive business benefits and outcomes
• Ability to integrate internal and supplier on-boarding / qualification processes driving business benefit and efficiencies at a national, regional and global level
• Identifies and researches potential new suppliers both locally and internationally
• Monitors market trends, competitive landscape, and product availability to pay the best price for goods and services without sacrificing quality or delivery times
• Perform cost analysis and measure benchmarking across categories, industries and suppliers
• Monitor and communicate up around operational risks as a result of geo-political, economic, social, and environmental impacts to manage and mitigate supply risks
• Develop contingency plans and evaluate possible substitutes, in conjunction with commercial and culinary, to avoid supply and price impacts
• Researches new products and services to meet company's goals
• Assesses and classifies procurement spend to understand spend value, volumes, sources and identify gaps as well as plans to achieve targets
• Conducts contract negotiations on behalf of the client
• Approves purchase orders based on authorities and governance manual
• Contract administration, for all contracts, including writing of contracts from contract templates (in liaison with key internal departments), communication with potential suppliers and post contract performance reviews with input from stakeholders. As well as development and adherence to agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with suppliers and other stakeholders
• Prepares financial data, studies trends and availability of goods and materials.

What you'll be doing:

Responsible for creating, managing, and executing a product strategy that delivers sales and profit growth.

Manage the category performance, delivering on KPI's set out in the budgets – developing tactical corrective action plans to address and recover any shortfalls.

Hold ongoing weekly trading review with the wider team. Highlight any potential current or future issues / opportunities.

Work closely with the commercial, materials, culinary and warehouse teams to ensure the product ranges are on trend and delivered within the correct timeframe, available and deliver to budget.

Work on NDP initiatives, new product launches and defining go to market strategies at the same time maximising profitability of existing products.

Develop and execute compelling category plans within all categories and sub-categories.

Develop Strong working relationships with our supplier base.

Manage the Buying administration with contract creation and execution.

Preparation of the product information for range presentations.

Ensure all the product details are captured and communicated to the commercial, supply chain and culinary team for master data set up.

Assist in the delivery of all documentation in line with the critical path.

Support the development of new business opportunities – supporting the Sales Team in the development of new products and services and providing key SME knowledge for Sales Tenders and presentations.

This list is not exhaustive, accountabilities may vary dependant on locality or role complexity and may include any other duties considered reasonable by the line manager.

What you'll have:

• Evidence of previous Category Buying- a minimum of 5 years
• Must have the legal right to work in Ireland
• Experience of working within the category, product of brand function
• Strong leadership and management skills- Good interpersonal, communication, presentational and teamwork
• Able to work under pressure – plan, organise and delegate
• Sound knowledge of ERP system, Strategic Sourcing Solutions, and Source to Pay processes
• Attention to detail and accuracy
• High level analytical and numerical skills
• Enthusiastic, self-motived, proactive and persuasive
• Budget and financial reporting to support business on yearly budgets
• Manage KPIS to include – Spend under management, spend under active contracts, suppliers on contract, value of savings delivered, % on rebates achieved, Supplier returns and wastage, OTIF