Senior Procurement Strategy & Insights Manager Direct Materials

Job Title: Senior Procurement Strategy & Insights Manager Direct Materials

Function: Procurement

Location: Mumbai HO

Req ID:R-1174378

ABOUT PROCUREMENT

Part of the Supply Chain’s family, Procurement is responsible for over 40B Euro of material and services spend globally with more than 58,000 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.

With over 1350 employees globally, we support a network of thousands of suppliers, more than 1.5 million smallholder farmers who in turn support communities of over 7 million people. The procurement Lighthouse Strategy focusses on: Competitive Buying, Sustainability, Value Chain Interventions, Partnerships, Service and Resilience and supported with a strong Digital agenda and Future Fit organisation and talent.

PROCUREMENT STRATEGY & INSIGHTS

The Procurement Strategy & Insights Team is serving as the nerve centre of the Unilever procurement organization, enabling the procurement organization for each Portfolio and BG 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 data-driven decision making to ease operating effectiveness and drive better and faster outcomes
• Developing and enabling procurement strategies with respective network VPs and 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

MAIN JOB PURPOSE

To be a healthy forward-looking challenger with the following key activities:

• Drive the Transformation projects agenda in an agile manner, working closely with Po1 Materials Teams, S&I and Finance. Including support to the development of new capabilities required to support the scale up of VCI (value chain intervention programs, like in Fragrance or Flavours)
• 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.
• Create insights from available data, based on a good understanding of the data architecture and guiding the mining process.
• Own Procurement market intelligence, being the central PoC for market analysis, supply & demand analytics, competitors research, PMI, etc.
• Derive value creation opportunities based on deep value chain expertise, suppliers & competitors’ knowledge and industry insights. Including benchmarking activities.
• Support new Technology and Digital programs to drive end-to-end value and competitiveness and efficiency in our processes (example U-Palm).
• This role will focus on Raw Materials (Palm, Oleochemicals, surfactants, flavours and fragrances).

KEY INTERACTIONS

The Senior Procurement Strategy & Insights Manager – Materials will interface with the following stakeholders:

• BU, BG, Po1 Procurement teams
• Procurement Strategy & Insights teams
• Portfolio Procurement team
• Finance Team
• Key Suppliers and agencies/partners
• Industry and insights resources
• Legal Counsel

LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS

• Strategic, Systemic Thinking & Entrepreneurial
• Outstanding problem-solving and analytical skills
• High Growth mindset & Consumer Love
• Strong Communication & Influencing skills
• High Initiative, Quick Learner and Self-Starter
• Ownership mindset

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• Preferred over 8 years’ experience in a Procurement or Supply Chain roles either in Unilever / FMCG industry or in a large complex organisation with strong portfolio and market expertise
• Consulting experience in Tier 1 consulting firms would be a plus
• Strong business and commercial acumen
• 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
• Ability and drive to work independently and lead diverse teams, across different geographies
• Experience of working in cross-functional teams within a matrix environment – both F2F and virtually
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and peers effectively
• Excellent critical thinking, analytical and story-telling skills in order to respond to multiple market/portfolio specific characteristics and influence change remotely.
• Relevant experience in Palm, Surfactant, Oleochemicals, flavours or fragrances, has a preference.

All official offers from Unilever are issued only via our Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Offers from individuals or unofficial sources may be fraudulent - please verify before proceeding.