Category Manager

Affinity Water are at the forefront of the water industry as the UK's largest Water only supplier, committed to delivering high quality water to all of our 3.8 million customers.

We are seeking an experienced Category Manager to take the reins of business-critical and medium to high spend categories, driving integrated strategies and maximising savings. 

Key Responsibilities:

1. Strategic Category Development:
   • Craft integrated and evolving category strategies for complex, medium to high spend categories.
   • Influence contracted spend of up to £30m, ensuring significant business impact.
2. Sourcing Excellence:
   • Lead the end-to-end sourcing process for high-impact goods or services, managing risk, legislative, and regulatory requirements.
   • Drive a multi-million pound qualified savings and benefits pipeline in collaboration with stakeholders.
3. Stakeholder Engagement:
   • Establish and nurture value-based relationships with senior key stakeholders, utilising a full business partnering framework.
   • Lead negotiations of significant (multi-million pound) savings and benefits.
4. Innovation and Expertise:
   • Provide expert category knowledge and sourcing management advice, introducing innovation and ideas for market-led competitive advantage.
   • Conduct regular external category and sourcing benchmarking, bringing back best practices to enhance our Procurement and Commercial function.
5. Market Awareness:
   • Stay ahead of the curve with regular engagement in the external market for category and sourcing matters, influencing our strategies with market trends, dynamics, and innovations.

Essential experience required:

• Proven experience leading business-critical spend categories.
  
• Demonstrable track record of significant savings delivery through strategic sourcing.
• Strong senior-level stakeholder management and business partnering skills.
• In-depth knowledge of key category and sourcing management processes, tools, and methodologies.
• Exceptional negotiation and dispute resolution skills.
• Politically savvy with the ability to use direct and indirect influencing strategies.
• Proven problem-solving experience and proficiency in cross-functional collaborative working methods.

Desirable experience:

• Degree educated, preferably with a relevant post-graduate qualification (e.g., CIPS, MSC).
• Knowledge of the Utilities market sector and associated regulations.
• Project Management experience.

Benefits include:

• Salary circa £55,000
• Annual leave 26 days, plus a celebration day, plus bank holidays, rising with length of service
• A generous pension scheme that doubles the contributions you make, up to a maximum of 12%
• We offer enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Shared Parental Leave. We also have a Carers policy and Menopause policy to help us support our people through different stages of their lives.
• Company bonus scheme
• Access to our Wellbeing Centre with support for looking after your physical and mental health
• Hybrid working: Improve your home-work balance with the opportunity for hybrid working

If you're ready to make a significant impact on our organisation, apply now and become an integral part of our dynamic team! Shape the future of procurement and drive success in business-critical categories.

You can find out what it's like to work at Affinity Water through our career site https://www.affinitywatercareers.co.uk/ where our colleagues share their career development stories and you can get a feel for our company culture.

Affinity Water recognises the benefits of greater diversity in our workforce to better reflect the communities we serve. We are committed to building a more inclusive culture where every member of our workforce can thrive.

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