Strategic Sourcing Manager Agencies - Africa at Unilever

In this role, you will be part of the Marketing Agencies Procurement Team, which is responsible for services such Creative, Social, PR among others. You will be assigned to a specific portfolio managing agencies end-to-end, including contracting, annual negotiations, and strategic tool rollouts. In parallel you will act as first point of contact for marketing queries in your market. This environment creates opportunities for each team member to step into projects that fit with their skills and personal preferences.

Key responsibilities:

You are going to implement the Marketing strategy with your agency partners and act as the FPOC in your region.

• Establish valued relationships with stakeholders within and outside of Unilever, including suppliers, CDMO and MCO business stakeholders, Supplier Operations, Strategy and Insights team and third-party service providers
• Business engagement: Act as first point of contact for the business to all Agencies procurement related questions. Ensure the satisfaction of Unilever stakeholders with the goods or services provided within your portfolio while ensuring compliancy of business users to procurement policies and contracts
• Vendor management: Identification and initial assessments of suppliers, preparing and managing supplier selection process and working with legal to finalise commercial agreements
• Identify and deliver value adding activities to contribute to business and procurement targets. Implementation and tracking of saving projects in SRS tool and delivery of cash through payment term extensions
• Selling ideas to stakeholders to convey value while communicating appropriately
• Continuously improve ways of working and optimize activities in your portfolio

Desired skills & experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree
• Relevant procurement experience: 10 Years of Marketing and/or Marketing Procurement experience
• Expert in stakeholder engagement
• Understanding of supply market, value chain, and FMCG knowledge. Knowledge across multiple Marketing portfolios and supply markets
• Experience on large-scale project management as well as multiple projects simultaneously and independently
• Unafraid to work with senior stakeholders and key suppliers, supported through excellent communication skills in English. Any additional European language as a plus.
• Willingness to work in a virtual team
• Knowledge of business systems, i.e., Coupa, CLM, SRS and Aravo,
  as well as strong Microsoft Excel skills
• Demonstrated and proven leadership capabilities to lead transformative initiatives
• Experience in shaping and leading transformational business process reengineering, with experience driving Change Management initiatives.
• Knowledge of and passion for sustainability, including social sustainability

Competences:

• Ability to work under pressure and in a complex global environment balancing a broad spectrum of stakeholder requirements
• Comfortable working in conditions of ambiguity and leading through change
• Able to create and drive adoption and execution of a shared vision and strategy for change.
• Ability to interact with senior stakeholders cross effectively and efficiently functionally to understand their needs and deliver effective balanced solutions
• Delivers change whilst managing the interface between “day to day” and improvement projects.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, including creation and delivery of effective presentations
• High financial and business acumen
• Strong in selling ideas and concepts
• Strong in project and time management for complex global projects
• Passion and practical creativity