Manager, Indirect Central Purchasing

The Manager, Indirect Central Purchasing manages the North American purchasing strategy for specific central services (IT & Telecom) that fall within the scope of the Indirect Purchasing team supporting corporate business functions. In this capacity, the Manager is responsible for all aspects of category management for these strategic, indirect, and complex purchase categories across all business units in North America. This position engages with stakeholder teams at leadership levels to drive the purchasing activities for the benefit of the organization. Additionally, as this role is part of a Regional Purchasing team, the Category Manager will work in sync with the Global Purchasing team in France. A key challenge for this role is to act as a conduit, converting Saint-Gobain macro strategies into actions and projects. The Manager also provides support and guidance for local purchasing teams dedicated to the North American Business Units.

Essential Functions:

• Establish and lead cross-functional teams to develop, advocate, and implement best-in-class purchasing category strategies to achieve short and long-term objectives, working closely with related internal departments (eg. Legal, Privacy, IT& Security) to ensure success.
• effectively communicate applicable industry information to relevant stakeholders and leadership. Advocate for changes in process after identifying Market best practices.
• Strategize, lead sourcing, supplier negotiations, contract negotiations, and supplier selection to optimize the value proposition and drive savings associated with the assigned categories of indirect spend for North American businesses utilizing the digital purchasing e-Tools provided by Saint-Gobain.
• Maintain a robust contract management process with SLA tracking, periodic Executive meetings or through any other necessary
• Develop, maintain, and validate KPL reports to track program performance and ensure regular, consistent stakeholder
• Engagement for each assigned category; collect and manage data from external (suppliers) resources as well as other industry benchmarks and internal purchasing resources. Engage with stakeh.-Ider leadership to partner in supplier meetings to ensure service level tracking, compliance, and opportunities for improvements/incremental cost savings. Prepare and publish progress and periodic reports to management.
• Organize and lead periodic reviews for the Marketing and Finance categories related to Purchasing strategy, preferred suppliers, and performance against key indicators supporting central stakeholder community comprised of central services directors and VPs.
• Provide multi-modal communication to all levels of Central stakeholders and global Purchasing leaders

Other Duties:

Align newly acquisitioned businesses into the CertainTeed/Saint-Gobain Purchasing function and deploy synergies within the preferred vendor network aimed at reducing cost or improving service.

Periodic review of supplier catalogs available in Saint-Gobain’s buying platform, Agora, to assess the ever-evolving needs of employees in need of a streamlined, non-Purchasing led purchase process and collaboration with the Senior Manager, Indirect Central Purchasing to improve the program