Category Manager, Divisional Procurement – Remote – Canada or USA

Job Summary

Responsible for developing and driving execution of category management strategies, supporting central procurement efforts, supplier relationship management, and stakeholder management for various indirect and direct materials categories, including chemicals, packaging, and/or MRO, and various service-oriented relationships. Manages the development and delivery of value from the supply base to mitigate risk, reduce cost, and reduce working capital to meet and exceed business and customer expectations.  Acts in an expanded Hybrid role as a leader for the local region.

Key Responsibilities

Category Management – Chemicals, MRO, Services, Packaging

• Lead strategic sourcing for $200M and support for additional $200M: including supplier capability assessments, defining business requirements, sourcing events, and negotiations to develop and deliver robust category strategies, leading spend categories up to $50M and supporting larger centrally led categories.
• Identify, analyze, and implement risk management strategies to assure continuity of supply.
• Proactively manage commercial terms, resolve performance issues, address changing market dynamics, and adjust to changing business needs with suppliers.

Stakeholder Engagement – 11 paper mills, 9 converters – US and CAN

• High level of engagement with corporate and local purchasing teams to develop and execute multi-year strategies, representing market conditions and organization requirements.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to understand needs, ensure buy in drive change.
• Contribute to benchmarking, data gathering, analysis, and implementation of new tools.

Supplier Relationship Management

• Use Supplier Relationship Management techniques to deliver increasing levels of service, quality, innovation, and competitive advantage.
• Carry out capabilities assessments and build collaborative, long-term key supplier relationships to drive value to the business.

Hybrid Procurement Duties

• Individual will provide additional supply chain and procurement support, inherent to the region where individual is based.  Such as leading Global Sourcing projects, coordinating stakeholder discussions, supplier performance and generally assisting in a leadership capacity for tasks normally handled by the local team, within the Paper & Packaging business.

Job Characteristics

• Coordinate, execute, and deliver measurable supply chain or procurement value to the bottom line for Paper & Packaging division via leading or supporting various simultaneous procurement and supplier related events and projects.

Critical Competencies

• Advanced technical /computer skills - Excel, PowerPoint
• SAP, ARIBA experience or equivalent preferred
• Required business level proficiency in English.
• Preferred business level proficiency in French

Required Education/Professional Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, supply chain or related field or comparable experience
• Minimum of 5 years of sourcing experience or demonstrated performance managing comparable scope of responsibility.
• Demonstrated track record driving change and delivering results within complex categories.
• Ability to quickly learn new categories, integrating formal strategic sourcing methodologies.
• Strong Research analysis and collaboration Skills

Preferred Education/Professional Experience

• Experience leading packaging, chemicals, and/or indirect categories (MRO, marketing, consulting, and various service-oriented relationships) preferred. 
• Five (5) years of industrial manufacturing experience required; pulp & paper industry experience preferred.