Corporate Planning & Management – Spend Management – Strategic Sourcing - Senior Associate - Birmingham

West Midlands, England, United Kingdom

12/21/2024

Divisional Overview

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Corporate Planning & Management (CPM) Division unifies Finance & Planning, Spend Management, Operational Risk and Resilience, and CPM Engineering teams to deliver business planning and analytics, expense management, third party risk management, and governance strategies across the firm. CPM have 5 operating pillars.

Finance & Planning supports the execution of the firm’s strategic objectives through the management of the planning process, firmwide reporting and analytics and insights into the firm’s business plans and budgets. They develop consistent framework for revenue division projections creating transparency, accountability and efficiency around projections. This pillar also includes the CF&O, EO and Engineering divisional CFOs, who are strategic finance advisors helping the firm and the non-revenue divisions achieve commercial financial opportunities. Product Finance is responsible for the overall governance and proactive management of the firm’s non-compensation expenses. Spend Management encompasses the functions responsible for managing all aspects of the firm's spend with third parties - advising commercial agreements and driving operating efficiency. Departments include Strategic Sourcing, Procure to Pay, Integrated Travel and Expense, Infrastructure and Transformation and Sustainable Operations. Operational Risk & Resilience drives firmwide Operational Risk programs along with second line teams and implements required changes within CPM. The Corporate Insurance & Advisory team in this pillar identifies, procures, and manages corporate insurance needs for the firm and its investing businesses. The CPM Engineering team provides engineering solutions that enable the firm to manage third-party spend, data and automation, plan budgets, forecast financial scenarios, allocate expenses and support corporate decision making in-line with the firm’s strategic objectives.

Role Overview

Professionals in CPM have an analytical mindset, exhibit intellectual curiosity and are from diverse academic backgrounds. This role sits within the Spend Management pillar and will focus on strategic sourcing activity within the Technology – Infrastructure spend category.

Technology – Infrastructure is a category within the Strategic Sourcing team that focuses on IT hardware, technical support services and certain software making up the firm’s technology infrastructure. This includes data centers, servers, data storage, network equipment, telecom / data connectivity, multi-media and audio-visual equipment, client desktop and peripherals. Also included are support technical services, licensing, equipment leasing and certain software (SaaS models or other) deployed as infrastructure. The team covers global spend across all divisions within the firm.

The role requires collaboration with different functions across the firm on a regular basis, an ability to work independently, and ability to interact with senior professionals across the firm. It also entails in-depth analysis and reporting for senior management, requiring diligence and a commercial mindset. The candidate is required to work closely with global counterparts. Should have excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Job Responsibilities Will Include But Are Not Limited To

• An understanding of assigned areas of IT technology, platforms and key OEM products and suppliers and internal use cases.
• Engage in cost analysis and market benchmarking to influence strategy, drive execution of the sourcing process, manage risks of supply and commercial terms, in partnership with business stakeholders utilizing Source to Pay technology systems.
• Deliver commercial excellence through project specific and category wide financial analytics and risk management, including analyzing of budgets / demand to identify cost saving opportunities and inform negotiation strategy.
• Liaise with legal teams to draft and negotiate contract terms while ensuring appropriate contract structures, pricing models, vendor incentive models, service level agreements and performance indicators are applied consistently across vendors.
• Track and report on executed contracts including spend and other trends of strategic vendors to understand impact across the firm.
• Liaise across business and vendor stakeholders to identify and escalate vendor or client sensitivities, as well as identify commercial and relationship opportunities.
• Engage with Risk Partners across the organization (e.g., compliance, technology, legal, finance, information security), as needed, to review control requirements and drive resolution of Strategic Sourcing issues
• Support the Firm’s Vendor Diversity Program and sustainability goals by seeking to incorporate small and diverse vendors into our supply chain and obtain supplier reporting of sustainability program metrics.
• Role based in Birmingham, UK as part of a global team.
  
  

Compentencies

• Functional Expertise – Understanding of a strategic procurement, category management approach and procurement value proposition
• Strategic Mindset – Needs to be able to effectively create category strategies with the ability to influence and guide key stakeholders with sourcing decisions. Needs to clearly understand and articulate the Procurement value proposition and demonstrate clear strategic thinking / intent within work product
• Communication and Influencing - Strong written and oral communication skills. Ability to shape messaging for varied audiences to influence strategic or beneficial outcomes
• Technical Skills – Demonstrates strong technical skills required for the role, pays attention to detail, takes initiative to broaden his/her knowledge and demonstrates appropriate financial/analytical skills
• Drive and Motivation – Successfully handles multiple tasks, operates at pace, takes initiative to improve his/her own performance, works intensely towards extremely challenging goals and persists in the face of obstacles or setbacks
• Client and Business Focus – Strong stakeholder engagement skills. Effectively handles difficult requests, builds trust, long-term relationships with clients, helps the client to identify/define needs and manages client/business expectations
• Teamwork – Gives evidence of being a strong team player, collaborates with others within and across teams, encourages other team members to participate and contribute and acknowledges others' contributions
  
  

Qualifications

• Relevant Bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification with an excellent academic record;
• 4 to 7 years of relevant experience in the following:
• Strategic Souring experience for indirect spend areas and utilizing knowledge of procurement best practices to drive process from a sourcing perspective.
• Experience in enterprise level Technology infrastructure sourcing or IT engineering operations with commercial responsibilities preferred, but will consider candidates with transferable sourcing experience.
• Relationship management skills for effective internal stakeholder partnering and supplier management.
• Project management skills to drive the sourcing process to deliver projects in a timely manner, including initiation and requirements gathering through to reporting on status and outcomes.
• Reviewing commercial bid returns to evaluate vendors and inform negotiation strategy.
• Negotiating key commercial terms with vendors and reviewing key contractual provisions to finalize contracts.
• Experience of Sourcing procure to pay tools (e.g. Oracle, SAP Ariba / Fieldglass, PMweb, etc.)
• Proficient with the suite of Microsoft Office software
  

About Goldman Sachs

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