Category Lead

at  Rogers Communications

We are committed to connecting Canadians through unique partnerships, our world-class network and content Canadians love—and our innovative team is growing. We are looking for dedicated team members to join our Corporate team who have a genuine passion for making positive impacts on customers and the communities where we live and work. We have a variety of business units with exciting and meaningful work waiting for you, including Communications, HR, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Supply Chain, Finance, and Real Estate. If you are considering your next step, we have exciting opportunities waiting for you. Come build a rewarding career at Rogers and be a driving force behind our success story!
Network Procurement is seeking a Category Lead eager to join the team. Reporting to the Sr. Manager, Network Procurement, the Category Lead will have knowledge of software, hardware, infrastructure, and professional services to install, integrate, test and maintain such products as it relates to wireline and optical transport networks. The candidate will be quickly recognized by business partners as a valued contributor in the management of commercial strategies, total cost of ownership and risk management of such purchases. This individual must be an excellent communicator with proven ability to influence at various levels within the organization.
You are a business partner oriented candidate who has an understanding of Procurement policies and practices, the ability to achieve CAPEX/OPEX savings targets and realize those savings through competitive bid and contract negotiations. You have good analytical skills, are detail oriented, and proven relationship management experience. You are a creative, critical thinker with strong workload management skills who champions innovation, change and process improvement. You are a professional communicator and collaborator able to build and maintain strong partnerships with internal and external stakeholders. You are able to seek, analyze and translate facts and data into key insights, concepts and recommendations to enable effective decision making. You have experience at presenting technical topics with confidence to non-technical business partners. You excel in a fast paced, changing environment and have the ability to effectively manage multiple priorities at once. You excel in a culture of continuous improvement leveraging innovation and system based tools to increase efficiency and value.

• Take ownership of assigned spend categories and projects to deliver procurement and company objectives and business partner goals.
• Identify cost savings objectives for assigned categories/projects and drive the total cost of ownership reductions by aggregating demand to leverage Rogers’ scale and scope, standardization and cost savings.
• Act as a first level escalation point for issues related to suppliers for which you are identified as the procurement prime.
• Manage the analysis of spend data to assist with the identification of sourcing and cost take-out opportunities.
• Ensure procurement cost saving challenges are built into the capital and operating budgets and Procurement’s projects and efforts are aligned to meet budget expectations.
• Ensure procurement projects and savings are tracked against the budget and targets.
• Assist in additional analytical related activities including but not limited to compliance, catalogue adoption rates, procurement metrics and dashboards, etc.
• Drive relationships with assigned key suppliers within your categories/projects ensuring fulfilment of contractual obligations and business partner requirements.
• Manage assigned supplier issue and dispute escalations to settlement, including negotiations and settlement agreement execution.
• Develop and maintain solid relationships with key internal stakeholders across the organization to ensure suppliers within the category and the category strategy are meeting business needs.
• Actively participate in efforts to drive continuous improvement, implementation of innovations and automations to create best-in-class procurement practices that are intuitive and user-friendly for internal stakeholders and suppliers.
• Ensure compliance with ethical procurement practices, procurement policies, supplier social responsibility objectives, and supplier diversity and sustainability programs.
• Act as internal resource to business owners on sourcing practices, supplier performance, compliance, and risk management policies, processes, and procurement standard practices.