SOURCING OPTIMISATION MANAGER

Circa £55,000 plus great benefits (Work Level 5)
Manchester city centre, in this role you’ll be working in a hybrid way splitting your time between home and coming into the office at least three times a week (find out more about our hybrid working policy at jobs.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy)
We’re looking for a Sourcing Optimisation Manager to join us in supporting, empowering and enabling the commercial team to make brilliant data driven decisions and execute them effectively with our suppliers. You’ll be in a unique role supporting our trading team to hone their buying skills, to make sure we get a strong deal for our Co-op – meaning we can continue to grow, reinvest where it counts, and provide great products for our members and customers.
In this role, you’ll lead on finding ways to save us money across our commercial functions – working closely with our trading teams to understand any challenges, optimising our current processes, and identifying how we can do things better. We’ll also look to you to represent our buyers to the business, and make sure they have the tools, data, and knowledge they need to make informed and effective decisions. If you’ve got a strong understanding of trading and how to buy, as well as the drive, passion, and energy we’re looking for, then we can offer you the opportunity to grow your career and make a real impact across Co-op.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Identify opportunities for us to reduce the costs of the goods we buy, improving our economic profit
• Help to develop buyer negotiation packs and advocate best practice sourcing approaches across the commercial team
• Maintain, develop and improve new data analysis tools that allow our buyers to make data-informed decisions
• Support our buying teams to implement new initiatives in a collaborative and supportive way. continuously engaging with the buying population to highlight opportunities for continuous development and improvement
• Act as an expert within the team and work with business optimisation colleagues to make processes within commercial work more efficiently
• Support with complex high-level negotiations by enabling buyers to utilise all the resources available to them
• Act as an internal consultant, linking with teams across propositions and commercial, making recommendations for change (process, people, operating model, data) that will unlock additional economic profit
• Develop materials to be used in the buying academy, helping to set the standards for how key decisions are made within the commercial buying roles in the future

THIS ROLE WOULD SUIT PEOPLE WHO HAVE

• Strong negotiation skills with a solid understanding of commercial trading
• A high level of data literacy, with the ability to manipulate, interpret, and communicate large data sets in an engaging way
• A passionate, driven, and resilient attitude, with a focus on innovation and an interest in setting up for future success
• The ability to forge and grow positive working relationships with colleagues at all levels with the confidence to influence across the business and speaking up when necessary
• A desire to work collaboratively by supporting and coaching colleagues

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE MAY CLOSE APPLICATIONS FOR THIS ROLE EARLY.

As part of your application, you’ll need to complete an online assessment. This assessment typically takes between 45-60 minutes. If you’re a current Co-op colleague, this does not need to be completed.