Company Description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 6000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job Description

We have a new and critical role in the Global Procurement function as a 'Strategic Sourcing Specialist’. The successful candidate will be responsible for developing sourcing strategies and conducting strategic sourcing activities across both IT and non-IT spend areas.

We invite applications from candidates who have experience in just some or all of the above listed sub- categories, because we are open to shaping the role for the right candidate.

The ideal candidate will be:

• Tenacious, creative, results oriented and passionate about the value Procurement can drive for the business.
• An expert in the global procurement of either HR and Professional Services, Marketing, FM or Technology, and possess deep and broad market intelligence.
• Commercially astute and highly experienced in delivering value for money, with excellent influencing skills.
• Persuasive, charismatic and an excellent negotiator, with related skills usually developed from prior experience working within a category management and/or a sourcing role.
• Proven ability to initiate and lead on procurement projects that not only deliver value for money, but also focus on areas such as demand management, supplier aggregation, and service improvements.
• Strong contracts drafting skills and an ability to interpret legal and commercial terms and conditions.
• Focused to getting things done today whilst also considering IFS’s longer term objectives.
• Highly skilled at obtaining stakeholder buy-in and ideally has prior experience driving ownership and direction of spend areas which have not previously been managed by Procurement.

What you’ll be Doing:

• Acting as a Key Procurement point of contact for strategic sourcing, you will be proactively engaging, managing and building relationships with key business stakeholders to understanding their service requirements in conjunction with regional and corporate goals.
• Navigating challenging situations, settling internal and external differences with minimum conflict, and gaining trust and respect from your business stakeholders.
• Managing supplier risk to establish a stable supply chain that allows IFS to offer uninterrupted services to its end-users in the business.
• Proactively sharing subject matter expertise and up-to-date external supply market knowledge with your business stakeholders.
• Building performance-based supplier partnerships that help drive optimal pricing, quality and process improvements.
• Leading and conducting key supplier performance reviews, using supplier scorecards to develop continuous improvement initiatives and actions.
• Leveraging spend and supplier data to develop an activity pipeline that can drive greater value for IFS through Supply, Demand, Governance or Compliance.
• Developing and delivering 3-year category strategies to optimize category products and services consumption, as well as improving efficiency, demand management, cost reduction and risk minimization for the category.
• Leading and managing the end-to-end sourcing and supplier management process for both global and regional initiatives, (including tenders, supplier market and selection analysis, RFPs and supplier presentations).
• Leading supplier negotiations on requirements, commercial terms and technical matters ensuring the end-result maximizes value delivery, minimizes risk and clearly aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
• Developing master Services Agreements and Frameworks in accordance with both regulatory and IFS policies.
• Working with legal, finance and IT teams who may be leading or contributing to any of the above activities.
• Running category specific initiatives to support our ESG agenda, which is a key priority for IFS.
• Category housekeeping such as the expiring contracts pipeline, savings performance tracking, PSL maintenance.
• Identifying opportunities to introduce new technology or improvements into your category.
• Keeping up to date with industry trends through webinars, conferences and networking opportunities.
• Providing updates and reporting to senior leadership on key performance metrics for your spend area.
• Coaching the sourcing team in their professional development and pursuit of building category knowledge within your area of expertise.
• Acting as a champion for the global procurement transformation, with a particular focus on embedding strategic sourcing across the businesses.
• Acting as an ambassador of the Procurement organization with internal stakeholders and external suppliers.
• Supporting the development of material for category management to standardize processes, document lessons learned and good practice, and deliver improved operational efficiency

Application Requirement:

Please include an introductory cover letter with your application, copied and pasted into our platform rather than attached as a document. The cover letter should provide a brief overview of your professional background and how you envision contributing to the role. Why IFS?

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Supply Chain, or a similar qualification is desirable.
• Extensive professional experience and a highly developed capability in global category management, the end-to-end sourcing process and supplier management process.
• Proven experience in independently developing and running competitive tenders and sourcing competitions
• Expert level contracts and commercial negotiation skills, knowledge and experience.
• Experience developing and delivering category strategies including opportunities identification to deliver procurement led value for money outcomes.
• Holds a strong track record of savings and value delivery.
• Experience and knowledge in sustainable procurement (desirable)
• Possesses business cultural awareness at an international level.
• Professional presence with the confidence and leadership ability to convey needs and vision at all levels.
• Impeccable communication (both written and verbal), customer service and interpersonal skills necessary to influence a large and diverse group of stakeholders including senior management, operations and finance business stakeholders.
• Proven ability to maintain high quality service standards.
• Self-directed, focused, and flexible to changing requirements, with an ability to easily prioritise and simplify matters.
• Well organised and can follow process.
• Excellent time management and prioritization skills

Additional Information

We believe that coming together as a community, in person, is important for innovation, connection and fostering a sense of belonging. Our roles have the right balance of remote and in-office working to enable flexibility for managing your life along with ensuring a real connection with your colleagues and the broader IFS community.