Corporate Planning & Management, Strategic Sourcing (Spend Management), Associate, Dallas

Job Title: Corporate Planning & Management, Strategic Sourcing (Spend Management)

Location: Dallas, TX

Level: Associate  

Divisional Overview

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 has 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 Professional Fees Spending category. Professional Fees is a category within the Strategic Sourcing team that focuses on advisory consulting, staff augmentation, outsourcing and managed services spent 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: 

• Work collaboratively to deploy category management techniques to develop multi-year global strategies which support the delivery of the firm’s commercial and operational objectives.
• Support Procurement strategy creation and execution of key initiatives
• Identify and implement best practices in procurement, commercial and vendor management
• Partner with business and functional leadership to understand short, medium, and long-term third-party requirements including demand management Drive supply side initiatives to reduce or contain risk, and / or create commercial and revenue generating opportunities -  maximize relationship opportunities; document vendor sensitivities
• Manage the relationship and escalations with the firm’s strategic vendors
• Ensure appropriate contract structures / types, pricing models, vendor incentive models, service level agreements, performance indicators and cost models are applied consistently across vendors to arrive at total cost of ownership
• Partner with internal and external legal counsel to ensure proper forms of Agreement are utilized, contractor conformance with the terms and conditions of the Agreements, and refinement of Agreements as required
• Manage compliance with and provide reporting on the firm’s commitments in relation to ESG
• Facilitate sharing knowledge, experiences and best practice within and across global Strategic Sourcing team 
• Support compliance to the Firmwide Third Party Risk and Control Framework and associated programs
• 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
• Track and report on strategic vendor management activities against Sourcing KPIs, spend and other trends impacting the firm and business units
• Collaborate with Sourcing Operations to drive digitization
• Support in ongoing management, monitoring and maintenance of Strategic Sourcing process, risk / control and RCA components 
• Role based in Bengaluru, India, with potential for travel as required

 Qualifications:

• Bachelors / Post Graduation; and in addition, if any relevant professional qualifications 
• Minimum five years’ experience in Strategic Souring and Category management, particularly in indirect spending with a preference in professional fees sourcing (IT services)
• Must have strong technical, strategic and project management skills as well as a strong foundation in supply chain management, sourcing and procurement, vendor management, legal and contracting and operational risk management

Competencies:

• Functional Expertise – Understanding of 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
• 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

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience of successfully negotiating complex, high-profile contracts, including incentivized service level agreements 
• Excellent client management skills and experience in leading projects involving a range of stakeholders. 
• Track record of being a team player collaborating with others within and across teams 
• Proven, strong communication, interpersonal and organizational skills 
• Professional and measured approach that has creditability within industry and with peers 
• Strong executive-level communication/presentation skills 
• Impeccable attention to detail and excellent problem solving and analytical skills
• Strategic thinker with strong implementation ability 
• Proficient with the suite of Microsoft Office software
• Experience of Sourcing procure to pay tools (Ariba, Fieldglass, PMweb)