Category Lead - Intermediate - VF

Title: Category Lead

Location: Columbus, OH (Hybrid, 3 days onsite)

Duration: 12 months

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or equivalent work related experience
• Proven track record to deliver results and achieve goals
• Demonstrated ability to develop effective working relationships with others
• Experience leading cross-functional teams
• Ability to build support and consensus
• Proven financial acumen and analytical abilities

The Category Lead is responsible for helping drive value through the strategic sourcing and the supplier relationship management processes by independently leading and managing multiple strategic enterprise sourcing initiatives. The applicant must be highly analytical and self-driven with a proven ability to leverage their category expertise to negotiate contractual agreements, collect and analyze data, build out cost models, draw conclusions, present findings to drive decisions, and track and manage supplier performance metrics.

The Category Lead must possess an ability to work in a fast‑paced, changing environment and still meet business performance measures, including timelines for sourcing and contracting activities and planning for future sourcing needs of the business units. The Category Lead reports to the Manager, Category Management.

• Establishing, leading/facilitating, and supporting cross functional category management teams to develop and maintain category plans and ongoing category performance
• Manage category‑related projects from initiation through implementation, applying project management principles to deliver results on time and within scope.
• Develop deep knowledge and experience within assigned spend management responsibilities
• Develop spend/performance and external market analyses to monitor category performance and identify performance improvement opportunities
• Develop spend and savings/performance improvement forecasts to monitor progress and ensure goals are achieved
• Develop plans to capture identified opportunities
• Define category requirements through collaborative efforts with respective stakeholder groups
• Collaborate with stakeholder groups to develop consensus on the appropriate category plans and priorities
• Lead performance improvement initiatives defined by the category plan including strategic sourcing and other performance improvement initiatives
• Establish, lead/facilitate, and support cross functional strategic sourcing/performance improvement teams as needed/prescribed by category plans to achieve savings and performance targets (e.g., reduce cost, improve quality and result in a lower total cost of ownership, meeting supplier diversity goals)
• Lead negotiations with suppliers as needed
• Maintain critical supplier agreements including renewals, negotiation of terms, issue identification, tracking and resolution

• Developing and maintaining supplier criticality ratings and managing resulting critical supplier relationships
• Managing supplier relationships including conducting Quarterly Business Reviews with critical suppliers and Executive Sponsors

• Developing successful partnerships with key stakeholders / business partners to achieve desired results
• Developing and managing cross-functional category management and strategic sourcing teams as needed
• Collaborating with stakeholders to drive needed decisions to achieve desired results

• Experience managing large supplier agreements
• Experience working in a Shared Services organization
• Supply Chain experience in the utility industry
• Knowledgeable in category management and strategic sourcing practices