Regional Category Manager – Indirect APAC

Position Title : Regional Category Manager – Indirect APAC

Location – Hyd |India| #LI Hybrid

About the role

The Regional Category Manager – Indirect APAC plans and leads all strategic aspects within the category of Indirect, across divisions, on a regional level and develops proposals for strategic business decisions. The role provides high value procurement solutions to the business and category strategies; support third party vendor selection, vendor development, technology management and performance measurement activities. The Regional Category Manager-Indirect ensures best-in-class delivery of external services and products in the agreed Indirect categories to support projects and to realize year-on-year productivity improvements, cost savings, and process improvements in close collaboration with the stakeholders in the business.

Your responsibility includes but not limited to:

• Implement category strategic goals from overall Procurement strategy / Ecosystem management. Planning, organizing and managing projects taking into account priorities, resources, budgets, issues and constraints to achieve desired results; defining clear project scope and objectives; utilizing software and tools to plan, track and report status.
• Mapping the value chain, analyzing it and deriving potential scenarios. Includes the understanding and application of total cost of ownership and should cost modelling.
• Participating in and / or leading financial discussions. Applying financial knowledge to participate actively, e.g. in budgeting process, including tax aspects in sourcing strategies and structuring sophisticated deals with ecosystem partners.
• Compliance & risk management: supporting reports to determine appropriate compliance level. Monitoring end-to-end compliance (budget, payment, vendor PO, contract invoice, buying channel, etc.) and deriving corrective actions to improve compliance. Applying risk management processes including identifying and evaluating risks and defining and executing a risk mitigation plan.
• Projecting the dynamics and impacts while establishing category strategies through generating internal and external insights. Extracting, cleansing and consolidating information to fact-based insights for further usage e.g. in category strategies.
• Maintaining and updating Procurement applications accordingly to the Procurement content (e.g. e-catalogs, user portal). Continuous improvement of procurement content and automation. Support definition and implementation of Procurement tools and processes.
• Managing data analysis and reporting, e.g. analyzing spend, demand, supply markets and competitors. Extracting, cleansing and consolidating information to fact-based insights for further usage e.g. in category strategies.
• Demand management, Responsible to ensure the right balance between business needs and Novartis’ strategy. Accountable to work with stakeholders to identify the most cost-effective ways to deliver business objectives.
• Sourcing and supplier relationships management - Executing the Source-to-Contract process including respective strategies, approaches and methods: Preparing and conducting fact-based negotiations. Adapting tactics from a broad portfolio of negotiation strategies to achieve results that support business and Procurement objectives.
• Proactive assessment of new ways of working, involving innovative scientific & technical solutions by identifying and onboarding the right suppliers. Manage relationships with stakeholders
• Analyzing specifications for optimization. Linking specification to customer value, challenging specification confidently. Conveying messages clearly and convincing stakeholders.
• Achieving results by proactively building long-term, sustainable and effective relationships, understanding the stakeholder landscape and demonstrating political astuteness across business structures and networks.

Essential Requirements:

• Successful project execution by providing all external solutions in time / at the required quality / within budget as verified by the business.Value Delivery – right-sized spending and projected savings in compliance with a meaningful guideline.
• Understanding Procurement vision based on insights into procurement leading practices. Linking Procurement strategy to Novartis’ overall strategy and conveying it clearly to the organization.
• Mapping the value chain, analyzing it and deriving potential scenarios. Includes the understanding and application of total cost of ownership, and should cost modelling. Mapping and analyzing the ecosystem, meaning how procurement's customers, stakeholders, suppliers, 3rd parties and even competitors play a role in ecosystems.
• Analyzing specifications for optimization. Linking specification to customer value, challenging specification confidently. Conveying messages clearly and convincing stakeholders. Expertise in defining multiple category strategies. Linking strategies to measurable target and clearly conveying them to the organization.
• Expertise in Indirect Services procurement categories (External Workforce, HR Services , IT services) . Understanding the respective category market levers, trends and main players as well as internal processes.
• Compliance & risk management: understanding the KPIs, processes and supporting reports to determine appropriate compliance level. Monitoring end-to-end compliance (budget, payment, vendor PO, contract invoice, buying channel, etc.)
• Experience in analyzing spend, demand, supply markets and competitors. Understanding the dynamics and impacts (e.g. mergers and acquisitions). Experience in extracting, cleansing and consolidating information to fact-based insights for further usage e.g. in category strategies.
• Source-to-Contract process including respective strategies, approaches and methods. Outstanding experience in applying tactics from a broad portfolio of negotiation strategies to achieve results that support business and Procurement objectives.
• Managing contracts throughout its lifecycle, including structuring information and activating it in the Procurement system, enabling compliance monitoring, passing the information to all relevant countries, coordinating storage and indexing with legal, set up reporting and reminder structures.
• Procurement tools and ability to navigate them. Understanding the procurement data structure and procurement classification system for material, services, and suppliers.
• Understanding the procurement content (e.g. in contracts) and maintaining and updating Procurement applications accordingly (e.g. e-catalogs, user portal). Continuous improvement of procurement content and automation.

Desirable:

• University/Advanced degree is required. Master’s Degree/other advanced degree in the supply chain management, business administration or similar is preferred. Strong preference for CIPS or CCW similar professional qualification.      
• 8 years of relevant business experience (industry specific experience). Preferably > 10 years of experience in Procurement or other related experience within the Pharmaceutical industry, preferably in category management, supplier management, or related area, with a focus in the Indirect categories (External Workforce, HR services, IT services) domain. Strategy / Category management / Supplier management / Project management

Why Novartis

Our purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives and our vision is to become the most valued and trusted medicines company in the world. How can we achieve this? With our people. It is our associates that drive us each day to reach our ambitions. Be a part of this mission and join us!

Learn more here: https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

You’ll receive: You can find everything you need to know about our benefits and rewards in the Novartis Life

Handbook.

https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards

Join our Novartis Network: If this role is not suitable to your experience or career goals but you wish to stay connected to hear more about Novartis and our

career opportunities, Join the Novartis Network here:

https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Novartis embraces diversity, equal opportunity, and inclusion. We are committed to building diverse teams, representative of the patients and communities we serve, and we strive to create an inclusive workplace that cultivates bold innovation through collaboration and empowers our people to unleash their full potential.

Join our Novartis Network: If this role is not suitable to your experience or career goals but you wish to stay connected to learn more about Novartis and our career opportunities, join the Novartis Network here: