As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through re-inventing chocolate, we’re looking for a Strategic Sourcing Manager – Indirect Procurement to join our Procurement Team on a permanent basis. Reporting into the Head of Indirect Procurement, this role will mainly be responsible for leading procurement activity across our Property and Facilities Management (FM) categories and other categories where required. Responsibilities include leading competitive tenders, driving category roadmaps, and negotiating meaningful benefits for the organisation.
We are looking for a driven, results-orientated procurement professional who will develop strong stakeholder relationships through effective collaboration. These are material categories for Hotel Chocolat, as we are a premium brand with investments in our factories, retail and distribution estates. These categories have had limited involvement from procurement in the past – looking for a self-starter, capable of creating clarity in ambiguity, to go after all the untapped potential in the spend.This role has the exciting potential to enable further strategic transformation particularly with our ongoing investment in our factory, distribution centres and retail estate.
As a relatively young but commanding brand, we offer autonomy and the chance to make visible impacts, and we need self-starters who can lead projects through ambiguity and capitalise on valuable opportunities. If this excites you, we want to hear from you!As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits including private healthcare cover, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and Company pension contributions, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia. Here at Hotel Chocolat, we've adopted hybrid working.
You’ll join us on site for 3 days a week to engage and collaborate as a team, with our stakeholders and suppliers, but you can figure out which sites, which days and where you need to be to get your work done. Stakeholders for this role are mainly based across our on-site locations in Royston, St. Neots and Huntingdon. For the other 2 days – you can work from wherever you like!
What you’ll be doing:Business Partner - Act as a Business Partner and trusted advisor for procurement matters primarily across the Property & FM categories, and supporting other categories as needed, building relationships with stakeholders at all levels across Manufacturing, Fulfilment, and Retail, to maximise supplier capabilities to drive performance, originality of innovation and ethics. Procurement Delivery - Create, lead, and manage the category sourcing plan and end-to-end procurement delivery, drawing on a broad range of sourcing approaches and applying the most appropriate to gain commercial value e.g. direct negotiation, RFI, RFQ and leading critical supplier negotiations.Targets and Plans - Working in partnership with Finance and functional colleagues, develop, manage and own the Property & FM category plans, delivering targeted savings and cash flow improvements and operational improvement targets, refining as necessary to align with evolving business needs and challenges, and closely monitoring progress to ensure, timely delivery.Policy, Process and Governance - Supporting the Head of Indirect Procurement, promote correct indirect third-party governance for the Procurement policy, processes, tools and templates driving compliance across the category and wider business, identifying opportunities for enhancement and improvement.Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) - Actively supporting and guiding contract owners in understanding their role and accountabilities in managing suppliers. Building performance focussed relationships with supplier peers to improve commercial and operational outcomes, and ensuring innovation is an integral part of SRM activity.Performance escalation - Act as escalation point for supplier performance issues within the category and ensure resolution and further escalation to the Head of Indirect Procurement as needed.Risk and Sustainability - Identify, manage and escalate supplier and delivery risk across the category, improving supply chain transparency and aligning category procurement activities with evolving Procurement ESG/ Sustainability strategy.
Who you are:Business Partnering - Experienced in building and maintaining trusted relationships with stakeholders across all levels of the business, working alongside other business areas to support strategic and operational decision making and provide procurement commercial insights to drive business performance. Commercial Acumen - Be able to bring together category market and supplier insights and an understanding of business objectives to increase value throughout supplier lifecycle, providing procurement commercial insights to drive business performance. Category Management - Experienced in delivering real, tangible value throughout the procurement lifecycle through development and implementation of category strategies.
Planning and Monitoring - Delivers projects on time, to agreed joint objectives through applying project management skills to scope, manage, track and report projects. Contract Development - Establishes relevant contracts through negotiations that improve quality, cost, risk and innovation and establishes sustainable supplier relationships. Essential Strong indirect procurement experience.Driven, motivated to deliver results, resilient and comfortable working through ambiguity.Proven ability to establish trusted relationships and influence senior stakeholders.
Background from Retail, Hospitality, FMCG or similar sectors.Bachelor’s degree. Desirable Category experience in all or some of property, construction, fit out, FM, equipment.CIPS qualified and/or with relevant master’s degree.International experience, e.g. USA, Europe, China. Who We Are…We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™.A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products.
The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about.Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to 135 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.To learn more about us and read about our People Pledge – our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion – click here: hotelchocolat.com/uk/engaged-ethics/our-people.html
