The role is mainly responsible for developing excellent category strategy in APAC for HR, Professional Services, Fleet and Medical categories, which can provide solid values to AZ business including but not limited to innovative end of end supply solutions with high quality and cost effectiveness.

The role needs to engage with internal and external business partners including senior level business users in marketing function, global category manager/leaders, country procurement managers, GPS APAC team, and suppliers and to build up collaborative relationship with the business partners.

Key Accountabilities

Strategy:

• Accountable for designing, and implementation of category, region or market strategies to optimize business efficiency.

• Accountable for category management either regionally or locally including strategic sourcing, SC&I, contract and risk management.

• Accountable for developing and maintaining expert knowledge of respective regional supply markets, competitors and product innovations.

• Works with Procurement in understanding the regional spend and finding opportunities to increase quality and improve value for money. Facilitate implementation of procurement change initiatives within category to improve business performance.

• Works with Global category

Leadership:

• Accountable for managing Enabling Category team with clear category related targets. Manage overall portfolio and performance regionally.

• Leads, Coaches and develops professional aspects of Procurement team members

• Establishing and developing a team by attracting high capable talent from within and outside the organization and providing appropriate opportunities and support

Business & Supplier Engagement:

• Develop an extensive understanding of customer needs and the business environment. Build strong relationship with customers and ensure customer satisfaction.

• Work with the Strategic Intelligence team to perform procurement reporting and analysis of management information to identify potential improvement opportunities as well as identification of innovative procurement solutions that provide cashable savings and process efficiencies for the organization.

• Address Supplier issues to ensure the highest level of service delivery. Maintains contractual and business relationships with Suppliers to the highest standards.

• Fosters trusted relationships with vendors to achieve better pricing and quality of services

• Conduct annual peer reviews of category, region or market strategies

• Plans and reviews the performance of Procurement and other function teams within area of responsibility

• Directs new initiatives and improvement programmes aimed at ensuring compliance, continuous improvement, technical excellence and improving cost-effectiveness

• Leads, defines and gains approval of business needs and the translation of these needs into specific resource requirements

• Develops senior level relationships in order to resolve issues, optimise business performance and develop future improvement opportunities

• Ensure the highest standards of compliance and ethics consistently across AZ

Required Skills & Knowledge

• Degree level qualification

• Thorough knowledge of pharmaceutical industry

• Expertise in at least one area of Procurement and knowledge of several others

• Proven leadership experience

• Communication skills and ability to influence others

• Comfort with risk and ambiguous situations

• Fluency in verbal and written EN