Commercial Business Partner

Salary: £54,000 per year

We are currently working in partnership with United Utilities, the UK’s largest listed water company, to recruit a Commercial Business Partner on a permanent basis. This is a key Commercial leadership position which demonstrates and continually delivers a value-added commercial service to enable United Utilities to be the best water company in the UK.

In this role you will lead a Commercial Team that is either business unit or category aligned (c£100m to c£350m per annum) to deliver excellent outcomes for your stakeholders through delivery of an end-to-end procurement service to manage third party Suppliers. The scope of your responsibility includes all facets of Procurement, with a key emphasis around relationship management – both to your internal customer but also suppliers. Delivering key business goals to drive value from UU’s supply chain is critical as well as transforming a commercial service as a positive disruptor.

What You’ll Do:

• Responsible for Commercial Business Partnering for your customers; being their Procurement expert and point of contact for their third-party relationships, both strategic partners and tactical suppliers
• Responsible for end-to-end ownership of the Procurement process; from sourcing through to contract management
• Responsible for the overall category strategy and delivery of savings & value initiatives in your area
• Understand and contribute to business strategy and policy through business planning, category planning and stakeholder influencing, being curious to drive change and improvement whilst not being afraid of being a ‘positive disrupter’ to challenge the status quo
• Promote and develop insight into current and future market trends and dynamics of particular categories allowing UU to make informed choices on future business strategy
• Deploy category knowledge across Commercial function/UU and develop and maintain network of contacts in the business, industry and supply base
• Influence specification, supply and sourcing, particularly in terms of value for money, commercial risk, operational risk, green & carbon agenda, economies of scale, innovation and efficiency
• Negotiate commercial pricing and contractual agreements with external providers to ensure service delivery, quality, added value, total cost management and security of supply
• Drive performance of contracts and suppliers throughout the contract lifecycle by influencing stakeholders and embedding a culture of strong contract governance procedures, providing meaningful internal reporting to allow agile decision making
• Deliver innovation and value for money through the continuous development of your portfolio with detailed category plans and execution of sourcing strategies including; Market testing and insight, best practice commercial terms; contact assurance methods; supplier relationship management; volume leverage; total cost management; demand challenge; process efficiency/compliance; external benchmarking of best practice
• Establish and maintain working relationships with operational and business based senior management teams within UU and external suppliers
• Use of negotiating, influencing and motivational skills is important as well as collaboration Motivate, lead, engage and manage Commercial department that delivers high performance with confidence, trust and care
• Management of senior stakeholder relationships ensuring business strategy and policy is aligned to category plans as part of your Business Partnering responsibility
• Manage the conflicting interests of various business functions and service providers, taking ownership of their commercial matters
• Coach, mentor and develop Commercial Delivery teams as required in line with specific development needs to ensure talent is retained with growing capability
• This list is not exhaustive and includes any other ad-hoc duties and responsibilities required from time to time.

What You’ll Bring:

• Preferably degree educated, with a relevant post-graduate qualification (e.g. CIPS,RICS, MBA, MSC, IACCM)
• Experience of implementing new commercial relationships cross functional and business boundaries and a quantifiable track record of savings delivery and change implementation
• Knowledge of key procurement processes, tools and methodologies used by leading edge procurement practitioners including knowledge of ‘Category Management’
• Experience of SRM, Contract Management and Business Partnering
• Knowledge of techniques for implementing commercial agreements in a complex and rapidly changing environment.
• The ability to influence at senior management levels to embrace and support the strategic agenda is essential.
• Team Leadership skills and proven track record of managing high performance teams
• Working knowledge of the regulatory environments and ability to understand and apply new regulations to the operation of your team; including net zero carbon reduction and other Ofwat policies.

Additional Information/Benefits

• Working 37 hours per week this is a full-time position
• This is a hybrid role with a mixture of onsite and remote
• Access to a great pension scheme and annual bonus of up to 20%
• Competitive annual leave entitlement
• Manager Healthcare and Car Allowance
• United Utilities has been honoured by Glassdoor with the Best Places to Work in 2020.

PLEASE NOTE:

Should your application be successful, and you are offered the role, a number of pre-employment checks need to be carried out before your appointment can be confirmed. Any assignment offer with our client will be subject to a satisfactory checking report from the Disclosure Barring Service, a credit check and a Driving Licence Check.

This vacancy is being advertised by Rullion Limited acting as an employment business.

Rullion celebrates and supports diversity and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for both employees and applicants.