Job Purpose and Impact
The Category Specialist will handle the development and implementation of a global sourcing strategy for a category and will identify, create and capture value from competitive advantages emerging from the company's global scale and market insights. In this role, you will achieve established targets for the category, provide direction to guide and lead global supplier contact for strategic negotiations. You will be an essential partner in the development of insights that link together value creation and deploy and assess local commercial viability.
Key Accountabilities
- Synthesize all technical and economic drivers of ingredients in all global markets, build relationships with key business partners and understand global competitive dynamics of categories to develop global expertise for categories around responsibility area.
- Create global sourcing strategies that leverage business leading market positions to establish a competitive advantage in the marketplace and lead category contract negotiations with global and regional suppliers.
- Align with regional risk, management and sourcing directors and leads to develop a multifaceted global sourcing strategy that optimizes value creation for the company.
- Communicate global market drivers and local feedback and incorporate it into regional businesses to ensure long term local competitiveness of regional businesses.
- Communicate detailed market intelligence with appropriate audiences to support our commercial approach in accordance with the customer segment, competitive positioning and market trends.
- Accountable for global sourcing initiatives, including the appropriate value capture mechanism. Implement, measure and report category value creation.
- Evaluate and deploy ingredient improvement actions and lead the transition of ingredient technology and sourcing strategy with local formulation and supply chain teams.
- Independently handle complex issues with minimal supervision, while escalating only the most complex issues to appropriate staff.
- Other duties as assigned
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in purchasing and supply chain.
- Experience with customer segmentation and pricing strategy.
