Category Manager - Communith & Mental Health

The role as Category Manager is responsible for supporting the effective management of and the value delivery for the procurement of goods and services across the Community & Mental Health Category. Within this role you will actively be responsible for supporting the Head of Category to ensure effective development and maintenance of the Category Strategy, Category Plan and Commercial Strategy. You will also have delegated authority to support the Head of Category's with elements of the overall commercial lifecycle, including Category Strategy and Category policy development.

As the Category Manager your main duties will be:

• To have delegated authority to support the Head of Category's in the development and maintenance of the community and mental health category strategy and to enable maximum aggregation of low-value spend, reduction in sourcing activity (minimising order cycle) and reducing supplier base to enable value to be added by Management activities
• Work with the Head of Category in developing and maintaining Category plans for key spend areas and transformation programmes
• Responsible for parts of the production of a Commercial Strategy for each sourcing project, including but not limited to, clear sourcing outcomes and definition of contracts to be included.
• Liaise with end-users to scope and develop Project Initiation Documents (PIDs) to include project outlines, spend baselines, project scope and linking to approved Category Strategy
• Management of potential supplier relationships by engaging the supply market early and building rapport/creating collaboration opportunities
• Assist Category Managers in developing robust, fit for purpose and standardised KPIs to be used within the sourcing cycle of Category Procurements
• Understand demand by forecasting and planning requirements with internal stakeholders and suppliers
• Analyse inputs to support development of a multi-year Category Strategy and prioritised annual pipeline of initiatives

This role requires an experienced Category specialist who has experience from a similar category within the NHS. In addition to the above experience the ability to lead and motivate a team is also required.

This role is being offered on a fully flexible basis with travel to the office as required. The salary on offer is £58,698 to £65,095.