Procurement Associate

3 months ago

Norwich, United Kingdom Norfolk County Council Full time

**Permanent Contract | £24,294 to £25,979 per annum (Scale E) | 37 hours per week | Norwich
The council purchases all kinds of things from suppliers across the country: from social care to streetlighting, from fire engines to library books. This post will be part of the Procurement Service Desk which is the first port of call for colleagues who need to order something from a supplier. You will oversee purchase ordering in our main purchasing system, both ensuring day to day purchasing operations run smoothly and also developing improvements and efficiencies through process improvement and automation. Your daily tasks will include resolving queries from colleagues, processing purchase requisitions in the system, setting up and maintaining supplier records in the system. You will also be encouraged to contribute to our programme of continuous improvement, suggesting ideas and testing solutions. Although we don’t directly interact with suppliers, we sort out the messy details and small print, resolving problems and making sure things run smoothly.

First and foremost, you need excellent customer service skills. Our customers are internal colleagues, and the role focuses on supporting them to do their part of the procurement process as smoothly as possible. Administration skills and attention to detail are important too, but it’s your ability to explain complex processes to laypeople that will really make you successful in this role. You will also need to be a great communicator with strong IT skills.

**What will you be doing:
- Working on the procurement helpdesk - maintaining a reputation of strong customer service ethos, helping internal colleagues with complicated procurement processes.
- Solving problems confidently, using your initiative to make sure things happen smoothly. Maintaining contract and supplier records on the electronic system, responding swiftly when things change, cross checking to make sure different systems stay in sync.

**What we are looking for:
- IT skills - good at using spreadsheets - daily use of Microsoft Office software, particularly Excel and Outlook.
- A strong customer service ethos - someone who wants to help people to get it right first time, who will take the time to help people where needed, and who will work with people to improve when things go wrong.
- Confident IT user who can quickly learn new computer systems and get the most out of them - can understand how the system works and use that knowledge to suggest technology solutions where we need to improve processes and work with IT colleagues to make it happen.
- A proven record of problem solving, with confidence to take the initiative and get things sorted.
- Excellent communication skills, both in writing and verbal.
- Someone who prides themselves on attention to detail.
- A good team player who enjoys helping colleagues and is willing to pitch in when required. Understanding of purchase ordering and/or broader procurement principles would be helpful but is not necessary as full training will be available.

**Who are we:
- The procurement team is a great place to work. We have a few sub-teams and this role reports directly to the Head of Contracting and will work fairly closely with them.
- We focus on making sure the organisation can easily make purchases in the right way - setting up training, systems, information sources to help people get it right.
- We are keen on using evidence to inform our decisions and often develop new reports to show particular trends in the data - for example showing where a process change might have the biggest impact/benefit to the organisation.
- We talk to purchasers across the organisation on a daily basis, and work with them to make sure their part of the process is constantly improving by making the right information available. We prefer to sort out problems as helpfully and quickly as possible, and then analysing the cause calmly when the problem has passed so we can minimise the same thing happening again.

We want our people to be inspired and motivated to work well together, make the most of our workspaces, enjoy a healthy work-life balance, and deliver excellent services to Norfolk and its people. Flexibility is built into the way we work, with hybrid working a key feature for many roles. Our technology platform and equipment are first class, enabling you to connect and collaborate remotely. We ask that you have in place good Broadband connectivity.

**Job description and person specification
You can also find out about the rewards and benefits we offer as well as our other terms and conditions.

These are some benefits you can enjoy by working for Norfolk County Council:

- Competitive salary
- Generous holiday entitlement with the ability to buy and sell leave
- Health and Wellbeing services including fast-track physiotherapy and a free counselling service
- Flexible working opportunities including flexi-time, part time, remote and hybrid working - dependent on your

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