Global IT Category Manager

**Global Category Manager - IT**
**York or London based with home working**

Are you a knowledgeable category leader and a skilled negotiator with a flair for influencing your stakeholders and suppliers alike? In this role you'll use your market and IT expertise to construct the best possible commercial deals. If you like having a hands-onrole, developing strategy across a broad range of sub-categories and being involved in the full procurement lifecycle read on.

Our IT Sourcing team lead the sourcing of Hiscox's major new capabilities and strategic contracts. You will become a trusted advisor within IT as collectively we develop game changing projects for Hiscox - displaying your flexibility, intellect and commercialability and working to develop a series of category strategies to support the work of Hiscox

This is an exciting opportunity for a category professional to shape the future of Hiscox. We have recently embarked on a journey to transform our approach to procurement right across our business. That can only be successful if we form strong relationshipswith our business stakeholders and deliver innovative third-party solutions which help them develop their business. You will:

- Using your market knowledge and working closely with stakeholder, shape, build, maintain and deliver the overall Category Strategy for your assigned area(s) within IT, including developing a prioritised set of Procurement opportunities agreed with stakeholderswhich bring about sustainable benefits for Hiscox
- Be a trusted advisor to senior level stakeholders by helping to shape their strategy through your market insight
- Ensure you deliver end-to-end commercial, contractual and relationship lifecycle value, in the eyes of key stakeholders especially ensuring that you:

- Develop optimum routes to market based on market developments and business requirements
- Develop clear service specification that enable best service provision fit
- Recognising Hiscox commitment to ESG, ensure that suppliers share our commitments and have plans which deliver on this agenda
- As a regulated business ensure that suppliers proposals clearly demonstrate compliance to all applicable laws and regulations
- Manage your assigned category areas continually reviewing the efficacy, efficiency and security of current supply arrangements and customer impacts ensuring that contracts remain in force, effective and up to date with market trends, price and service competitivenessand regulatory change
- Understand how innovation is changing your assigned category areas, form relationships with potential suppliers which allow you to quickly exploit developments in the market
- Identify, manage and mitigate commercial and supply chain risk, ensuring effective Due Diligence is completed with appropriate evidence effectively stored post contract signature
- Be Hiscox's lead negotiator in developing commercial opportunities for IT. You will have the required skills to draft contracts and appropriate schedules using a suite of approved templates/clauses
- Share category knowledge with Vendor Managers, facilitating the effective construction of value planning

**Skills/Capabilities**:

- You must have demonstrable stakeholder management ability up to Executive level with the gravitas to interact and influence at that level to deliver effective category strategies across Hiscox which are collaborative and unlock Innovation
- Very strong experience of third-party contractual work is a must combined with the ability to lead and deliver initiatives to improve the quality and value of the components of our cost base within your assigned Category areas
- Deep understanding of the Customer Journey in the Insurance marketplaces in which we operate and how to continually improve service as a key differentiator
- Very strong knowledge of commercial models and approach/techniques necessary to achieve best in class sourcing deals
- Very strong relationship management and networking skills and experience, required for both key stakeholder and supplier engagement
- Expert IT Category management development skills, including demonstrable experience in developing meaningful Category Strategies and in-depth knowledge of your assigned category(ies) ideally shown in a Global context
- Excellent negotiation skill set, demonstrable experience at successfully developing and executing negotiation strategies coupled with 'selling' capability
- Very strong contract drafting skills with the ability to create associated Schedules of legal Agreements
- Dynamic and self-motivated style, with energy and ability to deliver at pace and drive change
- Very strong organisational and project management skills to include a high level of PC literacy across the Microsoft Office suite
- Professional qualification (CIPS/ desirable or willingness to study towards)

**Diversity and Working Patterns**

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we're committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We have also learned that working life doesn't always have to be in the office,and when it's safe to do so, we will be introducing hybrid ways of working to encourage a healthy work life balance.