Category Buyer

**Category Buyer - Marketing Consumer**

**Bristol**

**About Us**

We're a truly international company, fourth largest in our industry and operating across 120 markets. An inclusive, innovative global FMCG business supported by over 27,500 employees. As we embrace a new era of growth, we are transforming. Our ways of working and culture are driven by a challenger mindset, constantly questioning the status quo. Our agility and entrepreneurial spirit, alongside award winning development programmes, enable innovation and success while creating exciting and rewarding career choices. As we move forward, our customers will be at the heart of what we do, evolving to needs and expectations and committing to a more meaningful contribution to harm reduction by building a successful NGP business. Integral to our long-term success is our sustainability strategy, behaving responsibly and supporting our ambitions, all underpinned by high governance. Encouraging inclusion at local levels and supporting a developing and robust diversity agenda globally, we’re fully committed to creating and maintaining an environment that celebrates and respects difference.

**The Role**

As part of the broader Global Supply Chain organisation and as part of the Procurement function, this truly global role will include the sourcing and management of strategic supplier relationships within a broader category management framework. This role is a critical enabler of success for Imperial’s marketing function and brings together a unique blend of global brand activity with procurement excellence. Imperial has a large portfolio of globally iconic brands, and the marketing procurement team play an important role delivering supplier solutions that support business growth.

Working with the Category Manager this role will support the delivery of the procurement strategy and support the deployment of category and strategic supplier relationship management. The Category Buyer will conduct strategic and tactical sourcing activities with the stakeholders as needed, in order to establish contracts and manage supplier relations including issue resolution when needed and support the Category Manager with development of category strategies. The role will cover high profile and strategic / globally focused engagements with suppliers and will require close working with central function business stakeholders and Business Partners within the Procurement function, particularly for global requirements and Tier 1 (top 5) markets.

**Additional information**

Portfolio Specific
- Work collaboratively as part of a small Indirect Marketing Procurement team, responsible for strategic commercial agreements and category development optimising value for money for the Global Consumer Office and supported functions
- Sourcing & Management of strategic creative agencies; digital & e-commerce services; product design agencies; brand activation partners; media buying; market sales data; consumer research; marketing technology and more.
- Regular and direct engagement with GCO strategic partners team, NGP Marketing leaders Intelligence & Insights leaders, key stakeholders within GCO, and Procurement Business Partners for regions / markets
- Category solution support focus on Tier 1 and Tier 2 markets working alongside Procurement Business Partners
- Collaboration with Governance teams in relation to International Marketing Standards within the supply base, Information Security, Data Privacy and related topics
- Engagement with strategic transformation and improvement programmes where necessary
- Global influence and category support for a supply base in excess of £330m and 1,400 suppliers globally being managed by the Marketing & Consumer category team as a whole

**Principle Accountabilities**
- Sub-category strategy development and delivering strategic commercial agreements which maximise value and minimise risk for Imperial Brands
- Support the Category Manager with the deployment of the procurement strategy and supplier risk / ESG and supplier relationship management strategy
- Conducting strategic and tactical sourcing activities within the category (including preparation, execution, and evaluation of RFx activity - RFIs, RFPs, RFQs and e-auctions as required)
- Ensure that all procurement activity and tender requirements are in accordance with the company’s financial regulations and comply with directives
- Conduct commercial contract negotiation, contract management (including implementation), renewal of contracts and archiving old contracts and make them available for each relevant region
- Follow-up and act on supplier performance data received from Procurement Centre of Capability team
- Work closely with Procurement Business Partners within the agreed service archetype to achieve the procurement targets
- Work with GBS (Global Business Services) in relation to operational process, compliance, deployment, and issue resolution / management as needed - to util