Product Specialist

**Product Specialist - EDI**
**Location: Spalding, Lincolnshire, UK - Hybrid (open to flexibility)**
**Contract: Permanent**
**Salary: £42k-£47k per annum plus bonus and private medical insurance**
**Hours/Shift pattern: Monday to Friday - 37.5 hours**

**Why join us.**
We’re proud to offer you a career with possibilities. Where you’ll be supported to work hard, aim high and bring your best to work, every day. As a valued Product Specialist, we’ll support your ambition, reward your resilience, and encourage you to rise to challenges and create a career you can be proud of too.

**What we do.**

We’re the market leader in the UK fresh prepared food industry - supplying meals, salads, desserts, pizza and bread to leading grocery retailers including Tesco, M&S, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose.

**About this role.**

Join Bakkavor as a Product Specialist and lead the charge in transforming our EDI IT systems. You'll spearhead a small team, ensuring our systems are high performing, fully supported, and aligned with business improvement projects. As a key player in our senior IT product team, you'll shape and execute an enterprise-wide IT strategy that aligns with our business goals.

In the Group IT Business Systems team, you’ll drive innovation, re-engineer processes, and deliver strategic solutions through exceptional leadership and team management. Your mission is to ensure our functional solutions meet business needs and are delivered effectively. Focus areas include EDI processes in Logistics, Purchase to Pay, and Order to Cash.

**Key role responsibilities.**
- Build and maintain relationships with IT leaders and business executives.
- Ensure cost-effective and agile IT service delivery aligned with business needs.
- Define and govern project scope, deliverables, timelines, and resource requirements.
- Collaborate with project and programme management to implement integrated project plans.
- Operate within formal programme governance structures for accurate reporting and issue management.
- Deliver quality governance artefacts meeting external audit standards.
- Manage relationships with external vendors and oversee their performance.
- Conduct technical configuration/customisation of third-party solutions for optimal user experience.
- Develop and implement change management strategies for technology adoption ensuring smooth transition and user acceptance of new IT solutions.
- Ensure accurate and secure data integration between systems (e.g., S4/HANA, Manhattan) and build reporting capabilities for operational and analytic purposes.
- Troubleshoot incidents and manage escalations in collaboration with the support organisation.
- Communicate progress and impacts effectively to various audiences.
- Leverage negotiation skills to enable cost-effective and innovative solutions.

**About you.**

We’re seeking an experienced leader with significant EDI experience gained in FMCG/CPG. Your IT knowledge and skills will be exceptional, with a proven track record of successfully delivering major IT-change projects. Your stakeholder engagement skills will be impressive, and your ability to adapt to different audiences will mark you out; someone who listens, and offers opinion and guidance in a coherent, constructive, and persuasive manner. Business stakeholders and colleagues will value your opinion. You will be decisive and pragmatic; someone who is able to operate in situations that lack clarity or definition; working with others to drive clarity at pace.

**We’d like to see.**
- Solid experience in major IT-enabled change delivery for EDI-enabled systems.
- Expertise in EDI management.
- Extensive knowledge of core business processes and operations in FMCG/CPG industries.
- Broad and deep ERP experience, particularly with SAP S4/HANA.
- Proficient understanding of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban methodologies.
- Proven experience in managing project delivery teams.
- Strong IT leadership experience with a 'thinking big' mindset.
- Inspirational leader skilled in influencing and motivating teams.
- Committed to driving high-quality delivery at pace.
- Experienced in working with 3rd parties and system integrators.
- In-depth understanding of the design, build, test, and deploy stages of major IT project delivery.
- Exceptional relationship management abilities with strong influencing and communication skills.

**What you’ll receive.**
As an equal opportunity employer, we’re committed to providing a safe and rewarding environment for you to thrive in. This is why we work hard to deliver benefits, rewards and wellbeing offerings that are important to you.

**You’ll enjoy.**
- Life Assurance (2.5 x salary)
- Short Term Bonus Scheme
- 25 days holiday
- Staff Shop
- Stakeholder Pension Scheme
- MyBargains Discount Platform
- Personal Accident Insurance
- Free Independent Mortgage Advice
- Employee Assistance Programme
- A Range of voluntary benefits (holiday purchase scheme, additional life assurance, dental