Category Manager - Catalysts & Chemicals

Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS); United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading energy company seeks a Senior Category Advisor specializing in Catalysts and Chemicals. This role involves leading a team to deliver strategic procurement outcomes while managing supplier relationships and executing transformational strategies. Candidates should have relevant educational background and substantial experience in procurement leadership.

Benefits

Life and health insurance

Medical care package

Learning and development opportunities

Qualifications

• Degree educated; procurement-related education preferred.
• Post graduate qualification related to procurement desirable.
• Experience in guiding teams and strategic procurement management is essential.

Responsibilities

• Leads a team focused on procurement for Catalysts and Chemicals.
• Oversees category delivery in multiple regions, ensuring annual targets.
• Collaborates with global category teams for optimized procurement outcomes.

Skills

Analytical Thinking

Stakeholder Management

Negotiation planning

Digital fluency

Education

Degree related to Procurement

Post graduate qualification in procurement

Job description

Entity:
Technology

Job Family Group:
Procurement & Supply Chain Management Group

Job Description:

Our purpose is to deliver energy to the world, today and tomorrow. For over 100 years, bp has been passionate about discovering, developing, and producing oil and gas in the nations where we operate. We are one of the few companies globally that can provide governments and customers with an integrated energy offering. Delivering our strategy sustainably is fundamental to achieving our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner!

Role Synopsis

The Senior Category Advisor - Catalysts & Chemicals leads a team of 5 individuals who deliver activities related to the Catalysts, Chemicals and HSE categories. Their team ensures that activities delivered in the region / site are aligned with both the category strategies and the strategic business priorities. They report directly to the Senior Category Manager, Catalyst, Chemicals and HSE.

They support their team to represent the 'voice' of the category within the region / site, liaising with the global category team to deliver region / site priorities, balancing business needs with category plans.

Their team members act as the primary point of contact for suppliers in the region / site and support business integrity and crisis activities, related to their category, to reduce operational risk and cost. They work with their peers to share leading practice, making procurement more efficient and effective.

This role cultivates partnerships with senior sponsors and collaborates to deliver step changes in 3rd party spend management for their category. They have high commercial competence, ensuring alignment with business goals and delivering secure optimal, compliant, and competitive, risk-managed procurement outcomes.

They are adept at change management and display emotional understanding, whilst fostering resilience.

They support execution activities relative to a global spend of ~$300m for Catalysts and Chemicals across the P&O businesses and of ~$300m HSE spend across all of bp's businesses globally.

Key Accountabilities

Region / site delivery: Oversees delivery of their category in multiples regions / sites, ensuring annual targets are delivered.

• Provides clear direction and energizing and engaging leadership for their team
• Good partner manager, cultivating relationships with business sponsors, aligning on business and category priorities and collaborating to deliver them
• Delivers modernization & transformation activities, leading optimization of regional category delivery aligned to the broader procurement and category strategic transformation agenda
• Handles category related performance for the regions / sites to meet and exceed the relevant Key Performance Indicator's, including safety and compliance metrics, value delivery and supplier performance
• Procurement delivery - supports the team to advise the business procurement delivery team on day-to-day category operations. Provides oversight on supplier performance management or interventions, raising to the relevant business sponsors as needed, to ensure timely resolution and prevent leakage.
• Advocates for opportunities to partner, collaborate, develop, and strengthen relationships with our contractors and suppliers
• Supports the team on the ground with the execution of transformational category strategies aligned to business needs. Understands the broader commercial landscape and external market factors to aid in the development of value-led strategies.
• Unlocks value and deliver strong performance in line with category management policy.

Team integration: Fosters a culture of collaboration, excellence, and continuous improvement through their team, the business and FB&T. Their team has good technical skills and represents the interests of their region / site across procurement and their category in the region / site.

• Builds region / site knowledge across the wider procurement organization and within their category to ensure delivery of their objectives
• Develops the team's technical capabilities and nurtures accelerator skills; curiosity in external markets, innovation and technological disruption, digital fluency and data-driven insights.
• Establishes an environment of psychological safety as a foundation for collaborative learning, ideation and innovation
• Provides coaching and guidance to their team and dotted line reports on business delivery, external partner interface, risk management and people matters
• Promotes compliance with bp's Code of Conduct (CoC), policies and procedures to ensure compliance, actively demonstrate and role model bp's Who We Are expectations.

Supplier & Stakeholder Management: Uses storytelling to communicate impactfully with collaborators and external partners, respectfully challenging to achieve the right outcomes, resolving conflict and focusing on priorities.

• Leads and influences through complexity and ambiguity, handling relationships with stakeholders in multi-discipline, multi-cultural environments
• Builds good sponsor relationships, becoming a trusted advisor, bringing market insights and championing supplier value whilst taking time to understand business needs.
• Builds relationships with the procurement teams globally and their wider category team, understanding stakeholder feedback and proactively working to build procurements reputation and return on investment
• Maintains close connectivity with procurement leadership, their global category, and FB&T ensuring appropriate prioritization and resourcing

Transformation and Change Management: Implements transformation initiatives, which deliver incremental business value. Ensures supplier perform in a dynamic business environment, and implements change across diverse landscapes.

• Uses digital solutions to drive innovation, enhancing efficiency, effectiveness and value creation
• Partners with internal subject area teams to drive category excellence
• Uses influencing, storytelling and communication to encourage adoption

Essential Education:

• Degree educated - something related to Procurement preferred - or equivalent relevant professional experience
• Post graduate qualification related to procurement desirable

Essential Experience and Job Requirements:

Functional knowledge: Must have access to and be knowledgeable on business context, strategic direction, priorities, partners, and key strategies.

• Knowledge of category management principles
• Knowledge of their category
• An understanding of how to ensure strategies flow through to execution in the businesses
• Experience in guiding teams in critical thinking to uncover insights, bring value, and drive innovation

Business expertise: Stakeholder management and influencing skills in order to develop an understanding of the supported businesses / regions and their priorities, including long term objectives.

• Critical thinking with excellent commercial competence
• An understanding of working in and navigating sophisticated multi-national businesses
• Track record in collaborating with businesses / partners to deliver continuous improvement

Leadership: Leadership experience, ideally in a procurement organization in order to:

• Set the tone for their team
• Lead their team in running the category in their regions / sites, making interventions and dealing with issues
• Collaborate with the global category team and FB&T, role modelling an end to end procurement approach
• Lead end to end execution of business, category and procurement key performance indicators/ objectives and key results

They are role models, shaping work delivery, decision making and partnering with stakeholders

An advocate for our code, they incorporate the Operating Management System (OMS) and our safety leadership principles into strategies and everyday work, to build a purposeful, winning and caring culture which engenders collaboration, learning and constructive challenge

Problem solving: The role requires the ability to partner with the business to develop innovative solutions, clearing blockers and enabling delivery. It also requires judgement to translate business needs into a demand plan.

• Embraces industry challenges and technological disruption, pioneers innovative solutions whilst handling risk
• Brings multiple parties (procurement, business, suppliers) together to collaboratively solve sophisticated problems
• Handles conflict to successful resolution while maintaining relationships with key collaborators
• Demonstrates an ability to evaluate innovative solutions and handle risk
• Good judgement to translate business requirements into a strategic delivery plan, aligned with the categories, to advise strategic decisions

Interpersonal skills: The role demands strong people skills to steer their team, while engaging with senior stakeholders.

• Strong senior stakeholder networking and influencing skills to ensure agreement and adoption, building a reputation as a strategic partner to the regions / sites
• Experience in regular interaction with external suppliers and representing bp externally
• Effective change management is key, requiring good influencing, engagement and storytelling abilities
• Persevering through organizational complexity and resistance to change, key to leading transformational change

Additional Information

At bp, we provide the following environment and benefits to you:

• A company culture where we respect our diverse and unified teams, where we are proud of our achievements and where fun and the attitude of giving back to our environment are highly valued
• Possibility to join our social communities and networks
• Learning opportunities and other development opportunities to craft your career path
• Life and health insurance, medical care package
• And many other benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform crucial job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us to request any accommodations!

Travel Requirement
Up to 10% travel should be expected with this role

Relocation Assistance:
This role is not eligible for relocation

Remote Type:
This position is a hybrid of office/remote working

Skills:
Agreements and negotiations, Analytical Thinking, Building sustainability, Category spend profiling, Category Strategy, Commercial Acumen, Communication, Cost modelling, Decision Making, Digital fluency, Market Analysis, Negotiation planning and preparation, Sourcing strategy, Stakeholder Management, Supplier Selection, Sustainability awareness and action, Value creation and management

Legal Disclaimer:

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, socioeconomic status, neurodiversity/neurocognitive functioning, veteran status or disability status. Individuals with an accessibility need may request an adjustment/accommodation related to bp's recruiting process (e.g., accessing the job application, completing required assessments, participating in telephone screenings or interviews, etc.). If you would like to request an adjustment/accommodation related to the recruitment process, please contact us.

If you are selected for a position and depending upon your role, your employment may be contingent upon adherence to local policy. This may include pre-placement drug screening, medical review of physical fitness for the role, and background checks.