Global Category Manager, Marketing Agencies

• Responsible for Global category management (~$800M under scope) in the area of Marketing Agencies (Consumer, Professional and Digital Creative, Public Relations, Corporate and Medical Communications, Digital & Advertising Production), for all Divisions across Novartis, ensuring delivery of measurable value through alignment of business requirements, strategic sourcing expertise, supplier market intelligence, financial productivity and mitigation of risk and development of Global Strategy, Governance and constant improvement and innovation initiatives.

• Translates global divisional category strategy into global, divisional, subcategory strategy implementation.

• Lead the implementation of sourcing plans for the category and deliver category savings targets following engagement in the target setting process.

• Provide input into the overall Category strategy about segmentation and identification of key supplier relationships, and lead business planning activities and ensure these projects are staffed and executed on a timely basis in line with the targeted goals.

• Manage strategic category supplier relationships, and implement consistent key performance indicators for the category, ensuring that any supplier performance risks and issues are resolved on a timely basis to end user satisfaction.

• Collect supplier information and feedback from Divisions, countries, Category teams and Business Partners and deliver Procurement Balanced Scorecard metrics for the category.

• Create, apply, complete and reviews major contracts for the category, and ensure that negotiated contracts are clearly communicated for the category area and that they are consistently applied.

• Support the implementation of category related Procurement tools and processes.

Knowledge And Skills

• 7-10 years of experience in procurement /Strategic procurement and 3-5 years of experience in Marketing Categories.

• Strong category management experience within a global and multi divisional organization

• Strong Communication and negotiation skills.

• Strategic thinking, strong analytical skills

• Full understanding of the end-to-end procurement / purchasing lifecycle including contract drafting & negotiation, supplier & stakeholder management etc.

• Ability and drive to work independently and lead diverse teams, across different geographies.

• High results-orientation and ability to perform in a complex environment.