Strategic Sourcing Manager - IT/Digital

About the role

7-Eleven is an iconic family of brands with over 86,000 locations, surpassing every retailer in the world. We revolutionize convenience, restaurants and fuel through cutting edge innovation — working hard to be the customer's first choice. 7-Eleven empowers our employees to "activate awesome" and make a meaningful impact in their stores and communities every day.

The Strategic Sourcing Manager will be responsible for sourcing/procurement related activities and processes associated with the acquisition of products and services for the IT and Digital business functions. This includes requirements gathering, creating and issuing Request for Proposal (RFP), proposal evaluation, contract negotiations, contract drafting and administration with the goal to improve spend and quality performance.

Responsibilities

• Executes 7-Eleven sourcing processes which include data/spend analysis, strategic planning and market research, scoping, bidding, contract negotiations and execution, compliance, and supplier management activities for assigned categories.
• Build and maintain collaborative relationships with cross functional stakeholders to develop and execute sourcing processes that support business goals
• Build and execute various RFx/sourcing events, performing bid analysis and providing feedback to stakeholders and collaborate on negotiation strategies.
• Manage suppliers/contractors based on specifications and contractual requirements to ensure effective execution, implementation and prompt resolution of any issues that may arise.
• Negotiate contracts and contract renewals with suppliers to source/procure products or services needed for categories to optimize spend, reduce risk, achieve favorable terms and drive towards optimized total-cost-of-ownership.
• Support onboarding of new suppliers and product setups, ensuring compliance and efficient integration through supplier and new item set-up processes.
• Troubleshoot and resolve operational and supply chain challenges to ensure timely product availability, consistency and performance.
• Identify/interview potential suppliers and evaluate supplier capabilities to determine if supplier is qualified to produce and/or supply products or services.
• Perform market research in applicable areas.
• Ability to support legal in key contract negotiations such as pricing, performance measures, and breach of contract remedies and termination options.
• Participate in cross-functional discussions with stakeholders.
• Provide clear and concise progress updates.
• Demonstrate ability to build and analyze financial models to evaluate proposal scenarios and present recommendations in a clear and concise format.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) strongly preferred.
• 5+ years of relevant work experience.
• 2+ years of management experience.

Qualifications

The successful candidate should have a bachelor’s degree in Procurement, Business Administration, or Engineering. MBA or equivalent background is preferred.

• Strong organizational skills, understanding of legal aspects, negotiating skills, purchasing terminology, cost analysis, and legal compliance regulations
• Experience and background in Informatics and Cloud technologies, with hands-on experience negotiating SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS contracts.
• Solid understanding of a wide array of IT contract forms including SaaS, Cloud, Software licensing, Software maintenance, MNDA, SaaS, End User License, Subscription, Cloud Services, Managed Services, Support Agreements, MSA, DPA & SOW's.
• A clear understanding or drive to learn software, hardware & services procurement procedures.
• Proficient with MS Office suite – including MS Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.
• Verbal and written communication skills that can clearly communicate with various internal stakeholders, team members and suppliers

Skills

Key attributes of a successful candidate include driving change management, influencing up and across matrixed organizations, creating the case for change, driving accountability and delivery against goals.

• Ability to solve problems by assessing the situation, leveraging data where applicable, identifying root causes and developing potential solutions.
• Makes well informed decisions, demonstrate initiative, exhibit autonomy to execute organization initiatives.
• Ability to operate in environments with ambiguity and ability to create clarity.
• High level of agility and adaptability; ability to quickly learn details of new business challenges and identify dependencies and impacts of other key initiatives.
• Manage collaboration and communication with other teams, both internal and external, to ensure teams have what they need and can work efficiently.