Senior Procurement Manager, Logistics Inbound PMO

Senior Procurement Manager, Logistics Inbound PMO

Manager level: 2B

Location: Mexico

Function: Procurement, Supply Chain

About Procurement

Part of the Supply Chain’s family, Procurement is responsible for over 30B Euro of material and services spend globally with more than 70,000 suppliers. Getting the right materials, sustainably sourced and ensuring responsible procurement is critical to ensuring our brands with purpose grow. Our teams work closely with the business to understand brand needs, bring supplier innovation to meet changing consumer needs and drive financial value for Unilever through competitive buying. We’re at the forefront of digital procurement, bringing new tools and analytics to drive data-based decisions.

With over 1400 employees globally, we support a network of thousands of suppliers, more than 1.5 million smallholder farmers who in turn support communities of over 7 million people. Our Lighthouse strategy Competitive Buying at the core of our responsibilities, in addition to delivering Super Service, supporting the Sustainability goals of the company, integrating with the Value Chain, and growing together with Partners around the world.

Logistics Procurement

The global Logistics Procurement organization business partners the global Customer Operations organization to deliver Net Productivity advances to benefit the Cost Per Ton reduction agenda as part of Unilever’s Growth Action Plan 2030. Organized as a global team, the Logistics Procurement team at the market level understands the dynamics of servicing customers at the right level while doing so at the most responsible cost. Through implementation of the Lighthouse strategy, the Logistics Procurement organisation designs and delivers step-change across value chains, operating processes and tools, and business models. This team is responsible for:

• Sensing, incubating, and enabling innovative ideas, new business models, transformation programs, and competitiveness understanding for disruptive value creation across procurement Logistics teams.
• Creating and implementing standardized processes and data-driven decision making to ease operating effectiveness and drive better and faster outcomes.
• Developing and enabling procurement strategies with respective network VPs and portfolio and market teams based on strategic insights.
• Identifying, scaling, and spreading best practices across the global procurement organization, within and across teams.
• Facilitating rapid learning, capability development, and future-fit upskilling of our people.

Background & Purpose of the Job

As part of the Procurement Lighthouse Strategy and Organization, a critical scope of work has been identified to understand Unilever’s competitiveness in our inbound logistics costs and to craft, pilot and execute this program to unlock value across the bottom line impact, Sustainability and resilience.

The purpose of this job is to establish a central (global) Program Management Office (PMO) related to the above mentioned critical program and workstreams. The PMO will be responsible for partnering across Procurement, global Business Groups, country level Business Units, and local Customer Operations teams to establish clear strategy, objectives, milestones/timelines, KPI’s and governance structures required to execute and deliver the required programs on time in full (including pilot execution and scale up).

Who You Are & What You’ll Do

You are leading a global Program Management Office responsible for delivering Inbound Logistics transparency and value unlocks. Key responsibilities include:

• Overall program and project management and delivery responsibility including scope definition and shaping, project timeline and milestone definition and tracking, governance and meeting cadence to drive the program and execution/delivery on time in full, and development of performance management framework.
• Collaborative stakeholder engagement across relevant procurement teams and senior stakeholders to support implementation of the programs and projects. Develop deep understanding of current state as well as future requirements from both organizations.
• Develop and drive effective communications agenda across procurement related to the program status, benefits, and delivery.
• Support in definition and roll out of optimized processes and ways of working in support of the collaborative agenda.
• Set up business and “size of the prize” opportunity through Unilever baseline deep dive analysis combined with external insight to establish both.
• Conduct or facilitate a deep dive study on how peers manage inbound strategy and set up the “art of what is possible”.
• Pareto - Identify targeted areas to focus on managing inbound logistics spend based on size of the prize and relative power of current suppliers (which Raw & Pack Materials, Geographies, BGs).
• Create Playbook with guided principles and decision tree for a consistent approach to manage inbound logistics (whether through Do nothing, Information control, Cost transparency or E2E control).
• PMO for execution of pilots to demonstrate value and scaling of the program.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

Required Skills, Qualifications, Certifications, Experience, Abilities, Education.

• Strong understanding and experience of Procurement and Logistics with desired experience in Fast Moving Consumer Goods businesses.
• High level of interpersonal, communication and influencing skills with a track record in impactful stakeholder management.
• Fluency in English in written and verbal forms including presentation, project briefs, and requests for proposals.
• Excellent critical thinking, analytical and story-telling skills to respond to multiple market/portfolio specific characteristics and influence change remotely.
• Strong process driven mindset with experience to land process transformation.
• Experience on driving large-scale change management projects.
• Excellent Microsoft Office suite skills especially Power Point and Excel (Power BI also useful).
• Ability and drive to work independently and lead diverse teams, across different geographies.
• Consulting experience in Tier 1 consulting firms would be a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent University degree.
• Certification in Project Management would be ideal but not a requirement.