Category Manager

Basingstoke, Hampshire
Sovereign Network Group

Are you an experienced Procurement Manager or Category Manager with proven procurement experience in property services?

We have a fantastic opportunity for an experienced Category Manager to join our Procurement team at SNG (Sovereign Network Group).

Based from our offices in Basingstoke or Wembley, this is a great opportunity to combine home and office working to ensure a positive work / life balance. Occasional travel to other offices may be required, and there will be a requirement to attend our Basingstoke office once a week for team days.

The Role

As a Category Manager, you’ll play a pivotal role within our team, delivering a number of strategic and priority sourcing projects, collaborating with stakeholders to develop category plans and identify opportunities, supporting occasional operational procurement requirements, and maintaining procurement compliance. You’ll support our teams across property services – asset management and estate services.

Main responsibilities include:

• Overseeing nominated category areas, suppliers and contracts to develop strategic procurement solutions to deliver efficiencies and benefits to the business
• Delivering an agreed portfolio of sourcing projects from end-to-end, ensuring outcomes represent value for money, meet timelines and facilitate high standards
• Maintaining compliance with the public procurement rules on individual projects and throughout the overall category portfolio
• Leading supplier engagement and sourcing activity throughout the tender process, during the contract life cycle and for the overall category
• Building strong relationships with internal stakeholders to understand business plans and objectives as well as any challenges, opportunities and identifying any risks
• Undertaking market research, on suppliers, markets, frameworks, etc. to actively support own procurement projects
• Ensuring all expenditure is identified with routes to market being clearly defined
• Identifying areas where procurement can add measurable value in terms of sourcing exercises, onward effective supplier management and strategic procurement

What we’re looking for

You should have demonstrable experience within a similar role in procurement, ideally with knowledge of relevant category areas, such as property services – repairs and maintenance, asset management, building compliance or hard FM. You’ll also need:

• Strategic procurement category management expertise, evidencing the use of data and analysis to drive decision making.
• Practical experience of carrying out tenders and competitions in accordance with the public sector procurement rules
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with proven ability to engage and influence others to deliver the best outcomes
• Experience in supplier relationship management, ensuring value for money deals with suppliers who are committed to delivering a high service to SNG, and managing the commercial performance of procurement contracts
• An agile approach with high attention to details and ability to work successfully on multiple projects at different stages, effectively prioritising tasks
• An understanding of the Procurement Act 2023 and PCR 2015 is relevant and beneficial to this role
• Experience of working for a registered social housing provider, local authority or similar public sector body, and/or a provider of repair, maintenance or facility management services, or a developer of new homes, would be advantageous