Join an integral part of the NHS family, critical to sourcing, delivery and supply of healthcare products, services and food for NHS trusts and healthcare organisations across England and Wales, as an ICT Category Lead.

Joining NHS Supply Chain means you are part of the continued and committed contribution to supporting the NHS to deliver safe and excellent patient care, by ensuring the organisation delivers the products and services needed by the NHS, both now and in the future.

The locations Nottingham or Leeds.

Core role of the Category Lead

As the Category Lead you will be managing the ICT Category Team, responsible for c £250M of spend, developing commercial and sourcing strategies to meet the operational/technical requirements of the ICT teams, covering areas such as System Integrators, Applications Development, Cyber, End User Compute, Networks & Infrastructure, SaaS/PaaS products, and IoT.

The Category Leads will manage a specific portfolio of category strategies, delivering full category management for the area. They will have responsibility for the delivery of the category KPIs, driving savings and value along with growing market share and ensuring continuity of supply. This role with have line management responsibility for the Category Managers, Category Buyers and Procurement Assistants (where applicable) in the specific category area.

The Category Lead will have accountability for building cross functional relationships with the wider organisation and externally with stakeholders, with the aim of identifying and implementing improvements in our ways of working that will create efficiencies for the organisation as well as improved value and service for our NHS customers.

Day-to-day of the Category Lead:

• Category Management - Manage a category plan/program in line with the organisations' commercial strategy ensuring realisation of synergies, like cost savings and risk-reduction, and optimisation of the category delivery, while reporting to senior colleagues.
• Horizon Scanning - Explore and develop a detailed understanding of external developments or emerging issues and evaluate their potential impact on, or usefulness to, the organisation.
• Information and Business Advice - Provide specialist advice on the interpretation and application of policies and procedures, resolving complex or contentious queries and issues and enabling others to take appropriate actions.
• Stakeholder Engagement - Develop stakeholder engagement through identifying stakeholders, finding out their needs, issues and concerns and reacting to these to support the communication of business information and decisions.
• Customer Needs Clarification - Set clear objectives for each category; develop and make presentations that are tailored to the known interests, needs, issues, and concerns of decision makers and influencers within the customer organisations; gather and analyse relevant information; and gain agreement to a statement of customer requirements.
• Data Collection and Analysis - Use data from a wide range of sources to analyse key themes and identify possible impacts on the business.
• Leadership and Direction – Lead and communicate the local delivery plan; explain how this relates to the function's strategy and action plan, and the broader organisation's mission and vision; motivate people to achieve local business goals.
• Performance Management – Lead, manage and report on team performance; set appropriate performance objectives for direct reports or team members and hold them accountable for achieving these, taking appropriate corrective action where necessary to ensure the achievement of team and personal objectives.

The successful Category Lead will be able to demonstrate:

• You will need to be able to demonstrate and evidence strong leadership capability as well as well-developed and tested category management skills.
• Assessment - Uses comprehensive knowledge and skills to work independently while providing guidance and training to others on analysing data from multiple sources to draw appropriate conclusions and make suitable recommendations.
• Verbal Communication - Applies comprehensive knowledge to act independently while providing guidance and training to others on using clear and effective verbal communications skills to express ideas, request actions and formulate plans or policies.
• Negotiation - Negotiates as the organisational authority and established expert to help the organisation by obtaining consensus between two or more internal or external parties who may have different interests.
• Action Planning - Uses comprehensive knowledge and skills to work independently while providing guidance and training to others on developing appropriate plans or performing necessary actions based on recommendations and requirements.
• Policy and procedures - Uses comprehensive knowledge and skills to work independently while providing guidance and training to others on developing, monitoring, interpreting and understanding policies and procedures, while making sure they match organizational strategies and objectives.
• Contract Management - Acts as the organisation's authorities and applies expertise to maximise performance of contracts.

Salary & Benefits of Category Lead

• Salary:  £59,925 - £70,500
• Annual Bonus (stretch): 15%
• Car Allowance - £7000
• Flexible Benefits Allowance: 4%
• Pension Contribution (ER): 12%
• Hybrid working available - 1 to 2 days in the office per week.

To get in touch, please click on the apply button and send your CV through to Deborah Robbins and Joe Warne who are leading this multi-role recruitment campaign.