Group Manager, Technology Sourcing

Job Overview

The Group Manager of Strategic Sourcing is a leadership role responsible for overseeing a team of Strategic Sourcing and Category Managers and driving the sourcing and value chain optimization strategies for all technology-related spend categories.  This role collaborates with senior leaders within Intuit’s IT organization and is responsible for managing $1.3B+ in annual spend across data, ai, saas, hardware, telecommunications, and emerging technologies. The Group Manager will bring together multiple teams across Intuit to identify opportunities to drive operational improvements, cost optimization, risk mitigation, and ensure best value from technology 3rd parties and investments. This role demands a strong understanding of both the technology landscape, impact on business outcomes and total cost of ownership, with a focus on driving business transformation within the IT organization. The Group Manager of Strategic Sourcing is pivotal to the success of the company's growth, operational excellence and acceleration. This role demands a strategic thinker, business partner, strong connector with strong analytical skills, capable of connecting the dots between 3rd parties, Intuit’s value chain and impact on growth & innovation that will drive Intuit's technology objectives forward.

This role requires leading a small team to develop and execute long and short-term sourcing strategies, with an equal emphasis placed on the ability to identify, analyze, and quantify opportunities as well as the ability to manage RFI, RFPs and handle challenging vendor negotiations.

Responsibilities

Leadership

• Take ownership and responsibility for proactively leading and managing strategic sourcing initiatives with or without analytical support
• Lead portfolio including multiple projects that require strategy, planning and execution of transformational, complex and innovative projects
• Direct, define, and implement sourcing strategies and initiatives to drive the delivery of corporate earnings, growth strategy, and business transformation objectives for category portfolio
• Drives total cost of ownership mindset with team and stakeholders including the ability to strategically evaluate build/buy/acquire decisions
• Connect dots between product strategies and company input goals
• Contribute suggestions to assist management in the development of organizational strategy, structure and operational roadmap
• Provide leadership, mentorship, and management of team
• Sets strategic priorities and develops goals and objectives for team planning resources accordingly
• Proactively builds relationships with and influences executive stakeholders
• Collaborate with procurement teams where applicable to ensure procurement efficiency and automation, sourced supplier utilization, risk mitigation and contract compliance
• Partner with International teams to implement global suppliers, establish local engagement model to expand GBS global presence
• Engages with several stakeholders at all levels, primarily Director/VP and above
• Demonstrate and practice a high degree of professional integrity and ethical responsibility in all business activities
• Keep abreast of industry innovation and bring ideas that will help the company re-imagine and leapfrog ahead resulting in advancements in technologies, process methodologies or establishing supplier alliances

Opportunity Assessment 

• Own and drive opportunity assessments, including total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis, with the right balance of strategic insights (spend, supplier, category, contract) and representation of current state to drive senior stakeholder engagement
• Evaluate and recommend strategic opportunities/initiatives to Strategic Sourcing leadership utilizing current and emerging business models, assessing short-term and long-term industry and strategic considerations
• Develop an effective approach to present and obtain sponsorship from senior leadership on opportunities

Strategic Sourcing Process Execution and Project Management

• Provide category expertise and identify potential sources of supply, determine capabilities of suppliers’ product and service offerings, and relate offerings to stakeholder needs
• Demonstrate the ability to put a structured sourcing process into action in formal and informal negotiations, and leverage the process to resolve conflicts and build consensus
• Drive project activity across large cross-functional team through communication of expectations, decisions, changes, enforcement of deadlines, and creation and evaluation of deliverables
• Define data needed to meet objectives and develop an effective plan for gathering it (including spend, contracts, supplier information, stakeholder insights, current state process & tools)
• Utilize analysis to solve business problems and draw conclusions and insights that are not immediately obvious
• Gather, analyze, and document requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, surveys, site visits, business process descriptions, use cases, business analysis, and task and workflow analysis
• Lead and Manage RFI/RFQ/RFPs from start to finish, which includes creation, issuance, and facilitation of the entire process, through vendor evaluations (using scorecards) and vendor selection
• Drive consensus across critical business decisions that are complex and high impact to the organization
• Create supporting documentation to applicable standards such that the value generated can be included in executive-level presentations
• Deliver value and projects that drives transformation of a category, innovation, insourcing/outsourcing, TCO Savings and Efficiencies

Continuous Improvement and Supplier Management

• Partner with stakeholders to review ongoing vendor segmentation and identify vendors to be included in the VMO program within vendor portfolio
• Performs assigned vendor management activities (business reviews, scorecard reviews, discussions) in alignment with the VMO approach, framework, SRM team roles and responsibilities for each vendor
• Manages supplier performance monitoring and measurement and works with the vendor owners on any key escalations or remediation
• Identify SRM opportunities with key vendors and focus areas that drive continuous improvement across KPIs and pushes innovation

People Management

• Manages a team of 3 or more which may be geographically dispersed individuals

Qualifications

• Relevant industry experience
• 10+ years of technology-related strategic sourcing experience
• Experience with Technology Sourcing, Data and AI
• Experience with ERP and Source-to-Pay tools
• Experience developing and/or presenting business cases
• Comfort with written and verbal communication of quantitative and qualitative information with executives
• Bachelor’s degree in Business or other quantitative discipline
• Experience in contract development, administration, and/or management
• Experience managing multiple simultaneous projects in a fast-paced environment with several stakeholders
• Experience in negotiating deals with global vendors
• Experience in managing global vendor relationships
• Experience in value chain optimization and assessments
• Experience in managing transformational projects that require high-level of change management
• Solid financial and/or quantitative modeling
• Attention to detail and ability to analyze complex data
• Ability to travel up to 20% of the time
• Availability to directly support and interact with multiple international business units

Desired skills:

• A proven track record of cost reduction and productivity improvements; ability to influence and drive change while building solid relationships with your internal clients and external vendors
• Internal or external business consulting experience highly desired
• Knowledge of global supply base
• Strong analytical skills; MS Excel proficient; financial modeling preferred
• Strong written and communication skills; MS PowerPoint, MS Word proficient
• Ability to work independently as well as lead and participate in cross functional teams
• Ability to collaborate in a team environment
• Awareness of best practices regarding vendor management (e.g., strategic alliances, supplier certification, etc.)
• Excellent documentation and requirements analysis