Practice Group / Department:

Central Services

Job Description

We're Norton Rose Fulbright - a global law firm with over 50 offices and 7,000 employees worldwide. We provide the world’s preeminent corporations and financial institutions with a full business law service. At Norton Rose Fulbright, our strategy and our culture are closely entwined. We know that our expansion will mean little unless it is underpinned by truly global collaboration and we understand that pioneering work only takes place when our people have room to move and think beyond boundaries. As well as the relevant skills and experience, we're looking for people who are innovative, commercial and value the work that they do. 

The Role

The management of the global and multi-regional suppliers is an essential factor in the success of Norton Rose Fulbright. The Senior Manager of Vendor Management & Procurement will be required to lead the strategic sourcing and procurement across a total spend of approximately $150m, and growing.

This role is a fixed-term contract.

Key Responsibilities

• Work closely with the regional leads of the Vendor Management and/or Procurement teams to ensure a consistent and standardised approach to all processes and policies implemented, and tools adopted.
• Innovate the direction of the function to ensure continued alignment to the strategic priorities of the firm and market standards (for example ESG)
• Lead with vision in improving centralised procurement to be faster, more efficient and have an increased element of automation
• Work closely with the C-suite management to highlight areas of improvement, business risk, and any performance issues with suppliers.
• Work closely with a variety of senior stakeholders including Finance, Legal, Data Protection, Security and IT to maintain adherence to standards in procuring goods and services for the firm
• Improve general reporting from the function
• Play an active role in the budgeting process both globally and across the five member firms
• Build insights to key strategic vendors to build NRF intelligence and develop supplier strategies
• Own the relationships for a mix of strategic and transactional suppliers, including their overall performance. Information must be collated in order to provide a holistic view of supplier performance to brief Norton Rose Fulbright stakeholders and as input to governance meetings.
• Adhere to agreed supplier governance / chair regular supplier relationship management governance meetings to ensure any supplier relationship, delivery, quality or commercial issues are highlighted and resolved.
• Manage against budget including authorising spend against that budget tracking actual spend to provide good financial control over commercial performance.
• Understand the key cost drivers behind supplier invoices and review supplier invoices for accuracy (and approve / reject as appropriate) in order to ensure suppliers are billing accurately and in line with contract
• Drive supplier innovation, cost reduction and performance improvement in order to maximise the value from supplier relationships over and above contractual commitments
• Manage supplier commercial issues and negotiate their settlement to avoid escalation of such commercial issues into legal dispute.
• Own the negotiation of all contracts that are global and/or multi-regional
• Be the firm's contact person for any client audit requests in regards to third party contracts

Manage & maintain the structure of the function’s processes and data including, but not limited to:

• Contract Database
• Benefits Tracker
• Work In Progress Tracker
• Methodologies, Policies & Processes
• Vendor Categorisation & Governance Frameworks

Manage a team to:

• Maintain supplier documentation including contract changes, reports, notices and relevant supporting materials are stored with controlled access

• Drive actions, minutes, management pack preparation and associated execution from the vendor and internal governance forums

• Model contracted charges including contract changes to provide accurate forecasts of spend, total cost of ownership, contract cost to complete, phasing of spend, build of detailed budgets

• Manage end to end in-life contract changes for strategic suppliers in close collaboration with global and regional procurement teams as appropriate

• Financial management of strategic suppliers managing indexation / foreign exchange variation, rate card validation and change

Skills and Experience Required

• 5+ years experience of management of multi-million pound outsourced IT supplier relationships. Within legal services or professional services organisations preferable but not essential
• A degree in commercial management or procurement would be beneficial
• Ability to build strong trusting relationships with business partners and suppliers
• Experience building collaborative environments, teaming cultures, and with engaging executives in the strategy development and financial management processes
• Demonstrated experience in problem-solving, consensus building, and negotiation
• Strong commercial awareness alongside risk management
• Knowledge of contract law and IT Service Delivery Management (ITIL) preferred but not essential.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite in particular data manipulation in Excel and presentation build in PowerPoint
• Experience of working in a global company and global capacity and the associated complexity on stakeholder management preferred but not essential

#LI-JC1 #LI-Hybrid

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

To attract the best people, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone can bring their whole selves to work, have a sense of belonging, and realize their full career potential. 
Our new enabled work model allows our people to have more flexibility in the way they choose to work from both the office and a remote location, while continuing to deliver the highest standards of service. We offer a range of family friendly and inclusive employment policies and provide access to programmes and services aimed at nurturing our people’s health and overall wellbeing. Find more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion here.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams. We strive to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates. If you require any tailored adjustments or accommodations, please let us know here.