Commercial Manager (Ref: 19104)

Please refer to Job Description

The Ministry of Justice has one of the largest and most complex spending profiles in central government. Each year we spend more than 5 billion with our suppliers and its our job to help coordinate the sourcing of what we need. We support the management of our contracts across the department, its agencies and non departmental public bodies.

Commercial is responsible for coordinating procurement and contract management across the MoJ, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Commercial is organised into category teams, each with an interesting portfolio of contracts and diverse customers and suppliers to manage. We also have systems, programme management office, supplier relationship and risk management teams who work across all areas.

Role Summary

In this role you will contribute to delivering commercial excellence for the department, providing a customer-focused service, understanding the business need and stakeholder drivers, with the aim of becoming a trusted commercial advisor. You will also develop relationships with the departments key and strategic suppliers, driving value for money and risk management excellence across the category. You will lead and own elements of the overall commercial lifecycle, including strategy and policy development, understanding needs and sourcing options, contract and supplier management and the procurement process itself.

You will work both independently and part of a larger team by drawing on your commercial experience to drive performance and manage setbacks. You will be able to prioritise and manage your own workload to deliver to deadlines, mitigate and escalate any emerging risks and to respond swiftly to changing operational demands.

This role is designed to be flexible and may support a broad range of commercial activity across the organisation. The postholder will contribute to contract management, procurement and wider commercial delivery in line with business priorities.

This role requires flexibility, and you may work across different pieces of work over time to meet changing business needs and priorities.

Why Join Us?

Be part of a team that helps deliver important services for the justice system

Work on interesting projects and help make a difference

Get support and training to develop your skills

Key Responsibilities

These roles are varied, and individual remit is subject to both size of category, and/or all levels of complexity, value and risk. Typically, key responsibilities for a commercial professional in this role may include (but are not limited to):

Strategic delivery and management within a category:

Understanding the departments commercial strategy and feeding into the planning process based on commercial approaches that deliver requirements in line with business needs, category strategies and market trends

Feeding into the development of category strategies and delivery of sourcing requirement within commercial, as part of the team supporting business as usual and project activities

Understanding demand by forecasting and planning requirements with internal stakeholders and suppliers

Developing and maintaining category plans for key spend areas

Understanding relevant sourcing options and analysis, delivering positive outcomes through the procurement process:

Leading on end-to-end strategic sourcing activities for the department and serving as a subject matter expert

Working with key stakeholders to develop a clear and agreed view of business requirements, and supporting business units in articulating their commercial requirements

Advising and providing professional guidance throughout the sourcing process, considering and evaluating a range of sourcing models

Leading development of commercial input into business cases, demonstrating a project's benefits, value for money and risk

Influencing and shaping future procurement policy and standards across the department

Identifying opportunities to develop collaborative partnerships with suppliers

Providing a procurement service to the department which delivers demonstrable value for money and compliant goods and services contracts as part of a team of procurement professionals on larger procurement activities, including driving productivity opportunities with existing supply base to deliver further savings

Negotiating with third parties where necessary, using knowledge and experience relating to commercial negotiation techniques

Understanding and being accountable for sourcing compliance and frameworks

Ensuring effective Commercial Contract and Supplier Management within the category:

Evaluating the performance of suppliers against the specification and reporting regularly

Actively contributing to the management of the supply chain portfolio, including the development and implementation of supply chain and supplier relationship strategies

Acting as commercial lead, managing one or more complex contracts, ensuring effective stakeholder management, governance, performance management frameworks, escalation, risk management, issues resolution, financial management, change control and compliance

Developing and maintaining positive commercial relationships with the supply chain to maintain and enhance performance, improve service delivery and create additional value

On an ongoing basis, tracking operation demand and patterns, introducing demand management mechanisms where applicable

Analysing and assessing supplier risk, understanding impact on contingency and business continuity, driving value for money whilst protecting the departments risk position

Tracking and owning risks relating to specific contracts, taking steps to mitigate commercial risks

Building and maintaining key relationships across the department and with important external stakeholders:

Developing effective working relationships with supplier organisations to establish appropriate governance and relationship arrangements, ensuring the effective management of clarifications and change requests

Provision of commercial advice to stakeholders on all aspects of commercial

Engaging, where required, with the relevant senior business lead, ensuring that business requirements are supported by category strategies

Enabling and developing the department:

Championing procurement best practice and working collaboratively with others to create a proactive and intelligent function

Contributing to the maintenance and updating of systems throughout the procurement lifecycle

Managing catalogues and commercial content, and maybe responsible for owning key aspects of this

Working with key stakeholders to promote the use of catalogues

Playing a role in building capability of new starters and those on development programmes

In addition:

Mentoring and providing guidance to junior members of the team

Working within a secure environment on sensitive projects as required

Some of the roles may involve line management

As part of your own personal career development in the Commercial team, there could be opportunities to move roles at the same grade. In some circumstances, we may need to move you on to business-critical priorities at the same grade to meet business need.

Essential Criteria

Commercial Focus: Has good experience within a procurement, commercial or buying role. Has a good understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management, and sourcing and procurement methodologies. Evidence of leading and securing value for money in a commercial environment. Has strong commercial knowledge, understands commercial law and can use key commercial tools appropriately

Risk and Assurance Management: Demonstrates the ability to manage cyber, personnel and physical risks within an area of responsibility

Commercial Ethics: Demonstrates the ability to apply standards to eliminate corruption, fraud and unethical behaviour in supply chains, taking appropriate actions in the event of any alleged breach of standards

Team Focus: Demonstrates the ability to work as part of a team to support their performance, manage setbacks and resolve issues internally

Build Relationships: Demonstrates the ability to communicate with stakeholders at all levels using different communication styles to articulate the benefits that have been achieved and to establish governance and relationship ...