Procurement Category Lead - Indirect

Job description / Role

Air Arabia is looking for an experienced professional to manage indirect procurement for the Airline. We actively encourage you to apply if you have experience in handling procurement activities related to IT, Operations, HR, Legal, Finance and other similar functions in large commercial organizations.

Job Purpose
To provide an excellent, professional sourcing and procurement service to assigned entities within Air Arabia Group which delivers best value for money, service and quality from the most suitable suppliers. Act as a middle point between suppliers/vendors on one hand and internal Air Arabia Group management and departments on the other, to ensure satisfactory agreements.

Key Result Responsibilities
• Develop and implement procurement strategies to deliver ongoing cost reductions and process simplification.
• Taking responsibility for financial performance against plan and proactively develop a pipeline of innovative initiatives that reduces Indirect spend.
• Assists in implementing our strategic approach to overall spend, alongside internal stakeholders, advisors, and a wide range of external stakeholders; sets out a clear strategy to Shape & Optimise Cost Categories and keep the strategy updated over time.
• Implement supplier management policies to ensure consistent practises and develop strategic supplier relationships
• Processes new vendor requests as required and establishes new relationships with subcontractors and suppliers to ensure adequate resources for all projects and to improve pricing and quality of work.
• Assist in setting up and maintaining company quality control program
• Supervises and handles Stores and Inventory control activities (as assigned) ensuring the adequacy and timeliness availability of needed material and products in accordance with business requirements and quality standards.
• Undertakes procurement activities including administration & documentation to deliver best value for money, quality, and security of supply commensurate with customer’s business needs; Ensure the most appropriate procurement processes are applied to meet business needs and transaction costs are minimised
• Collates performance data for the Commodity spends into agreed reporting formats; produces Management Information reports and necessary analysis to highlight critical areas, trends, discrepancies, excess, short supply, etc to support management decisions.
• Reviews/updates and maintains an accurate database for all commodity procurement team such as assessments, contracts, etc.
• Manages control measures to ensure adherence by suppliers/vendors/internal clients to agreed standards in the procurement practices.
• Responsible for roll out, coordinating and managing the implementation of Procurement Systems including the user training, technical support, system improvements and user compliance with system utilization and administration.
• Carries out procurement research through internal customers, suppliers, and other sources of information to obtain feedback and assessment of procurement activities.
• Liaise regularly and collaborate with appropriate members of the Procurement function at Air Arabia Airline Hubs and subsidiary companies (Cozmo, SAS etc.) to ensure consistency of approach
• Keep abreast of business developments within Air Arabia affecting areas of responsibility and work closely with business users to understand their current and future business needs
• Keep abreast of and anticipate developments within relevant supply markets affecting areas of responsibility within Air Arabia and develop plans to capitalise on them
• Keep abreast of current management and procurement techniques and thinking and use and deploy them as appropriate to ensure area of responsibility is at the forefront of modern thinking
• Proactively promote the benefits of professional procurement to extend the use of best procurement practice throughout Air Arabia
• Directs, manages and develops the assigned team members to provide a sourcing and procurement service which meets the current and future needs of business users at least cost.
• Benchmarking supplier performance and Negotiation
• Serves as the point of contact for vendors on contractual legal matters; liaises with internal managers, and vendors to identify and resolve issues. ensures that obligations to vendors are met in accordance with contractual agreements and initiates remedial action in the event of contract breach; coordinates vendors’ payments with Finance.
• Drafts, evaluates, contract terms from legal aspects, administers contracts in accordance with company’s policies and legal requirements.
• Provides red-lined recommendations on all standard and non-standard contracts, and often negotiates directly with internal managers until consensus has been reached.
• Provides administrative support for all contract management activities such as contract termination, suspension, claims, variations, close-outs and extensions.
• Ensures that originals of signed contracts are managed/ controlled/ communicated to all relevant parties to provide contract visibility, awareness and interpretation to support implementation.
• Ensures redaction of confidential sections before sending contracts to third parties.

Note – The role defined here is not exhaustive and duties and responsibilities in line with the job function may be added from time to time.

Requirements

Qualifications (Academic, training, languages)
• Bachelor Degree in Management or equivalent combined with necessary experience.
• MCIPS or equivalent
• Have excellent communication skills
• Can show a history of career progression and ambition to grow further
• Excellent business writing and reporting skills.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office, Internet and Web Search (Excel advanced level).
• Detail oriented, comfortable with numbers, charts and data sheets.
• Fluent in English Language

Work Experience
• 5+ years of experience in procurement/ Purchasing role for Airlines of large-scale tactical & strategic nature.
• Prior experience in managing RFP and contracts management is essential.
• Experience in managing and negotiating with key vendors, strategically agile, with strong commercial acumen and exceptional negotiation skills in managing large, complex, Large outsourcing based development contracts in an Airline/Airport environment.
• Experienced in initiating and managing contracts of technical nature.
• Demonstrates skills in handling financial transactions with accuracy.
• Cooperative team player; possesses very good organizing and time management skills.
• Capable of preparing/extracting reports from different sources of data and identifying shortages.
• Multi-task oriented, responds to multiple assignments easily and promptly.
• Organized and demonstrates high attention to details.
• Willing to support and provide alternate solutions in ad-hoc scenarios and unplanned situations.
• Dependable, self-motivated takes ownership and acts proactively.
• Displays energy and enthusiasm.
• Capable of working under pressure and tight timeframes without compromising quality.
• Employs a balance of technical expertise, and interpersonal relations to interact with senior level stakeholders and external providers as well as execute new initiatives that support company’s objectives.
• Demonstrates the ability to contribute and successfully deliver against set KPIs.

About the Company

Air Arabia (PJSC), listed on the Dubai Financial Market, is the Middle East and North Africa's first and leading low-cost carrier flying to over 100 destinations across the world. Air Arabia was the first airline to introduce the low-cost carrier concept in the region and is on a mission to serve all Arab countries and beyond, constantly undergoing aggressive route expansion, taking advantage of its ideally located hubs in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan. Over the past thirteen years, Air Arabia, through continuous market research and customer feedback, provides a range of value added services to millions of passengers who chose to fly with Air Arabia's fleet of A320 aircraft. The airline commenced operations in October 2003 and achieved financial break-even from its very first year of services and has been profitable ever since.