Category Manager, Infrastructure and Cloud Services

Telenor Group is the world’s leading telecommunications company across the Nordics and Asia with 211 million subscribers and 81 billion NOK in revenues. We are committed to responsible business conduct and driven by the ambition of empowering societies. Connectivity has been Telenor’s domain for more than 160 years, and our purpose is to connect our customers to what matters most.

Telenor has a leading Nordic position in mobile, broadband and TV services, as well as substantial activities in subsidiaries and joint venture operations, including mobile financial services and online classifieds in the Asia region. Worldwide, Telenor Group and our operations’ teams are 11,000 people strong.

Telenor Procurement Company (TPC), established in 2017 and based out of Singapore, operates as a subsidiary of the Telenor Group.  We deliver Global Category Management as a service to the Telenor Business Units and beyond, taking full responsibility for the end-to-end Sourcing process and performance of global spend categories. Functioning as one Global Procurement team across all Telenor markets, we enable Telenor’s strategic ambitions by becoming a centre of expertise in the pursuit of efficient operations. TPC seeks qualified procurement professionals that are comfortable working in a global setup in the fast-paced Telecom field.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.telenor.com/about/our-companies/other-units/telenor-procurement-company/

About the Role

As Category Manager for Infrastructure and Cloud, you will be part of the TPC ISIT Sourcing team and will report to the Director, Head of Category. You will work closely with both corporate in Telenor and all Business Units. Further, you will be working closely with the Head of Category in contributing to the end-to-end Category management and strategy development, including sourcing execution, contract negotiation and supplier management processes. Your role is pivotal in identifying and realizing cost saving initiatives that deliver real business value in the category across all of Telenor’s Business Units.
Infrastructure and Cloud is a global, centralized category management function. The team manages a common global sourcing function for data centre, office IT and public cloud services for the Telenor Group. This includes physical assets such as servers, networking, laptops and storage systems, as well as public cloud services. The team runs a wide array of global initiatives including cost optimization, quality improvement, planning, strategy development and large company-to-company negotiations. The position involves a dynamic work environment and may require occasional flexible hours during peak periods.

Main tasks include

• Develop comprehensive understanding of the Category, contribute to end to end category strategy development and perform analysis to support category strategy work.
• Take ownership and demonstrate accountably for product categories within Infrastructure and Cloud.
• Collaborate with user departments for preparing and executing the strategy, innovative analysis and proactively addressing procurement needs.
• Identify, lead and execute cost saving initiatives that deliver value in the procurement of goods and services for the company.
• Prepare and lead TCO analysis during procurement processes and participate/lead the negotiations.
• Manage resources and stakeholders in a sourcing process.
• Actively work with the Global Procurement Teams from different Business Units as part of the extended Category Team.
• Implementation of category sourcing strategy and vendor management/SRM.
• Ensure compliance with policies, processes and achieve targets.
• Ensure contract management, implementation and follow-up activities.
• Understand supply market and perform thorough supplier prequalification for the category.
• Handle dispute with global suppliers.

Profile

To be successful in this role you should be a seasoned professional, committed to continuous development. You should have solid experience in strategic sourcing and contract management.

The successful candidate should enjoy and be proficient in project management, contract negotiations and stakeholder management.  Furthermore, the successful candidate must be result oriented, demonstrating excellent collaboration abilities and strong communication skills.

Other attributes to enjoy this role will be

• Strong business knowledge in telecommunications and/or IT landscape.
• Strong ability to communicate and interact effectively (verbal, presentation, facilitation & listening modes of communication) across organizational and cultural boundaries, internal and external.
• Able to work with a high degree of execution power and passion.
• Understand the vendor market.

• Strong analytical thinking and problem- solving capabilities.
• Demonstrate accountability, maturity, flexibility, and speed in response to business and challenges.
• Possess Commercial and negotiation skills.
• Highly creative and innovate mindset.
• Knowledge of sourcing techniques and demand management & demand forecasting methods.
• Familiar with contract setup activities such as specification definition, contract T&C setup.
• High level of integrity and ethics.

Qualification and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor /Master’s degree in a related technology field, Finance, Business or equivalent.
• Minimum 5 years in a procurement, negotiations, contract management and vendor management role preferably with experience in ISIT area.
• Proficient in use of MS Excel, PowerPoint, performing data analyses using processing tools, e.g. ThinkCell, Excel or Tableau to be able to produce and draw conclusions based on the analysis.
• Excellent written and spoken English.