Category Manager, Professional Services

Telenor Group is a leading telecommunications company across the Nordics and Asia with 172 million customers and annual sales of around NOK 110 billion (2021) 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.

We have 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 16,000 people strong.

Telenor Procurement Company (TPC), established in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore, operates as a subsidiary of the Telenor Group. We deliver Global Category Management as a service to the Telenor Business Units, 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.

**Main tasks**

As a Category Manager you report to the Head of Category, Professional Services and work closely with both Telenor corporate functions and all of the business units. You will be implementing the Professional Services category strategy by migrating localized spend into global price books and then take operational responsibility for achieving value creation within category. The Professional Services domain includes sub-categories such as Consultancy Services, Temporary Labor, Banking & Financial Services, HR services, etc.

Main tasks include:

- Lead virtual teams and monitor performance and compliance toward the Professional Services category
- Collaborate with category user departments to reduce the procurement cycle time, improve compliance with policies and achieve targets
- Establish measures to assess progress and performance
- Prepare period reports on all procurement activities within the category
- Perform market and industry analysis to build a relevant portfolio
- Manage the vendor market and take full responsibility on contract management and commercial negotiations
- Prepare necessary documentation for senior management approvals

**Profile**

To succeed in this role is it believed that a broad understanding of the telecom industry combined with a deep understanding of the Professional Services category is needed. As the category spend and suppliers are located across all of our markets you would need to have excellent communication skills. You would on a daily basis need to interact across organizational and cultural boundaries and doing so in a convincing and credible manner

To succeed in this role is it believed that a deep understanding of the Travel categories is required. You need to have a solid track record of being operationally successful in establishing and migrating categories. In addition you need to be an efficient negotiator who produces significant financial benefit within the Travel domain.

To enjoy and succeed in this role you need to:

- Strong business knowledge in telecommunications landscape
- Foresee business risks related to role, highlighting to leadership and work towards mitigating risks in best manner
- Strong ability to communicate and interact effectively(verbal, presentation, facilitation & listening modes of communication) across organizational and cultural boundaries, internal and external
- Strong analytical, systems thinking and problem solving capabilities
- Demonstrate commitment, maturity, flexibility and speed in response to business needs and challenges
- Be an efficient negotiator through strong commercial skills
- Highly creative and innovative 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 Requirements**
- Up to 7 years in a procurement / contract management / vendor / negotiations / supply chain management role or as functional expert in the Professional Services category
- Bachelor degree, preferably within business administration, finance, supply chain or similar. MBA will be preferred.
- Broad experience with common data processing tools, e.g. Excel or Tableau