Director - Procurement Operations, Nam

Veolia Group is a global leader in environmental services, operating across all five continents with nearly 218,000 employees. Specialising in water, energy, and waste management, Veolia Group designs and implements innovative solutions for decarbonization, depollution, and resource regeneration, supporting communities and industries in their ecological transformation.

Job Summary about the area and the role:
Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions (VWTS) is a worldwide leader in water recovery, treatment, and reuse. We design and supply a range of water systems, from food and beverage applications, to municipal water, to microelectronics ultrapure water and heavy industrial wastewater treatment. We serve more than 50,000 customers worldwide and treat more than 11 million cubic meters of water every day. We simply aim to be the benchmark company for ecological transformation across the world.

At WTS, we realize diverse teams make smarter decisions, deliver better results, and build stronger communities. We are an organization that champions diversity and inclusion at every rung of the ladder and are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We offer challenging and meaningful careers, with competitive benefits and flexible work arrangements.

Summary of the Job
The Director - Procurement Operations, North America will report into the VP Procurement, North America. This role will be responsible for driving Procure to Pay (P2P) tactical activities across all product lines, supplier diversity program, data enrichment strategy and promoting organization culture within the procurement function. In partnership with internal functional stakeholders and business partners, this role will drive P2P activities' optimization by streamlining processes, adopting process automation tools, thereby optimizing resources, creating enhanced value from data enrichment activities and guiding the broader procurement organization through the organization's cultural roadmap.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Lead P2P organization for North America, responsible for day-to-day procurement operation, on time delivery, controlling cost based on category strategy and supporting suppliers being paid on time.
• Optimize resources for a 30+ member team located in multiple locations and countries
• Manage the overall procurement process and ensure that procedures are continually monitored for best practices. Identify, optimize and fix broken processes to drive operational excellence
• Build and maintain collaborative working relationships with key stakeholders, introducing ideas to drive operational improvements, best practices, and operational efficiencies, while assisting with the support of all systems and tools required for procurement activities
• Subject matter expert coordinating discussions with other functions with process or system integration requirements or adjacencies to Procurement
• Promote organization's culture throughout the Procurement organization and creating an engaging customer centric and execution-oriented work environment
• Drive use of P2P technology and automation tools to improve workload management and efficiency of service delivery
• Develop and monitor roadmap for P2P function and teams in alignment with Global Procurement organization and company goals and objectives.

People and organization

• Recruit, develop, manage, recognize and reward staff. Plan organizational evolution to adapt to internal/external context and design/implement succession paths for individuals in the function/company.
• Build and maintain an organizational environment that cultivates the broad development of a best in class, engaged and effective regional procurement team.
• Serve as an active contributor to Management Team and Procurement Leadership Team as well as other regional and global teams as assigned or requested.
• Support us to drive a diversity and inclusive work environment

Hard Skills:

• Must have a strong customer service orientation with excellent analytical skills.
• Ability to collaborate and influence with internal/external stakeholders.
• Good knowledge in Source-to-Pay, Supply Chain and Logistics.
• Strong negotiation skills.
• Familiarity with market trends and best practices in Process excellence and Digitization in the industry.
• Good understanding of process excellence tools, digital tools landscape, value stream mapping and continuous improvement methodology.
• Ability to work with multiple cross-functional teams to drive process standardization and improvement

Soft Skills:

• Organized and self-motivated for success
• Experience as a Lean and/or Process Excellence Leader with demonstrated ability in organizational transformation.
• Excellent verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills, capable of developing presentations and comfortable interacting with internal/external stakeholders and WTS senior management.
• Experience in working in different cultures and environments, in a matrixed organization.
• Proven experience in management with demonstrated success working in a fast-paced multicultural and cross functional team environment.

Education & Experience Required:

• Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, or similar field, candidate with a master's degree and / or certification like Six sigma or equivalent business process excellence will have added advantage.
• Thristeen (13) years' experience in Procurement or Supply Chain function or equivalent role, with knowledge of Process excellence, Digital tools and continuous improvement initiative

Preferred:

• Working knowledge of the Water Treatment industry, or equivalent industry equipment and systems, production process and validation.
• Strong commitment to ethical conduct, integrity, and compliance with company policies and regulations.
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and adapt to changing priorities and requirements.

As an inclusive company, Veolia is committed to diversity and gives equal consideration to all applications, without discrimination.