American Express—Manager-Commodities

Job description

Description: Global Supply Management (GSM) is responsible for helping AXP maximize the purchasing power of its third party spend across the globe whilst mitigating the risks associated with engaging third parties. There are 3 core pillars to GSM: Strategic Sourcing & Business Enablement (SSBE), Third Party Lifecycle Management (TLM) and Payment Strategy & Operation (PSO). SSBE support the business to source the right partners to supply goods and services, ensuring that supplier contracts are compliant with applicable laws, regulations and AXP policies (AEMP01 and AEMP10) and to mitigate risk to AXP. The Global Contract Governance & Effectiveness team (GCGE) sits within SSBE and works as a support and escalation function to the SSBE contract and category management teams. In addition, GCGE lead the GSM workstream for Regulatory Change Management projects (RCM), regulatory audits, internal audits and other compliance/legal change projects that relate to the procurement contracting process globally. The role reports into the Director of Global Contract Governance and Effectiveness (GCGE). Requirements: Key Skills Required: - Experience and proven track record of successfully navigating complex contract negotiations, solid understanding of legal principles and priorities relating to contracting and the ability to offer practical, credible and compliant solutions to supplier pushbacks. - Excellent relationship management skills are a must for this role, both written and verbal, with ability to collaborate, negotiate and influence at all levels of the organisation and across all stakeholder groups including GCO, TLM, Compliance, Enterprise Third Party Risk management and across geographic markets. - Must be comfortable preparing presentation materials and presenting complex topics in easy to understand formats, both to senior leaders and peers, adapting the messaging to suit the audience and be able to answer questions clearly. - Proven experience in managing complex, multi-regional projects that involve large volumes of contracts across different teams. Strong strategic thinking, understanding of contract and operational risk, strong planning skills, balanced with proven track record of delivering tangible results in complex, global and matrix work environment. - Ability to work on multiple projects at any one time, prioritise work requirements with challenging deadlines and ability to move projects forward with often ambiguous data. - Experience of working with GCO, IAG, RCM teams and Enterprise Third Party Risk Management is desirable. - Effective leadership skills and commitment to continuous mentoring, coaching and development within the SSBE team of contract managers to deliver high-quality output with limited resources and work collaboratively with colleagues and partners across the world. - Positive attitude, ability to work in a fluid, fast-paced, and at times unstructured environment and maintain flexibility to meet the changing needs of the customers, business units and the organization. - A bachelor’s degree in a relative field (law, business management, supply chain management desirable). CIPS qualification desirable - Proven ability to draft and develop project plans to include key milestones, critical paths, roadblocks, risks, next steps and a risk based approach. - Demonstrated interpersonal skills to work across a wide range of teams and build effective working relationships. - Desire to learn and continuously searching to understand industry best practices and find creative solutions - Ability to thrive in a fast paced and fluid business environment. - Understanding of TLM would be advantageous. Responsibilities: - Support Contract Managers on day to day contracting queries arising out of supplier negotiations, providing up front guidance on contracting approach and structure. - Act as the primary contact for GCO and GSM Leadership with respect to all of the constituent parts of procurement contracting. - Act as a key contact for SS&BE with respect to compliance projects across the Enterprise that impact third parties and/or the procurement contracting process e.g. Intra-Agency Guidelines compliance etc. - Liaise with Regulatory Change Management (RCM) team and acts as Project Manager with respect to RCM entries that impact the procurement contracting process. - Lead projects to enhance internal GSM systems and drive better working practises, leveraging technology wherever possible. - Support on managing the global suite of GSM procurement contracting templates, liaising with GSM teams and GCO to ensure they remain up to date with legal requirements and making them available on SS&BE's contract management system (Conga) and managing the global contract inventory. - Support with the monthly “GSM Information Share” meetings across the regions (US, EMEA, APAC). Sharing topical information and leading contract training initiatives, facilitating guest speakers from other teams (TLM, GCO etc). - Partner with Capabilities to leverage AI technologies, driving innovation and positioning SS&BE for future success.