Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr Staff

Entergy

Job Title: Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr Staff

Work Place Flexibility: Hybrid

Legal Entity: Entergy Services, LLC

Please note: Authorization to work in the United States is a precondition to employment in this position. Entergy will not sponsor candidates for work visas for this position.

Note: This is a hybrid position requiring in office work two - three days a week, and can be based our offices in The Woodlands, TX, Jackson, MS, Little Rock, AR, or New Orleans, LA. The selected candidates will be placed as a Category Management Specialist, Sr or Sr Staff based on education, relevant experience, and demonstrated success at the category management specialist level. Relocation assistance is not available for this posting.

Job Summary/Purpose

The Category Management Specialist is responsible for driving Supplier Commercial Excellence across a diverse portfolio of IT sub-categories and business functions, including Hardware, Information Security, IT Professional Services, Software, Telecom, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This position leverages extensive expertise in supply chain, category management, strategic sourcing, and contracting to execute the end-to-end procurement and supply chain processes of plan-strategy-source-perform.

As the single point of contact and strategic lead for Entergy's third-party spend, the Category Management Specialist collaborates cross-functionally with internal stakeholders, such as business units, Supplier Development, Tax, Finance, Risk Management, Safety, Human Resources, and Legal, as well as external suppliers and industry organizations. The role is responsible for building and maintaining these cross-functional teams to create prioritized sub-category profiles, develop contracting strategies, execute strategic sourcing processes, manage negotiations, and implement and oversee post-award contract management.

The primary objective of this position is to create value through the supply chain in terms of safety, cost, and performance, ultimately driving Supplier Commercial Excellence and delivering end-to-end value for the assigned portfolio of spend.

Job Duties/Responsibilities

• Safety/Human Performance:
• Actively promote strong safety behaviors and ensure the team always puts safety first.
• Utilize key tools, programs, and proactive field visits to assure standards and behaviors.
• Monitor and influence suppliers to proactively identify any safety concerns.
• Incident Response:
• Perform storm role duties as assigned through the Storm Assignment Management System (SAMS).
• Category Strategy:
• Develop and execute category and subcategory strategies, checklist, manage spend and regularly track market trends, Ability to work strategically and tactically to deliver positive business results.
• Category Processes:
• Systematic process to review commercial, process, technical, risk management and sustainability strategies for product categories and subcategories.
• Contract Negotiation/ Drafting
• Draft IT service agreements
• Lead the Request for Proposal process for IT Professional Services, Software, Hardware or Telecommunications
• Supplier Management:
• Supplier management strategy in place, linked with supplier segment, category strategies, and business reviews to ensure supplier performance.
• Supplier Base: Supplier portfolio is regularly reviewed based on price/performance and cost structure comparison.
• Optimization:
• Recurrent effort to bundle purchasing and to forecast demand across departments/business units.
• Customer Engagement
• Ability influence and work across Cross-functional teams and levels in the organization to optimize supply-chain, redesign-to cost and make-or-buy strategies.

Minimum Requirements

Minimum Education & Experience required of the position

• Category Management Specialist, Sr:
• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Accounting, Engineering, Legal, or other related discipline and minimum 9+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience OR in lieu of a degree, minimum 13+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience
• Minimum 3+ years’ energy industry supply chain experience in category management or strategic sourcing Preferred: Certification from an industry accreditation organization such as CPSM, APICS, etc.
• Category Management Specialist, Sr Staff:
• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Accounting, Engineering, Legal, or other related discipline and minimum 12+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience OR in lieu of a degree, minimum 16+ years of category management, strategic sourcing or other related supply chain experience
• Minimum 6+ years’ energy industry supply chain experience in category management or strategic sourcing Preferred: Certification from an industry accreditation organization such as CPSM, APICS, etc.

Minimum knowledge, skills, and abilities required of the position

• Responsible for driving exceptional total cost value creation by applying contemporary IT category management strategies – plan, strategy, source and perform. Including:
• Development of IT category profiles, sourcing processes, business cases and implementation plan’s that maximize value across spend under category management – progressing safety, performance and cost reduction opportunities.
• Utilize IT demand and supply plans to recommend and inform category sourcing initiatives. Accountable for working with the IT business to balance demand and supply by integrating operating plans. Maintain awareness of plant schedules and commitments (Milestones) to provide support to meet outage and project schedules.
• Analyses of IT 3rd party spending, contracts and suppliers to ensure informed decision-making by related cross functional team. Gathers and leverages external intelligence on IT supply markets.
• Identify and implement cost saving opportunities (including cost savings initiatives / programs) through rate reduction, process improvement, innovative incentive structures, or supplier collaboration.
• Conduct Bids and Sourcing Activities
• Assist tactical groups in negotiating Terms and Conditions, Claims and Dispute Resolution.
• Leads negotiations and contract development for alliances and other complex companywide agreements. Negotiates software licenses.
• Lead the identification of IT spend to be managed enterprise wide and work with IT and related stakeholders to obtain alignment.
• Anticipates and minimizes performance issues via creation, monitoring and reporting of key performance indicators (KPIs). When IT Contractor performance issues emerge, identifies root causes and drives efficient resolution of issues at hand by working across both internal and external stakeholders.
• Evaluate rates, incentives, and cost structures of contracts to ensure consistency with market conditions.
• Monitor and help resolve contract claim