Professional Services Category Manager in Sunbury-on-Thames

Our purpose is to deliver energy to the world, today and tomorrow. For over 100 years, bp has focused on discovering, developing, and producing oil and gas in the nations where we operate. We are one of the few companies globally that can provide governments and customers with an integrated energy offering. Delivering our strategy sustainably is fundamental to achieving our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner.

About the role: The Procurement Manager / Senior Advisor provides category leadership for key sub-categories of spend in support of their global category. They undertake category management and global supplier relationship management, driving end-to-end spend management to mitigate supply chain risk and improve value delivery, including sustainability, within their category. They do this through collaborating across and beyond procurement, including with regional, business, and FBT resources. They know their categories intimately and support development of innovative strategies which deliver business objectives and strong category guidance which ensures efficient end to end category execution.

The Procurement Advisor’s key responsibilities include:

• Be the procurement partner for Business Consulting and other Professional Services categories
• Category Strategy Development: Define and implement category strategies aligned with organisational goals such as cost optimisation, sustainability, and risk management. Analyse spend patterns, market trends, and supplier landscapes to see opportunities for value creation.
• Supplier Relationship Management: Handle strategic and core suppliers, ensuring performance through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Oversee supplier risk assessments and compliance with contractual obligations.
• Contract Lifecycle Management: Own end-to-end contract activities, including negotiation, amendments, dispute resolution, and closure. Ensure operationalisation of contracts in ERP systems and maintain audit trails for compliance.
• Governance and Compliance: Apply category management policies and frameworks to ensure conformance with organisational standards. Monitor adherence to procurement governance and risk mitigation processes.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Act as a link between procurement, finance, and business units to align category strategies with organisational objectives. Influence partners and lead change management initiatives.
• Performance Monitoring: Track savings against category plans and report progress using dashboards and analytics tools. Capture lessons learned and continuously improve sourcing strategies.

Essential experience:

• Functional knowledge: Knowledge of category management principles and experience in undertaking procurement processes and developing category strategies.
• Business expertise: Partner management and influencing skills in order to develop a deep understanding of the supported businesses / regions / assets and their priorities, including long term objectives.
• Leadership: An SME in the relevant category, who shares knowledge with the wider team and delivers the strategy.
• Problem solving: The role requires analytical thinking to develop and evaluate solutions, as well as judgement to translate business requirements into actionable plans.
• Interpersonal skills: Strong interpersonal skills are crucial for collaborating with the category team, engaging with global, diverse participants, communicating impactful across organizational levels and handling change effectively.

Nice to have:

• Procurement/Consultancy/Product experience in any of the following areas: Professional Services (i.e. Consulting HR Services), or People & Culture.
• Leadership: engage with all internal and external partners in the overall future of Professional Services vision with the ability to drive supporting programme roadmaps and their execution.
• Innovative Mentality - Actively seeks and accepts new challenges, change or innovations in line with business strategy; open to new or unfamiliar experiences and is constantly curious.

Why join us? At bp, we support our people to grow in a diverse and exciting environment. We believe that our team is strengthened by diversity. There are many aspects of our employees’ lives that are meaningful, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits can include flexible working options, a generous paid parental leave policy, excellent retirement benefits, among others!

Travel Requirement: Up to 10% travel should be expected with this role. Relocation Assistance: This role is not eligible for relocation. Remote Type: This position is a hybrid of office/remote working.