EMEA Travel & Card Strategic Sourcing Manager

EMEA Travel & Card Strategic Sourcing Manager

Travel & Card services provide optimized, best-in-class travel solutions through standard purchasing tools, methods, and terms aligned to Cisco’s Procurement Policies while optimizing spend, cultivating strategic supplier relationships to drive performance, and digitally tightening compliance and controls through data and insights to mitigate risks.

Travel services consist of six sub-commodities: airlines, corporate cards, travel technology, ground transport, hotels, and travel agency.

In this role, you will be required to have a solid understanding of procurement operations and business challenges, and the ability to translate them into solutions.

Who You’ll Work With?

You will work closely with a wide variety of partners and multi-functional teams (e.g. finance, invoicing, tax, risk, and compliance, category and supplier management) to implement Travel Services strategy in the regions, standardize and improve the service, and mitigate risk for Cisco.

You will work closely with the Global Travel & Card Service Leader supporting strategic oversight including crafting, recommending, implementing, administering, updating, and carrying out policies and procedures.

Your role will require you to partner closely with Global Procurement Category and Supplier managers on negotiations and contracts. Solid understanding of sourcing Air, Hotel, and TMC including RFP, bidding process, contract pricing, and renewals.

Regional Relationship Management

• Responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with regional and global partners and business functions to identify business requirements including legal, tax, finance, HR, etc.
• Partner with SAP Concur Centers of Excellence (Scrum Teams), Business Architecture, and Country Enablement to translate business requirements into functional system design documentation.
• Track and analyze business function feedback to build new business requirements (e.g. surveys results, case management C-SAT, reported escalations or process exceptions).
• Partner with Change Management to update documentation based on business functions/end-user feedback.
• Identify end users/business profiles for targeted training and testing in the region.
• Collaborate across regions and services to keep alignment and standardization.

Regional Service Governance

You will be responsible for managing the processes as part of the service in the region. You will also be responsible for regular reporting as part of Regional Travel Operational Service Review of the critical metrics which includes:

• Current volume drives forecasted volume drivers (new release impact forecast), volume drive risk and concerns.
• Regional quality of service which includes case metrics and plans improvement quality metrics, if applicable.
• Productivity metrics including process cycle times, time to value, and capacity utilization.
• Customer Experience reported from case management scoring and survey results.
• All the metrics should be reported with category and business functions view with an actionable plan to align with global targets and benchmarks.

You will be responsible for leading the resources who support travel and payment solution processes in the region including:

• Current staffing model and future staffing model to align with service roadmap.
• Govern physical & IT security with vendor providing service (access validation, assets, application data access).
• Assessment of training progress and quality scores for new joiners.

Responsible for validation of travel & payment process and controls accuracy in the region including:

• Quality assessment of controls and processes (internal audits).
• Processes specific to the regional requirements created and kept up to date.
• Responsible for driving incremental process improvement to bring efficiency gains and reduce costs; all processes improvement should be planned and documented including benefit/value.
• Implementation of new controls defined in partnership with Risk and Compliance COE.

Regional Operational Readiness

Responsible for preparing the regions for new Travel, Card, and Expense system releases, process changes, and new controls including:

• Capability assessment impact and benefit to the region and countries.
• Identification of stabilization risks and mitigation plans.
• Future staffing model including skills assessment and training plan.
• Involvement in testing for documented business requirements and coordination with end users/business functions and stakeholders.
• Documenting all changes in updated process maps and desktop procedures including audit procedures.

Additional responsibilities and duties:

• Reprioritize work with limited direction and complete additional projects/tasks as assigned.
• Benchmark processes and provide recommendations for improvements and standardization.

Who You Are

You’ve got experience in leading domestic and international travel, SAP Concur T&E products, payments and expense programs, meetings management, and relocations in the travel space to effectively implement, direct and lead spend across the company. You will direct operations, processes, and implementation of Travel and all related services in EMEA. You will indirectly lead a team of travel professionals from our vendor partners.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years of expertise in the travel industry, with demonstrated track record and technical expertise in all travel-related categories.
• Knowledge of SAP Concur T&E reporting and processing.
• Great communication (oral and written) and negotiation skills.
• Knowledge of international travel regulations, process, systems, customs, and currencies.
• Solid understanding of Travel and Expense important metrics.
• Strong knowledge of end-to-end Global Travel management.

Preferred Qualifications:

• European / Global experience considered a big plus.
• Ability to work with an Agile approach.
• An analytical mind with strong business insight.
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience at a minimum.

Desired Qualifications:

• Knowledge of MS Office and TMC/GDS/OBT solutions.
• Travel or Meetings and Events industry qualifications (e.g. CIPS, GLP, CCTE, CMP).
• Customer-focused approach.
• Ability to run P+L and track record leading global programs.
• Consistent record of success as a Travel/Meetings & Events Category Manager.
• Presentation skills – Ability to craft and handle documents as well as present to leadership at all levels.

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