Category Group Manager - London or Bristol

A government department client is looking for a Category Group Manager to join them on a 6 month contract. This position will be in London or Bristol/hybrid. Job Summary: In the role of Category Group Manager you will be responsible for providing senior level thought leadership and experience across the Portfolio and associated categories, driving up the maturity and quality of category strategies and their adoption within the portfolio categories. You will be responsible for building and directly leading a team of (c2-5) Category Management staff, building their confidence and commercial capability and deep category expertise to drive performance and manage setbacks. The role will also require you to use your commercial expertise to identify opportunities for improvement and implement these changes at a local level by working with affected parties to identify and overcome challenges. You and your team will contribute to delivering commercial excellence for a category group aligned to a capability portfolio, through development and implementation of category strategies (for categories that include large complex platforms, equipment, support contracts, Infrastructure, FM, corporate services, digital services and commodities) across the commercial lifecycle. You will engage with Senior Leaders across the client and be a core member of the Portfolio and Category Management leadership teams, providing a customer-focused service, understanding the business needs and stakeholder drivers, with the aim of becoming a trusted commercial advisor. You will also develop relationships with the department\’s key and strategic suppliers, driving \’value for money\’ and risk management excellence across the category. For clarity, ownership of the implementation of agreed strategies will sit with the respective Delivery Organisations with the Category Management team supporting as required. Strategic delivery and management of the category group: Championing Category Management across your category group and capability Portfolios. Developing with senior stakeholders, including Portfolio Directors, the vision for the category group. Cascading the vision and translating into delivery objectives for the sub category teams aligned to Portfolio priorities. Conducting annual category planning to develop a prioritised pipeline of category opportunities within your category group area and Portfolio. Undertaking quarterly reviews to dynamically prioritise opportunities in-year. Ensuring category group plans are incorporated into annual planning and budgeting cycles. Developing an overarching portfolio plan for your category group, consolidating and aligning the sub-category workstream plans, incorporating risk and quality in support of Portfolios. Setting priorities for workstreams and opportunities, aligning plans to the Strategic Defence Review NATO first and UK/Defence Industrial strategy. Ensuring Sub Category plans define the fundamental components of a category from strategy creation through implementation in terms of its scope, deliverables, time scales, resource requirements and budget. Ensuring the processes, operating model and governance arrangements are in place to develop and leverage deep category management, category and market expertise across your category group and aligned portfolios. Ensure coherence with other category teams to ensure alignment, alignment, interoperability and integration with other category areas to support Portfolio outcomes. Understanding value lever options, delivering positive outcomes: Initiating and conducting opportunity analysis for identified opportunities within your category group engaging with all relevant stakeholders. Producing Opportunity Assessment reports to feed into category planning and prioritisation processes. Supporting business cases, where necessary, to demonstrate coherence, integration, through life support, value for money, benefits and risks across platforms and Portfolios Building and maintaining key relationships across the department and with important external stakeholders. Influencing MSHQ, NAD Options and Commissioning to shape future portfolio priorities adopting Category Management principles. Identifying and mapping key stakeholders for category group and specific sub categories. Cultivating and managing proactive relationships with internal and external stakeholders including industry to implement category management directly and through the supply chain. Enabling and developing Category Management across the client Portfolio: Bringing the best practices and learning from the external market to the department through leveraging industry and Allies experience to develop deep market insights and knowledge. Encouraging and empowering others to adopt best practices, driving collaboration and innovation across the Defence enterprise to demonstrate continuous improvement. Developing, sharing and promoting best practices and lessons learned to create a culture of learning and good practice that supports continuous improvement to optimise category delivery. Driving category change based on Lessons Learned. Performance and day to day management of a team to deliver Category Management across the Category Group: Identifying capacity and capability requirements across the category group. Recruiting resources within budget constraints, overseeing effective deployment of resources utilising special projects resource as necessary to support surge requirements. Planning and leading effective impact assessments of the business and operational impacts of category strategies. Identifying change management requirements and processes to influence operational and behavioural change to realise the business benefits from category group and individual category strategies. Ensures category outputs are integrated into Business As Usual (BAU). Developing an effective category management team and culture, promoting effective individual and team performance, providing support, guidance and coaching. Providing regular management reports and/or updates to Head of Category Management, Portfolio Director, other senior stakeholders and forums as required. Skills Required: Credible and assured to command the confidence of a range of senior stakeholders. Proven leadership experience. Ability to think strategically, act decisively and respond quickly. Strong commercial awareness including an expert understanding of the commercial lifecycle. Track record of delivering benefits (full range of non-financial and financial benefits) through category management interventions within a complex project/programme delivery environment. Understanding of the Defence Industry, supply chains and/or deep knowledge in related categories e.g. autonomous systems, weapons systems, sense decide & communicating systems, power propulsion & auxiliary systems, would be an advantage