Director, Strategic Sourcing

▶ Who we are

With more than 13,000 stores in the U.S. and 84,000 stores globally, it is no wonder 7-Eleven, Inc. has been named an iconic brand. In addition to 7-Eleven stores, 7-Eleven, Inc. also operates and franchises Speedway, Stripes, Laredo Taco Company and Raise the Roost locations.

Since inventing the convenience industry in 1927, 7-Eleven has built a rich 96-year history filled with beloved products like Slurpee, Big Gulp and Big Bite, and fan-favorite holidays like Slurpee Day and Bring Your Own Cup Day.

Now, 7-Eleven is on a mission to contemporize the brand and redefine convenience – and we need your help.

General Description

This Director of Strategic Sourcing plays a critical leadership role specifically supporting the Fresh Food, Private Brands, and Supply Chain functions at 7-Eleven.  Working in collaboration with internal stakeholders to develop sourcing strategies, this position will lead the sourcing teams responsible for capturing savings, creating a competitive advantage by leveraging our enterprise-wide scale to ensure consistent high-quality and best value delivery.  The Director is responsible for developing and implementing procurement best practices, develop sourcing strategies, manage contract life-cycle and build supplier relationships in support of 7-Eleven's key initiatives and growth strategy. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience in Category Management, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier & Contract Management.

Duties and Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• In close collaboration with functional leaders across the organization, develop and define the multi-year Strategic Sourcing road-map and implement sourcing strategies to meet business goals and optimize spending, identify, and minimize risk through, while generating cost savings.
• Work with business leaders to ensure the best portfolio of suppliers are selected for each program. Influence business stakeholders in the decision-making process considering the Total Cost of Ownership. Define and implement relevant contractual clauses.
• Develop supplier negotiation strategies and lead complex negotiation processes. Negotiate contractual terms and conditions in partnership with business owners inclusive of working with Fresh Food, Private Brands, and Supply Chain teams.
• Perform market benchmark and spend analyses. Identify opportunities for increased competitive bidding, smarter supplier relationships and more efficient processes. Explore and evaluate sourcing options from the business’ perspective to find suppliers and solutions that best meet its needs.
• Implement strategies to maintain competitive pricing leveraging scale and long-term agreements with suppliers to deliver the best value to the organization. Sustains competitive product pricing by negotiating win-win cost reduction agreements and strategies. Evaluate and vet new supply sources.
• In close collaboration with suppliers and cross functional business partners, develop the implementation strategy and help manage the implementation of new supplier services and goods. Understand the dependencies and help mitigate risks during implementation.
• Develops and maintains strong working relationships with strategic suppliers and key stakeholders to ensure cost, quality, service, and delivery targets are met, risk and issues are mitigated, and identify potential cost savings and process improvement opportunities.  
• Managing Sourcing, Bidding, and Negotiation efforts of direct reports for all strategic sourcing initiatives.
• Lead Strategic Sourcing team members to include coaching and mentoring. Develop and lead a high-performing team including recruiting, identifying career development activities, performance management and managing a diverse and inclusive team.
• Continuously improve the governance, processes, and tools to help mature the Strategic Sourcing role, driving sourcing strategy development and execution to drive savings and reduce risks for SEI.

Key Leadership Competencies

• Ability to effectively build relationships to influence stakeholders and suppliers through indirect leadership, working across varying levels of organizations at senior-to-exec management level both internally and externally.
• Demonstrated ability to clearly communicate strategy and tactical points and adjust communications as needed based on audience, making the complex simple to understand.
• Develop an understanding of company vision, strategy, and key initiatives. Achieve detailed understanding of functional area and related processes to be able to provide recommendations to leadership regarding sourcing strategies, contract language and strategic supplier capabilities weighing business objectives and value, cost and risks.
• Ability to solve problems by assessing the situation, leveraging data where applicable, identifying root cause and developing potential solutions. Makes well informed decisions, demonstrate initiative, exhibit autonomy to execute on organization initiatives.
• Be a thought leader in the sourcing field, crafting strategy, provides sound rationale, and championing change when warranted and substantiated by data.
• Ability to operate in environments with ambiguity and ability to create clarity. High level of agility and adaptability; ability to quickly learn details of new business challenges and identify dependencies and impacts of other key initiatives.
• Manage collaboration and communication with other teams, both internal and external, to ensure teams have what they need and can work efficiently.
• Participates in defining and influencing corporate sustainability programs together with EH&S while providing strong support for the effective execution of corporate sustainability program.
• Drives results and designs and implements business metrics to monitor, track, and report sourcing project progress.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Education: Bachelor’s degree, Masters preferred
• Experience: 15 years of relevant experience leading large, complex teams and/or projects
• Experience leading strategic sourcing / procurement in a large complex organization and knowledge of the full end-to-end P2P process and e-Sourcing preferred.
• Experience leading the development and management of category plans or sourcing strategies with a preference on experience in managing fresh food/foodservice, private brands, supply chain spend.
• Demonstrated successful contract and agreement negotiation experience, managing the entire RFQ/RFP process, including development of negotiating plans and strategies.
• Strong analytical skills and process improvement viewpoint.
• Proficient with MS Office suite- advanced skills in MS Excel and PowerPoint. Possesses excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills and is comfortable working with multiple stakeholders at all organizational levels.

#LI-DB1