Who are we?

First Rail is part of FirstGroup, one of the leading rail operators and one of the largest bus operators in the UK.  FirstGroup operates services throughout the UK and Ireland, with over 30,000 employees providing services that make travel smoother and life easier.  FirstGroup works hard to reduce its impact on the environment, introducing cleaner and more environmentally responsible methods of transport.

About the job

To deliver best value for money by effective management of spend within assigned IT categories ensuring that cross divisional synergies are identified and leveraged.

Identification and implementation of category strategies resulting in the delivery of cross divisional cost and efficiency benefits against agreed targets.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Effective management of all UK spend within the portfolio of assigned IT procurement categories.
• Delivery and reporting of cost benefits against agreed targets.
• Ensuring that cost benefits are agreed and signed off by business stakeholders and Finance.
• Identification and implementation of benefits resulting from cross divisional synergies.
• Engagement with stakeholders to ensure that procurement category strategies are aligned with business objectives and priorities.
• Effective supplier management, relationship (SRM), and performance (SPM) to ensure that suppliers' deliver contractual obligations but also seek and deliver continual improvement opportunities.
• Ensuring that the sourcing, contracts and R2P agreed with suppliers are aligned with First policies, procedures, governance, and values.
• Ensuring that cost, risk, and compliance is managed through robust contracts with approved suppliers and that trading terms and conditions are aligned with First legal governance, requirements, and obligations.
• Be recognised as the SME for all assigned categories of spend.
• Provide advice and guidance to stakeholders to support business objectives e.g., rail franchise and bus tender bidding.
• Support the Group IT Procurement Manager with delivery of major projects as identified.
• Lead identified synergistic procurement projects as the SME on a UK wide basis.

You'll need to be:

• Experience of IT category management across a wide and diverse portfolio
• Experience of creating and negotiating IT contracts for wide portfolio of goods and services
• Track record of delivering cost benefits and improvements
• Ability to identify and deliver innovative solutions
• Experience of delivering enhanced value from supplier management – relationship (SRM) and performance (SPM)
• Strong negotiation and influencing skills
• Ability to develop and manage collaborative business relationships both internally and externally
• Strong business acumen / commercial astuteness
• Resilience
• Flexible and adaptive to changing priorities and objectives
• Confidence, poise with ability to relate to and communicate with senior stakeholders
• Highly organised with ability to work autonomously and prioritise own workload to meet pre-defined objectives
• Professional procurement qualification e.g., FCIPS; MCIPS
• UCR (Utilities Contract regulations) procurement experience
• PA23 (Procurement Act 2023) regulations

We all belong at First Customer Contact. FirstGroup's vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, across its group of businesses, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

We review all roles and job descriptions to ensure they are accessible and, where possible, we support and provide flexible working options; we recommend that you refer to each vacancy description for further details.

If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below.  We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversity/