Our Opportunity:

Chewy is currently recruiting an Associate Director of Transportation Procurement at our headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. The ideal candidate will be customer obsessed, have a passion for problem solving, a track -record of amazing execution of cross-functional initiatives and exceptional at using data to drive decisions. You will be responsible for identifying opportunities and negotiating new agreements for all modes of Transportation along with leading your team of program managers. In addition to creating and implementing processes, and procedures regarding procurement, you must be able to roll up your sleeves and deliver results. You must be able to deal with a high degree of ambiguity and scale with the company while achieving goal objectives such as revenue savings and business improvements.

What You’ll Do:

Category Management & Delivery

• Personally develops, leads, and manages larger RFP events.
• Develops with team an end-to-end RFP strategy for each project across, mapping out the current landscape and defining an improvement plan for the near, mid, and long-term to stimulate interest from and engagement with stakeholders.
• Complete activities such as: market research, demand management, specification, or SOP development, forecast, spend, and comparison analytics, RFP strategy development, business case development, negotiation of rates and terms, Carrier relationship management for escalations, and stakeholder engagement.
• Utilize established tools/systems & adherence to policies such as delegation of
• Complete extensive written documents that discuss the results, strategy behind recommendations, the methodology for forecasts, market changes or potential impacts, decision optionality, and/or risks or contractual information

Client/Internal Stakeholder Relations

• Demonstrating value delivery to a target audience of VP/Sr. Dir / Dir level stakeholders to reinforce stakeholder buy-in for all RFP/RFQ/RFI events.
• Be able to engage leaders to gain insights and perspective at appropriate intervals aligned with internal policy, goals, and industry regulations.
• Understand business area needs, strategies and priorities and service accordingly.
• Demonstrate Chewy values in all relationships (including Carriers). While also holding internal and external stakeholders accountable for verbal and written communications.
• Ability to address urgent needs of the business effectively and efficiently. This may include making decisions quickly with incomplete or ambiguous information to meet timeline.
• Capture spend performance for year over year comparisons thus communicating savings against goals and any market adjustments as applicable.
• Be knowledgeable in best procurement practice for Transportation as well as cognizant of procurement effects on the downstream business.
• Co-develop and execute sourcing strategies with the business, expertly advising and guiding the process to the best-fit approach, tactics, and tools (e.g., outcome-based specifications, RFP/RFI/RFQ builds, KPI/SLA development).
• Meet regularly with stakeholders to ensure alignment & solicit feedback.

Processes, Metrics & Execution

• Track progress against objectives; refine and develop audience-specific updates for yourself and motivate the team to do the same.
• Use market research to ensure that Chewy stays ahead of the latest market cost/value/innovation developments per Transportation mode.
• Work in collaboration with Finance, Legal, IT, Compliance, Internal Audit/Risk and other functions to ensure compliance to policies and audit remediation.
• Responsible for the negotiation and contract management process, including facilitating extended team members involvement (e.g., Legal, Finance, Tax, Security, and Data Privacy, etc.).
• Responsible to the stakeholder for the timely procurement of contract services required for company operations.
• Create, prioritize, and plan a pipeline of opportunities to deliver the saving objectives and reduce overall risk which may include finding stakeholders that are off standard process and engaging them to leverage procurement.

Carrier Relations

• Develop and maintain an annual Carrier management plan that will support future RFP events, including obtaining, analyzing, and debating any inaccuracies in forecasted spend or lane information provided by internal stakeholders, savings expectations, and performance objectives.
• Enable Chewy to get the best out of its Carriers by working in partnership with them for mutual good business while upholding the highest level of ethics and integrity.
• Ensure Procurement, the Business, and Carriers conduct business ethically, and within the Company’s Anti Bribery and Corruption and FCPA guidelines. Alert the leadership to any improper practice.
• Encourage Carrier Diversity and Sustainability efforts.

Essential Skills for the Role

Leadership: Although this role is an active participant in running bid events and contract negotiation, it is also a people leadership role. With that, this leader should actively promote new ways of looking at problems, processes, or solutions. Establishes rapport and responds in an approachable manner with a wide range of contacts. Puts systems in place and engages in personal interactions to promote sharing of key learnings and best practices across the organization. Be responsible for building and inspiring a team by creating a sense of purpose, engagement, communication, collaboration, and team who celebrates successes. Have a strong ability to assess and build a high preforming team that exceeds expectation year over year. Show self-reflection and awareness of areas that can and should be improved by proactively building out case scenarios and make recommendations to implement and driving change by diving into the work with the team.

This leader should practice empathy, humility, gratitude, and passion for team members while balancing drive/motivation, timelines, and goals for the team empowering the program managers and analysts to make effective decisions and know when to escalate. Have the ability to remain calm under pressure or extreme timebound projects, know when to delegate, and balance when to dig in with the team to drive results. And Demonstrate a strong bias towards Chewy’s disagree but commit leadership principle with team members and with leadership.

This leader should value teamwork by fostering an environment of collaboration. Understands and values the collective strengths and experience of the Team and knows when to draw on complementary skills to meet the required objectives. Actively builds bridges between areas by uncovering and working to remove barriers.

Strategic Thinking: The ideal candidate clearly understands key external developments and trends, such as market needs, competition, and technology that are likely to impact the business and builds this knowledge into an end-to-end category strategy. Develops solutions that reflect a thorough understanding of Chewy’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Addresses potential issues through effective planning and resourcing. Applies extensive, expert knowledge and experience to support the business direction. Can take complex, abstract ideas or situations and distill the fundamental issues and articulate the solution in an easy-to-understand way.

Serving Clients/Stakeholders: Adapts quickly and resourcefully to shifting priorities and rapid change within Chewy. Demonstrates tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty while delivering a service and value for internal Chewy customers. Recommends process improvements that will greatly improve quality, and establishes effective systems, processes, and procedures to get work done and transfer knowledge. Brings fresh perspectives, innovation, ideas & best practice into Chewy.

Problem Solving: Must support business needs within Chewy and be aligned with Procurement. Must be able to understand and deliver savings and risk mitigation from the sourcing and operational complexities of the category of spend. Must be able to work on cross-functional and/or cross-site teams to achieve objectives. Superior negotiating skills while representing Chewy to Carriers and negotiating formal commitments for services/products which are strategic to Chewy. Knowledge of multiple spending patterns, Carrier processes, business processes across the company must be employed to effectively make decisions representing internal clients and the relationships with Chewy’s Carriers.

Communication: Communicates opinions, facts and thoughts with clarity, transparency, and honesty. Seeks multiple perspectives and listens openly to others’ points of views. Enables and demonstrates the courage to speak up on issues and risks as well as on the good news. Interacts, communicates, and coordinates with people at all levels, both internally and externally. Has a high level of interaction with Chewy Carrier base. Ability to Train and develop Procurement team members (provides technical and interpersonal skills to develop others) and can adapt to several training methods as necessary to set team members up for success.

What You’ll Need:

• BA or BS required; MBA preferred. Procurement qualifications are a plus (e.g., CSPM, APP, ISM, IPMM or MCIPS).
• Demonstrated ability of working with and managing cross functional strategic procurement teams in a global, complex, changing environment to deliver value-added results to the organization.
• 7-10 + years of experience in Global Strategic Sourcing Procurement organizations driving Transportation related procurement initiatives.
• Expertise in developing, leading, driving and managing Carrier and contract negotiations while leading and developing a growing team to do the same
• Extensive knowledge of category management practices and principles.
• Leadership skills to effectively direct, drive, and achieve results in a global supply chain
• Ability to communicate direction and influence others.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver value-added results to the organization by driving department financial analysis principles and procurement discipline.
• Deep experience in understanding assessorial applications to bid events, TMS, ORS, and WMS involvement downstream, rate card creation, and forecasting processes
• High level of client focus and an ability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
• Ability to think strategically, communicate expectations, drive a diverse team to achieve results.
• Up to 15% travel may be required.
• Ability to work in a Pet Friendly environment.