Procurement Manager

The UNICEF Supply Catalogue contains specifications for over 2,000 commodities that respond to the needs of children and their families. The Catalogue is designed to help partners identify the most appropriate supplies for the programmes, and assist in supply planning, delivery and monitoring.

Depending on their situation, this may very well prove to be one of a candidate’s top three accomplishments. Regardless, job seekers need to show they understand truly effective ways to engage with internal clients as well as external suppliers, and work together to accomplish initiatives and support both procurement and company-wide goals.

Even in the most tactical procurement roles, a buyer should be able to visualize the purchasing process from beginning to end. Each of these nine steps of the tactical purchasing process should be known inside and out:

☛ Determining a need

☛ Communicating the need

☛ Reviewing the need

☛ Finding potential suppliers

☛ Conducting bidding and/or negotiation

☛ Selecting a supplier

☛ Formalizing the commitment

☛ Following up

☛ Closing out the transaction

Transaction limits for all cards were raised in 2012. Purchases over £1,000 need to be requisitioned and raised formally unless the cardholder works in the Faculty of Science in which case single transaction limits may be increased on receipt of the Purchasing card limit request form.

Make sure the correct template is being used (Government, NGO or UN) and replace all the grey-shaded fields with the correct information.

Print two hard copies and sign/date both, then submits both original signed copies to the UNICEF Country Office Representative for counter signature (or to Procurement Services if there is no UNICEF Country Programme). A fully signed copy will be returned to the partner for their records.

Please note that any changes to the standard MOU template require clearance from the Director of Supply Division prior to signature.

Raw purchasing transaction data can take up a lot of space on a screen or in a report. It can appear useless. But, modern technology can help you transform that data into information and intelligence. And you don’t need to purchase an expensive procurement technology suite to do so. Microsoft Excel offers many functions that can be very useful for analyzing raw purchasing transaction data. From simple sorting and subtotals to using PivotTables, you can conduct a very thorough spend analysis using Excel alone.

Even though there may only be one supplier capable of fulfilling the need, their suitability to work for the University still needs to be assessed.

If the supplier is contracted to the University and the lunch is of low value (i.e. a sandwich lunch) this is fine to accept. However, if the supplier is currently in a tender process, under no circumstance should lunch be accepted. For a lunch where the value is over £30, the gifts and hospitality form should be completed and sent to the Procurement Service.

The reason for agreeing the evaluation criteria in advance is to ensure that the correct weightings have been given to those areas of most importance. Through the detailed evaluation undertaken, the supplier ranked in first position should therefore be the correct supplier, and an award will be made.

We deliver supplies “Cost and Insurance Paid” (CIP - Inco terms 2010) to the port of entry designated in the Cost Estimate. UNICEF nominated freight forwarders deliver the goods to the port of entry designated by the partner. If you request supplies to be shipped by air, the port of entry is usually the nearest major international airport. For sea shipments, the port of entry is usually the nearest major international seaport in the country where the project is implemented. The seaport of entry for land-locked countries varies on a case-by-case basis. In general, air shipments will carry a higher delivery cost than ground or sea shipments.

Transactions cannot be disaggregated, and this may result in one of the transactions being declined by Barclaycard. It may also result in your card being cancelled for mis-use.

The first step of building a sourcing strategy is creating a Savings Strategy Outline. A Savings Strategy Outline will list all tasks that you plan to accomplish during a sourcing initiative. For each of those tasks, you will list target commencement dates, actual commencement dates, target completion dates, actual completion dates, target annual savings and actual annual savings. Obviously, at the beginning of your sourcing initiative, your Savings Strategy Outline will only contain target dates. But, as you progress through your sourcing initiative, you will add actual dates.

Spend information is taken from all financial systems, Oracle, acquire and Barclaycard spend. This is then reviewed to look at off-contract spend, and these are then categorised into short-term (contract needed within 12 months, perhaps where there is a legal requirement or there is likely to be an increase in spend); medium-term (contract needed within 24 months) and long-term (contract needed, but not urgent as there are other contracts available that can be used).

It is a requirement, as identified in the Diamond Report, for University’s to use collaborative agreements for 30% of their non pay spends. This is measured on an annual basis through statistical returns. The Procurement Service will always review any agreements that are available to use, and will discuss with the stakeholder if this is suitable for their needs. If they are, a mini competition will be undertaken that complies with the terms set in the framework agreement. This can substantially reduce timescales. If the agreement is not suitable, or does not closely match our requirements, we will have to do our own tender.

A candidate’s accomplishments underscore not only their perceived competencies but how much value they place on key parts of the position on offer. Maybe they restructured the purchase order process and implemented three-way verification to reduce rogue spending. Perhaps they spearheaded the streamlining of the supply chain for additional cost savings, or establishing a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with a supplier. Whatever the case, their answer should make it clear how they can put the skills they’ve used in the past to help strengthen your purchasing organization in the future.

Negotiation or bartering on price is not ethical, however there are techniques that can be adopted to influence a change in a proposal, for example value engineering. This must be done by trained Procurement Service staff. If price is very important, it may be possible to carry out an eAuction. This must be decided in advance of the tender.

The advantages that we receive by complying with EU legislation are:

☛ Free advertising of requirements and therefore being alerted to other suppliers that may not have been known about otherwise.

☛ Compliance with the competition act.

☛ Assurance that a robust and fair process has been followed.

The lead time on orders is calculated from the time of acceptance of the Cost Estimate and deposit of funds for the supplies, and it depends on factors such as the availability of the commodity, the quantities requested, the general market situation, etc. Generally, it takes a minimum of 6 weeks after the deposit of funds for the goods to be delivered.