Job Description

Commercial

The Ministry of Justice has one of the largest and most complex spending profiles in central government. Each year we spend more than £5 billion with our suppliers and it’s our job to help coordinate the sourcing of what we need. We support the management of our contracts across the department, its agencies and non‑departmental public bodies.

Commercial is responsible for coordinating procurement and contract management across the MoJ, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Commercial is organised into category teams, each with an interesting portfolio of contracts and diverse customers and suppliers to manage. We also have systems, programme management office, supplier relationship and risk management teams who work across all areas.

Public Bodies Business Partnering, Professional and Core Services

Core Services

The Core Services Commercial team consists of four categories which support the MoJ & ALBs (Arm’s Length Bodies) with procurement and contract management activity.

• Financial Services

• Corporate Services

• People Services (Personnel)

• People Services (L&D and apprenticeships)

We have vacancies within the following three categories:

Financial Services

Financial Services team sits within the Core Services portfolio, which also incorporates Corporate and People Services.

Financial Services is a busy category covering a wide range of contracts, including high-profile and critical Gold contracts and a selection of Silver and Bronze Contracts. These contracts need proactive management in collaboration with the Ministry’s operational contract management teams. The team manages annual Contract spend in excess of £100m, investments in excess of £250m and supports income collected from Fines/Fees in excess of £600m

The Financial Services team are responsible for the procurement and management of 25 contracts in total (including 4 critical Gold Contracts) across a range of Financial Services including Investments, Payment Acceptance, Payment Solutions, Insurance, Claims and Compensation, Pensions and Banking Services. As the Commercial Manager you will be responsible for the leadership and management of a set of contracts and line management duties to the Assistant Commercial Manager. It is essential that the candidate has experience in contract management and procurement.

Personnel (People Services)

We have an exciting opportunity for a Commercial Manager to join our People Services category under Personnel Services that is predominately based in Leeds. The People Services Team sits within Core Goods and Services and our contracts cover all the MoJ and its ALBs. This team manages a range of contracts, these services include:

• Permanent Recruitment Services

• Occupational Health

• Employee Benefits

L&D and Apprenticeships (People Services)

We have an exciting opportunity for a Commercial Manager to join our Learning & Development and Apprenticeship category team. This team sits within Core Goods and Services and our contracts cover all the MoJ and its ALBs. This team manages a range of contracts for staff learning and development, examples include;

• Probation Officer Schemes

• Polygraph Training

• Forensic Psychology

• Rope Access Training

• Football Coaching

• Waste Management training

• Wood Product Manufacturing operation apprenticeship

• Intelligence Analyst apprenticeship

These contractual requirements range in value from £10,000 to £40 million. As a Commercial Manager you would be responsible for some of the higher more strategic L&D contracts.

It may be possible that you would have line management responsibilities for one person, but this would depend on the structure of the team at the time of appointment.

Role Summary

As a Commercial Manager, you will support the team and the Senior Commercial Manager to deliver procurement and contract management activities to achieve commercial outcomes across the business. Working within a fast-paced environment, you will bring excellent communication and organisational skills to ensure contracts are working effectively, and stakeholder relationships are managed appropriately. The category involves working with a wide and diverse set of stakeholders and suppliers and covers some really unique and niche requirements.

In this role you will contribute to delivering commercial excellence for the department, providing a customer-focused service, understanding the business need 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. You will lead and own elements of the overall commercial lifecycle, including strategy and policy development, understanding needs and sourcing options, contract and supplier management and the procurement process itself.

You will work both independently and part of a larger team by drawing on your commercial experience to drive performance and manage setbacks. You will be able to prioritise and manage your own workload to deliver to deadlines, mitigate and escalate any emerging risks and to respond swiftly to changing operational demands.

Key Responsibilities

These roles are varied, and individual remit is subject to both size of category, and/or all levels of complexity, value and risk within a category. Typically, key responsibilities for a commercial professional in this role may include (but are not limited to):

Strategic delivery and management within a category:

• Understanding the department’s commercial strategy and feeding into the planning process based on commercial approaches that deliver requirements in line with business needs, category strategies and market trends

• Feeding into the development of category strategies and delivery of sourcing requirement within commercial, as part of the team supporting business as usual and project activities

• Understanding demand by forecasting and planning requirements with internal stakeholders and suppliers

• Developing and maintaining category plans for key spend areas

Understanding relevant sourcing options and analysis, delivering positive outcomes through the procurement process:

• Leading on end-to-end strategic sourcing activities for the department and serving as a subject matter expert

• Working with key stakeholders to develop a clear and agreed view of business requirements, and supporting business units in articulating their commercial requirements

• Advising and providing professional guidance throughout the sourcing process, considering and evaluating a range of sourcing models

• Leading development of commercial input into business cases, demonstrating a project's benefits, ‘value for money’ and risk

• Influencing and shaping future procurement policy and standards across the department

• Identifying opportunities to develop collaborative partnerships with suppliers

• Providing a procurement service to the department which delivers demonstrable ‘value for money’ and compliant goods and services contracts as part of a team of procurement professionals on larger procurement activities, including driving productivity opportunities with existing supply base to deliver further savings

• Negotiating with third parties where necessary, using knowledge and experience relating to commercial negotiation techniques

• Understanding and being accountable for sourcing compliance and frameworks

Ensuring effective Commercial Contract and Supplier Management within the category:

• Evaluating the performance of suppliers against the specification and reporting regularly

• Actively contributing to the management of the supply chain portfolio, including the development and implementation of supply chain and supplier relationship strategies

• Acting as commercial lead, managing one or more complex contracts, ensuring effective stakeholder management, governance, performance management frameworks, escalation, risk management, issues resolution, financial management, change control and compliance

• Developing and maintaining positive commercial relationships with the supply chain to maintain and enhance performance, improve service delivery and create additional value

• On an ongoing basis, tracking operation demand and patterns, introducing demand management mechanisms where applicable

• Analysing and assessing supplier risk, understanding impact on contingency and business continuity, driving ‘value for money’ whilst protecting the department’s risk position

• Tracking and owning risks relating to specific contracts, taking steps to mitigate commercial risks

Building and maintaining key relationships across the department and with important external stakeholders:

• Developing effective working relationships with supplier organisations to establish appropriate governance and relationship arrangements, ensuring the effective management of clarifications and change requests

• Provision of commercial advice to stakeholders on all aspects of commercial

• Engaging, where required, with the relevant senior business lead, ensuring that business requirements are supported by category strategies

Enabling and developing the department:

• Championing procurement best practice and working collaboratively with others to create a proactive and intelligent function

• Contributing to the maintenance and updating of systems throughout the procurement lifecycle

• Managing catalogues and commercial content, and maybe responsible for owning key aspects of this

• Working with key stakeholders to promote the use of catalogues

• Playing a role in building capability of new starters and those on development programmes

In addition:

• Mentoring and providing guidance to junior members of the team

• Working within a secure environment on sensitive projects as required

• Some of the roles may involve line management

As part of your own personal career development in the Commercial team, there could be opportunities to move roles at the same grade.  In some circumstances, we may need to move you on to business-critical priorities at the same grade to meet business need.

Essential Criteria

Commercial Focus: Has good experience within a procurement, commercial or buying role. Has a good understanding of the principles of end-to-end commercial lifecycle management, and sourcing and procurement methodologies. Evidence of leading and securing ‘value for money’ in a commercial environment. Has strong commercial knowledge, understands commercial law and can use key commercial tools appropriately

Risk and Assurance Management: Demonstrates the ability to manage cyber, personnel and physical risks within an area of responsibility

Commercial Ethics: Demonstrates the ability to apply standards to eliminate corruption, fraud and unethical behaviour in supply chains, taking appropriate actions in the event of any alleged breach of standards

Team Focus: Demonstrates the ability to work as part of a team to support their performance, manage setbacks and resolve issues internally

Build Relationships: Demonstrates the ability to communicate with stakeholders at all levels using different communication styles to articulate the benefits that have been achieved and to establish governance and relationship arrangements.

Desirable Criteria

• Working knowledge of systems, e.g. Oracle and/or Jaggaer (Bravo),

• Awareness and understanding of public sector commercial principles and legislation

• Awareness of public sector commercial legislation including EU Rules and UK interpretations. 

• Candidates must have one of the following or a willingness to work towards gaining the appropriate qualification in commercial management profession - CIPS, World CC or similar.

Application Stage

An initial sift will be performed against the following elements and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Experience

• CV

• Statement of Suitability (Up to 750 words). In the statement of suitability, please demonstrate your skills for the role and how you meet the key responsibilities and essential criteria as detailed in the job description

Behaviours

We will assess your application on the following behaviours. Please use the STAR method in your examples.

• Communicating & Influencing (max 250 words)

If shortlisted, you will be invited to an interview and will be assessed on the selected success profile elements at the interview stage.

Interview stage

There is one interview stage for this vacancy which will be held remotely and as part of the interview process you will be required to provide evidence on the following, and will be assessed against the Civil Service success profiles framework:

Behaviours

• Making Effective Decisions

• Leadership

• Managing a Quality Service

Technical

• A technical question on resolving an issue within Procurement

• A technical question on resolving an issue within Contract Management

Strengths will be assessed at the interview, and these are not shared in advance.

To learn more about the Civil Service success profiles framework and how they are assessed please click here.

Please use STAR approach to structure your examples for both the application and interview for behaviours. Using the STAR method can help you give examples of relevant experience that you have. It allows you to set the scene, show what you did, and how you did it, and explain the overall outcome.

Situation: Describe the situation you found yourself in. You must describe a specific event or situation. Be sure to give enough detail for the job holder to understand.

• Where are you?

• Who was there with you?

• What had happened?

Task: The job holder will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation you found yourself in.

• What was the task that you had to complete and why?

• What did you have to achieve?

Actions: What did you do? The job holder will be looking for information on what you did, how you did it and why. Keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take and what was your contribution? Remember to include how you did it, and the behaviours you used. Try to use “I" rather than “we" to explain your actions that lead to the result. Be careful not to take credit for something that you did not do.

Results: Don’t be shy about taking credit for your behaviour. Quote specific facts and figures. Explain how the outcome benefitted the organisation or your area. Make the outcomes easily understandable.

• What results did the actions produce?

• What did you achieve through your actions and did you meet your goals?

• Was it a successful outcome? If not, what did you learn from the experience?

Keep the situation and task parts brief. Concentrate on the action and the result. If the result was not entirely successful describe what you learned from this and what you would do differently next time. Make sure you focus on your strengths.

Commercial Roles

New entrants are expected to join on the pay minimum. Higher starting salary and / or Recruitment & Retention Allowance may be available for successful candidates with exceptional skills and experience.

We will consider applications from non-qualified candidates, who are willing to develop and work towards a recognised qualification in order to meet the full requirements of the role.

The specialist allowance may apply to fully qualified applicants with a commercial professional qualification, for example CIPS, World CC, etc.

Further details can be provided during the recruitment process.