Ministry of Justice

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.

Role Summary

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 with key Business Partnering categories including HMCTS and MoJ Policy:

•             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:

•             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, in particular the ‘define’ stage, 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

•             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 

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

•             Build effective working relationships across all levels of HMCTS Business and utilise these relationships to influence and build impactful commercial strategies.

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

•             Understand each of the customers within your remit, their unique operational priorities and how these translate into commercial pipelines and risks

•             Working across the portfolio to support a variety of initiatives to improve the overall commercial offering to, and capability of HMCTS

•             Developing and delivering training, assessing and building commercial capability, and supporting the delivery of the overarching communication/engagement strategy

•             Lead sourcing and/or contract management activity from time to time, where requirements are not catered for within existing categories.

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

For this campaign we vacancies within the following portfolios in Commercial.  In addition to the essential and desirable criteria, and responsibilities above, each portfolio may have additional desirable criteria which has been stated below.

HMCTS – Commercial Partnering

Vacancies: 1

The HM Courts and Tribunal Services (HMCTS) Commercial Partnering team is a new, exciting and expanding area in Commercial’s already diverse and wide range of commercial support opportunities. Its aim: to ensure HMCTS have the appropriate strategic commercial advice and support, support effective assurance and governance oversight for the directorate by engaging in forward planning, and develop commercial capability and capacity across HMCTS to ensure the business understands what is expected of a “good customer”.

As the Commercial Partner, you will build effective relationships across HMCTS Key stakeholder. You will be responsible for understanding your stakeholders operational priorities and how these translate into commercial pipelines and risks. You will provide commercial expertise and advice where needed, while working across the portfolio to support a variety of initiatives to improve the overall commercial offering to, and capability of HMCTS. This will include developing and delivering training, assessing and building commercial capability and supporting the delivery of the overarching communication/engagement strategy. You may also lead sourcing and/or contract management activity from time to time, where HMCTS requirements cannot be catered for within existing categories.

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 and Influencing

•             Seeing the Big Picture

•             Leadership

Please note in the event of a large number of applications being received we may run the initial sift against CV, Statement of Suitability and lead behaviour of Leadership.

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

•             Changing and Improving

•             Making Effective Decisions

•             Working Together

•             Managing a Quality Service

Technical

Strengths maybe 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