DWP is one of the government's largest public service departments, touching every citizen in the country at some point in their lives and paying £200+ billion to 20 million+ customers, each year. DWP has £3bn+ of spend under commercial management. Our aim is to improve people's day to days lives and help them build financial resilience and a more secure and prosperous future.
This role is central to the delivery of Commercial Directorate's (CD) strategy and continuing development of the function as one of the leading commercial teams within Government, enabling the department to become more efficient and ensuring the delivery of quality services from its third-party suppliers.
CD is organised in an 'end-to-end category management' model.Put simply, this means that individual CD colleagues own the procurement lifecycle from end to end for their category: from pre-procurement, through sourcing to in-life Management (including contract management and supplier relationship management).
CD oversees DWP's contracting arrangements across a wide range of categories. This role will have responsibility for commercial activities in directly outward facing operational services such as employment, health and other areas of service delivery, essentially the areas with direct customer-facing impact.
The Commercial Director, Operations, will lead a large team of well over 100 individuals. They will work closely with Directors General and Directors in Fraud, Health, Operations and other customer-facing areas taking responsibility for complex outsourced employment, health, and customer-facing services. They will report directly to the Chief Commercial Officer and help them in developing strategy, embedding innovation, and ensuring high quality delivery in all our commercially enabled customer-facing services.
Key responsibilities of the Commercial Director, Operations will include:
- Accountability for the delivery of future Departmental and commercial strategies for the way in which government and DWP will commission and contract for services in complex markets across multiple categories of customer-facing spend. Future commercial strategies will need to be innovative in achieving DWP's objectives whilst being accountable for delivering cost savings and efficiencies.
- Building close and productive working relationships with senior budget holding stakeholders within DWP, including at executive team level to ensure CD is truly engaged with and influencing decision making within the Department.
- Responsibility for commercial management of significant expenditure and contracts with total annual spend of over £1bn and total contract values in excess of £3bn, and working closely with the finance team to enable reinvestment of savings and potential reduction of expenditure.
- Leadership for multiple areas of spend within DWP primarily focused on delivery of services to citizens. These include Health Assessment Services, Employment Services and Service Delivery (including outsourced services).
- Demonstrating and developing robust financial acumen by driving greater transparency of costs, leading the delivery of savings and developing financial knowledge and market awareness within CD
- Routinely interacting with Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Director Generals, and 'C-level' Executives of supplier organisations. It is essential to be able to engage effectively at every level, understanding and interpreting vision and strategy and providing the right level of constructive challenge
- Playing a role in the broader commercial reform programme led by the Government Chief Commercial Officer
- Playing a key leadership and change management role in maintaining a strong commercial function for DWP and across Government
- Be amongst the most senior members of the Government Commercial Function and play a role in the broader commercial reform programme led by the Government Chief Commercial Officer
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Ability to prioritise and manage a complex, demanding workload including a portfolio of projects, maintaining focus on achieving results and the ability to personally and through others provide excellent customer-facing services and solutions
- Evidence of excellent business judgement and highly effective negotiation skills, able to intelligently weigh risks and exercise rapid decision making in complex and frequently ambiguous situations
- Experience of having evolved existing and/or implemented new category strategies to take advantage of emerging market innovations in complex customer-facing outsourced services and providing market insights to inform commercial decision making
- Experience of influencing decisions and building effective relationships at board/executive level with key senior stakeholders and suppliers within a fast moving, commercially-focused environment
- Evidence of building capability at all levels within a commercial function with sizable annual spend. An engaging, strategic leader who can coach and mentor teams, while providing and taking account of constructive challenges
- Significant senior experience leading large, geographically dispersed commercial teams in complex, customer-facing organisations. Developing commercial strategies for customer-facing services, & supporting/enabling transformation