Global Sourcing and Procurement Projects Associate at One Acre Fund

One Acre Fund, founded in 2006, supplies smallholder farmers with the agricultural services they need to make their farms more productive. We provide quality farm supplies on credit, delivered within walking distance of farmers’ homes, and agricultural trainings to improve harvests. We measure our success by our ability to make farmers more prosperous: On average, farmers harvest 50 percent more food after working with One Acre Fund. We serve more than 800,000 farm families in Eastern and Southern Africa, with more than 7,500 full-time staff, and we aim to serve 1 million farm families by 2020.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Global Sourcing and Procurement Projects Associate

Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Duration: Full-time job.
Preferred Start Date: As soon as possible

Details

Enhance systems & implement cost saving measures that will drive efficient scale-up of the supply chain. Deliver results on high impact projects designed to drive performance, eliminate waste & achieve cost-effectiveness.

Job Description

To support One Acre Fund’s rapid growth trajectory, our team plans to more than triple our purchasing portfolio in the next 5 years. Top put that into context, we’re purchasing over $70M worth of goods in 2019 alone. To sustainably support this growth, we need to dramatically save costs and simplify our processes to deliver an effective, agile procurement department at the feet of our over 800,000 clients.
We are looking for a creative and analytical go-getter who will take on a portfolio of challenging cost and time saving projects. In this role, we’ll look for you to find ways to save over one million dollars every year, set our processes up for scale, and use data to hold the team accountable to ambitious performance targets. You will stay out of the day-to-day weeds and focus on tackling high priority projects. Specific responsibilities include:

Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Use Data to Set Targets: Work with the sourcing data team to clean up and use data. More specifically:

Use data to make investment decisions (like when to buy fertilizer to optimize savings or whether to order aggressively vs. conservatively based on historical forecast vs. actuals performance);
Report performance metrics to leadership and internal team to inspire improvement and celebrate wins;
Generally stop at nothing to get the data you need, whether that means going out and running market surveys or building reports in PowerBI and excel using extracts from our ERP.

Develop and implement projects that save meaningful money: Collaborate with teammates and other departments to initiate creative, data-focused projects that save money and improve efficiency. Your goal is to achieve at least $1M in new savings every year. Example projects include:

Developing a new cost analysis tool to measure and report cost savings;
Use data to improve forecast accuracy to minimize excess inventory and stock-outs;
Improve data visibility to empower purchasers to negotiate and internal clients and approvers to make better informed decisions.

Simplify procurement processes to improve team resilience and agility: Simplify and integrate existing tools and make controls easier to follow:

Move processes into existing platforms – e.g., you’ll move cash forecasting into SAP, implement an e-tendering platform, and refine our vendor and contract management processes through SAP;
Close controls gaps in sourcing processes with support from team leadership and executors to reduce possible fraud or over-spend events;
Report on controls to internal team and organizational leadership.

Build Team Culture:

Create an enabling environment for purchasers to improve their sourcing skills by developing trainings and being a mentor to others;
Support heavily on recruitment by tapping into talent pools to hire top talent for open roles on the team

Career Growth and Development

We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance.
We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications
You have 4+ years or work experience in an operations or strategic problem-solving role, with exposure to complex project management. You have an excellent academic background, love data, and are passionate about reducing waste across supply chain operations. Having prior operations or consulting experience is preferred but we’re most interested in whether you have experience solving complex operational problems in a fast-growing organization. You have the following experience:

You have experience in a demanding, multicultural professional environment, preferably in positions where frequent cross-department collaboration was required.
You have experience in operations, consulting, manufacturing, or supply chain.
You have leadership experience at work or outside of work.
You love working with data and have data analytics and quantitative reasoning skills; Advanced Excel (can maintain complex spreadsheets) required and experience working in SAP is preferred.
When confronted with challenges, you think creatively and always look for win-win solutions.
You enjoy coordinating with diverse teams – you advocate for your ideas while also being humble and open to other perspectives.
You’re comfortable quality checking documentation without support.
You are passionate about delivering outstanding customer service – you put customers first in all that you do and understand the importance of building agile processes that will best serve your clients.
You are fluent in English (French and Swahili a plus).

Remuneration / Condition
Compensation: