Director, Procurement Operations

Location: Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

When you join the team at Unum, you become part of an organization committed to helping you thrive.

Here, we work to provide the employee benefits and service solutions that enable employees at our client companies to thrive throughout life’s moments. And this starts with ensuring that every one of our team members enjoys opportunities to succeed both professionally and personally. To enable this, we provide:

Award-winning culture

Inclusion and diversity as a priority

Performance Based Incentive Plans

Competitive benefits package that includes: Health, Vision, Dental, Short & Long-Term Disability

Generous PTO (including paid time to volunteer!)

Up to 9.5% 401(k) employer contribution

Mental health support

Career advancement opportunities

Student loan repayment options

Tuition reimbursement

Flexible work environments

*All the benefits listed above are subject to the terms of their individual Plans.

And that’s just the beginning…

With 10,000 employees helping more than 39 million people worldwide, every role at Unum is meaningful and impacts the lives of our customers. Whether you’re directly supporting a growing family, or developing online tools to help navigate a difficult loss, customers are counting on the combined talents of our entire team. Help us help others, and join Team Unum today!

General Summary

This role is responsible for leading, defining and managing the Procure-to-Pay (P2P) and Travel Operations organizations. This includes the requisitioning process, Purchase Order (POs) creation, receipt of goods and services, invoice processing, payment solutions, payment reconciliation, payment account coding, use of credit cards (procurement cards, corporate cards, and virtual cards), management of the travel agency, travel expense policy adherence and governance and the execution of the financial approval process around purchases and payments. This role will be responsible for improving current P2P processes, while managing the current P2P processes and related departments.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Monitor standards and policy compliance across the P2P, Travel Operations, Corporate Card Program and Expense Auditing process, identify and elevate issues as needed and recommend policy or procedure changes

Oversee the end-to-end P2P process, ensuring timely and accurate processing of purchase orders, invoices, and payments

Define operational reporting and metrics needed to drive improvements in P2P process

Provide leadership for the development, update and maintenance of procurement transaction standards and policies

Drive the increase of upfront financial and functional approval for purchases

Provide financial oversight to ensure proper controls are in-place and adhered to for cash disbursements, including leading internal and external audits related to cash disbursements

Recommend potential technologies to improve P2P process and partner with the Source-to-Pay Process Manager to finalize the business case for implementation.

Understand best practices within the entire P2P end-to-end process and drive practical application of best practices within Unum’s business environment

Collaborate with colleagues to institutionalize the activities surrounding P2P, both within the team, furthering integration with the finance and strategic sourcing teams, as well as with key internal stakeholders.

Partner with Legal, Compliance, Internal and External Audit to ensure that the P2P policies and procedures are aligned with enterprise controls and policies.

Manage invoice processing and payment transaction standards and policies

Manage the travel operations, corporate/procurement card program, and the expense auditing function ensuring minimized travel disruptions, proper usage of the corporate/procurement card and adherence to the established corporate travel policies

Drive usage of procurement, AP and T&E policies, including the expansion of virtual card payment, ePayables and standardization of financial approval processes across the P2P process

Monitor and propose improvements to the efficiency and controls of invoices, expense audits, travel bookings and credit card payments made through the Corporate Sponsored credit card (includes procurement card, corporate card, virtual card, and ePayables)

Benchmark industry best practices ensuring efficient cost-effective services and implements programs and policy changes to drive desired outcomes

Communicate companywide budget guidelines, expense trends, and provide recommendations for minimizing travel-related expenses.

Designs and delivers training and education plans and events to ensure awareness around travel policies and practices

Supports corporate events that require unique and specific travel needs, working directly with Corporate Events, Corporate Aviation, Commercial Travel and/or Travel partners to ensure efficient, problem free travel.

Ensures integration of commercial travel with Corporate Aviation, maximizing owned assets and looking holistically at travel patterns and expenses.

Serve as a member of the Strategic Sourcing Leadership Team for Unum, collaborating in the development and deployment of key procurement strategies and ensuring procurement support activities are aligned with overall strategic direction and the business objectives.

Promote benefits of change, acts as a catalyst for change across enterprise and adapts to changes as required

Attract, retain, and develop a competent & motivated team capable of meeting current and future needs of the business

Collaborate across different organizational levels, functions, businesses, and geographies to realize procurement goals and objectives

Direct the activities of supplier relationship managers from simple, routine to highly complex supplier arrangements of strategic importance to Unum.

Develop & maintain appropriate linkages with the various business and functional leaders to ensure successful execution of strategies.

Support VP, Strategic Sourcing in performing reviews with the business and functional leaders to reflect changing business needs and ensure that the strategies contribute to the growth and profitability of the business.

May perform other duties as required.

Job Specifications

• BA/BS in Supply Chain Management, Business or equivalent work experience; MBA preferred
• Minimum 10 years of related procurement/finance experience with at least 5 years of procurement or procure-to-pay management experience preferred.
• Solid working knowledge of procure to pay applications and processes, purchasing procedures, controls, surrounding business processes and best practices in procurement and commercial contracts
• Demonstrates understanding key systems for procurement operations, corporate travel, AP, T&E and card systems

Experience in cross-functional team management

Passion for developing a high performance team and proven ability to motivate professional staff at all levels toward successful results.

Ability to establish objectives, implement procedures, and develop methods to measure effectiveness of results obtained

Strong collaborative skills, positive attitude, high energy and results orientation

Strong ability to build relationships and networks with multiple functions and at the leadership levels

Strong leadership, project management, influencing, financial and negotiation skills

Strong strategic and analytical thinking, problem solving, decision making, with ability to identify key findings & implications

Strong detail orientation, with a focus on cost reduction and process improvement

Exceptional interpersonal skills, able to work in diverse environments and adhere to highest ethical standards

Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to effectively articulate difficult ideas and concepts through clear and concise verbal and/or written communication.

Exceptional initiative and ability to set stretch goals

Advanced PC skills required (Excel, Power Point, Word, etc.)

Unum and Colonial Life are part of Unum Group, a Fortune 500 company and leading provider of employee benefits to companies worldwide. Headquartered in Chattanooga, TN, with international offices in Ireland, Poland and the UK, Unum also has significant operations in Portland, ME - plus over 35 US field offices. Colonial Life is headquartered in Columbia, SC, with over 40 field offices nationwide.

Unum is an equal opportunity employer, considering all qualified applicants and employees for hiring, placement, and advancement, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, genetic information, military status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or protected veteran status.

The base salary range for applicants for this position is listed below. Unless actual salary is indicated above in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location and experience.

$89,900.00-$169,900.00

Additionally, Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive including healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental), insurance benefits (short & long-term disability), performance-based incentive plans, paid time off, and a 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not. All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

Company

Unum

Additional Locations: Portland, Maine, USA