About the job

Job summary

Do you want to take on an exciting opportunity to help build your strategic knowledge of the business? With oversight of a whole directorate?

 

Do you enjoy diving into every task, working in a varied role making improvements and efficiencies to the way teams work

If you are passionate about driving excellence in operational delivery and efficiency, have excellent communication skills and a passion for problem solving come and join us our team.

Job Summary

In this role, you'll be responsible for delivering operational excellence in the Crown Commercial Service by leading projects and improving operational processes. Reporting to the Commercial Operations Leads, you will support the ongoing transformation to achieve the CCS growth ambition. Your responsibilities will include supporting the creation of the overall change program for commercial and leading key elements, such as performance and analytics, workforce management, financial planning, governance and audit, and operational process improvement.

Commercial Directorate Overview

Commercial is the largest directorate in CCS and is responsible for the design, development, implementation and management of our commercial agreements, which are used by our customers across the public sector. We have helped our customers:

• spend more than £34 billion through the agreements we create

• enjoy more than £3.5 billion in commercial benefits annually through our agreements

Category management sits at the heart of CCS. We use our knowledge and expertise of public sector suppliers, to create market and category strategies. These strategies are used within CCS to create market leading commercial agreements that help shape how common goods and services are bought across the public sector. Our skills are also used in carrying out commercial policy, development of new products and services and supplier relationship management.

Job description

Team Summary

Commercial Operations is responsible for the effective and efficient running of the  Commercial Directorate, driving and maintaining high standards of operational capability across the organisation. The team is staffed with operations experts and is accountable for driving continuous operational improvement.

 

Working closely with colleagues in the wider Commercial Operations team, the function is responsible and accountable for delivering and embedding  a programme of change to improve the service to internal customers and further enhance the operations service offering.

Our Commercial Team is transforming to become even more flexible. Candidates should be aware that there will be opportunities to flex into other category areas as required, either to meet business needs and/or for staff development.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identifying and leading process changes to increase efficiency and effectiveness

• Maintaining workforce planning tools and associated analytics.

• Preparing analytics packs to enabling the Operations Leads to analyse and prepare data-driven insight.

• Coordinate the CD Business Impact Assessment and ensure regular updates

• Supporting the financial forecasting and business planning process

• Preparing and maintaining audit plans and data to ensure the Commercial Directorate meets its compliance requirements

• Acting as a ‘Data Champion’ within the Directorate to continually improve data quality in Salesforce, PowerBI and other data tools

• Assisting the Operations Leads in developing processes and communications around objective setting 

• The post holder will build and maintain strong working relationships within the category teams and across CCS. Developing and owning relationships, and building detailed knowledge of stakeholder needs to deliver value through commercial practice improvement activity.  

• Responsible for the formation, management, maintenance and leadership of working groups and/or cross-functional teams to drive delivery on project areas under your control

Person specification

Essential Criteria (To be assessed at application stage):

• Demonstrates the ability to manage a team in a project environment to the achievement of a plan and can build their confidence to deal with setbacks

• Data-driven, highly numerate with an eye for accuracy and detail. Expert Excel skills.

• Resilient demonstrating experience of strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders

• Experience in working with numerical or financial-based data to validate and provide insight. The ability to use problem-solving and analytical skills with large data sets

• Good time management, prioritising and multi-tasking skills

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,575, Crown Commercial Service contributes £11,808 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Technical skills.

Selection Process

Candidates who are successful at sift will be contacted as soon as possible following the closing date and advised of the interview process in more detail. The sift and interview times and dates to be confirmed. (Subject to change)

To find out more about our recruitment process please click here

Please note: Applicants can make use of artificial intelligence but the information presented at application must be factual.

A reserve list may be held for up to 6 months, which the Civil Service may use to fill future suitably similar vacancies across government for candidates who are considered appointable following interview. Should you be placed on a reserve list and want to be removed please contact recruitment@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.