Indirect Procurement Team Lead

About Kerry

About the role

Lead the centralized Indirect Purchase Order team and ensure accurate, timely and compliant delivery across the end-to-end PO lifecycle, from request validation and PO creation through changes, goods receipt or service confirmation, invoice exception resolution and supplier query support. This is a hands-on people leadership role that combines operational execution, workload and performance management, controls, stakeholder partnership, team development and continuous improvement for the North America service.

What will you do?

• Lead daily Indirect PO operations, allocate workload and ensure requests are completed accurately and within agreed service levels.
• Operate as a hands-on working lead, stepping into transactional and exception-management activities when volume, complexity, absence coverage or business risk requires it.
• Own service performance across request validation, PO creation and maintenance, approval follow-up, goods receipt or service confirmation, supplier queries, and invoice or match exceptions. Monitor queues, backlog, aging, turnaround time, rework, rejected requests and recurring issues; take corrective action and escalate material risks promptly.
• Monitor failed invoices in OpenText that result from incorrectly raised Purchase Orders (POs) or Goods Receipt Notes (GRNs), identify recurring failure patterns and ensure timely resolution.
• Lead root cause analysis and implement corrective and preventive actions when the 90% First Time Pass Rate target for centralized Indirect Purchasing activities is not achieved.
• Ensure compliance with procurement policies, approved-vendor requirements, delegation of authority, segregation of duties, tax requirements, documentation standards and audit controls.
• Lead, coach and develop team members through onboarding, cross-training, knowledge transfer, feedback, objective setting and development planning.
• Maintain team capacity, business continuity and backup coverage across critical activities and restricted-access processes.
• Own operational SOPs, work instructions, knowledge materials, control evidence and service-performance reporting.
• Lead root-cause analysis and drive standardization, simplification and automation to improve quality, productivity and stakeholder experience.
• Act as the primary operational escalation point for requesters, approvers, suppliers and GBS (Global Business Services) partner teams.
• Support transition readiness, knowledge transfer, shadowing, reverse shadowing, cutover, hypercare and handover into business as usual.

What will you need to be successful?

• Bachelor’s degree (preferred, not mandatory) in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Supply Chain, or similar.
• Experience: Minimum 3 years in a similar leadership role within Finance.
• Demonstrated knowledge in procure-to-pay, procurement operations, accounts payable, indirect purchasing or purchase-order management in a comparable shared service environment.
• Skilled with Microsoft 365 tools. Experience with Coupa and SAP is desirable.
• Professional English communication for North American stakeholders and suppliers.
• Strong analytical problem-solving, proactive follow-up and escalation judgment.
• Stakeholder, supplier and service-escalation management.
• Workload, capacity and priority management in an SLA-driven environment.
• Financial-control, documentation and audit-readiness mindset.
• Continuous improvement, process standardization and change capability.
• People-oriented and committed to capability development.
• Collaborative and effective in a matrix environment.

We may use artificial intelligence tools to support the review and assessment of applications and assist with scheduling interviews. We do not use AI to make decisions during the interview process. All candidate assessments and hiring decisions are made by our recruitment and leadership teams.