Sourcing Specialist, Consultant

Your Role

The Global Business Services (GBS) department is responsible for delivering strategic and category supplier sourcing, contracting and governance excellence at Blue Shield of California.

The Contracting Specialist, Consultant will report to the Senior Manager, Contracting. This role is responsible for every phase of contract development from integrating relevant legal and compliance terms to negotiating the terms with BSC suppliers and finalizing the agreement documents through engaging with a diverse range of suppliers an internal stakeholders. Contracting specialists are also responsible for assisting clients to terminate and where necessary transition contracts on favorable terms for BSC. This role executes and delivers value through strategic, operational and transactional contracting initiatives working in partnership with the Blue Shield business unit(s) and stakeholder teams.

Your Work

In this role, you will:

• Act as a trusted advisor and provide sourcing strategy advice and consultation to best achieve the business strategy and objectives for transactional and operational initiatives
• Provide guidance to Business partners and seek alignment to influence spend and cost savings through supplier rationalization and driving economies of scale
• Prepare contractual agreements using current practices, contract templates, researching relevant background materials and informed knowledge of a business units needs and ability to fulfill its requirements
• Ensure that the contractual agreements include all necessary terms in language that is legally binding and in accordance with Law department guidelines
• Engage and collaborate with Business, Sourcing, Legal and other enterprise stakeholders to ensure that their requirements are reflected in all contracts
• Review contract terms and conditions to verify that they are in compliance with company policies and all applicable federal and state regulations
• Promote small, disadvantaged, and minority-owned businesses through a supplier diversity program
• Utilize your critical thinking skills and best judgement to solve business issues and support your colleagues and teammates
• Work in a collaborative fashion with your teammates to lend support and guidance as requested
• Contribute to the analysis of complex situations, identify risks and contribute to the development of risk mitigation ideas
• Present status and issue identification/resolution effectively to management

Your Knowledge and Experience

• Requires a bachelors degree or equivalent experience
• Minimum 7 years of relevant experience in a sourcing, contracting, and negotiations role
• Requires deep knowledge of end-to-end sourcing and contracting typically obtained through experience combined with advanced education
• Requires understanding of key components of basic agreements and how legal terms impact business terms and vice versa
• Requires excellent writing and communication skills, including ability to communicate and collaborate with Blue Shield employees at all levels
• Requires ability to understand how clauses relate to one another, including all exhibits and schedules
• Requires ability to write clearly and concisely while adapting templates to fit the services being procured in accordance with clients expectations
• Requires ability to review statements of work and/or requirements provided by a business partner, identify risks, apply best practices and improve the quality of the work product
• Requires experience of managing contracting initiatives from start to finish; strong ability to practice and apply time management skills to balance and manage the requirements of workload without missing deadlines
• Requires ability to secure alignment with stakeholders and hold them accountable to deadlines, while communicating risks and make necessary adjustments in a timely manner. Requires ability to manage multiple projects concurrently
• Requires knowledge of technology trends, particularly as they related to SaaS agreements and a desire to continuously learn aa technology evolves.
• Data analysis, strategic thinking, accuracy, attention to detail, and Microsoft Office skills

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