Director Transportation Excellence EU

TA Contact Person: Mini Bawa Sharma

Purpose

The Director Transport Excellence is a key in-house strategy execution role for an organized, passionate, goal-oriented, visionary leader who understands the challenges and the opportunities of an EU wide supply chain and transportation network. The primary focus of this position is to drive excellence in EU transportation network and ensure efficient processes in all  back-office functions. This role creates and implements the vision and strategy for transportation programs, systems and processes required to define and support the company’s current and future distribution and supply chain requirements. 

The candidate should be capable of defining and driving business transformation, streamlining operations, and building new solutions to simplify processes and deliver on strategic objectives.
Consecutively the team initiates, manages and drives improvement programs. To measure success, the team defines new metrics and KPIs, runs dashboards and supports supplier management to improve overall transportation KPIs.

Drive major change initiatives and projects in EU network from transport point of view.  (New DCs, TMS activation, )
Develop standard operating procedures and metrics to achieve business results and drive continuous improvement in all aspects of transportation across the company.
Accordingly, deliver a tactical / strategical improvement plan to streamline operations, processes, and systems, essentially to deliver better value for the business.
Create a vision for transportation and work backwards by defining the strategy and relevant milestones to reach to the consensus vision of the organization.
Ensure proper communication and stakeholder engagement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the transport excellence team with direct and indirect reporting lines.
• Own a quantitative, data-driven, fact-based mindset in order to prioritize and manage the EU transportation excellence agenda. 
• Ensure projects are delivered with proper cadence and governance, along with a clear communication plan.
• Lead quarterly and annual budgeting process along with Supply Chain Finance for EU Transport.
• Define and deliver cost saving initiatives to optimize our 300+ M Euro annual transportation spend.
• Improve overall transportation KPIs (OTIF, Speed, Sustainability, cost, NPS and VAS) for our omnichannel business (ecom, retail and wholesale).
• Design, budget, and deliver impactful IT tools for transportation management.
• Optimize the transportation network for better cost, service, speed and reliability. 
• Drive the sustainability vision of the company for the whole network.
• Build up transportation metrics and track performance, lead improvement agendas.
• Lead B2B and B2C tender process with Global Procurement 

Key Relationships: 

• Initiate and drive discussions with cross-functional internal stakeholders, as well as external partners; to collect and consolidate input, issues, feedback, and insights to prepare, plan, align and deliver solutions. 
• Deliver execution of the aligned tactical / strategic initiatives
• Proactively manage stakeholders, build relationships, and manage communication.
• Stakeholders can relate (but not limited) to the following core functions:
• EMEA Supply Chain Management (all functions) 
• EMEA Market (all functions)  
• External partners (carriers, solution providers and consultants)
• Global Operations (Global Transportation, Procurement. Digital, Strategy and IT)
• Corporate functions (e.g., legal, finance & performance management)

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: 
Soft skills:

• Thinks Big and has a bias for action. Expected to be creative, to plan, shine and deliver.
• End-to-end mindset with a holistic view of problems and opportunities on hand
• Has backbone, develops and constructively communicates his opinion, not scared to disagree, and yet commit. Seeks the best for the business always in mind.
• Solution builder with a creative mind and solid experience in delivering results.
• Highly self-motivated, and acts like an ‘owner’
• Earns trust, both of his/her team and internal/external stakeholders. Does what he/she says in due time, and dares to say ‘No’ when required so.
• Engaging, open and perceptive to feedback and improvement
• Autonomous and capable of handling all-way communication (upward, lateral and downward)
• Change management skills, influencing a network of internal and external stakeholders.
• Solid presentation and storytelling skills
• Discipline in planning, time management and organization skills 

Hard skills:

• Expertise on transport and last mile network, with suppliers, services, and consumer preferences
• Strong project management experience, from ideation to execution and follow-up
• Working experience with a Transportation Management and Optimization system
• Advanced MS Office skills, especially MS Excel and MS PowerPoint
• Dives deep with proven data analytics skills, and willing to ‘get his/her hands dirty’
• Has experience in building and evaluating Business Cases with scenario planning
• Strong project management experience, from ideation to execution and follow-up
• Continuous improvement and problem-solving skills; ability to develop and implement processes and metrics to manage business results
• Change management experience and communication skills, particularly interpersonal, in complex large / matrix organizations.
• Demonstrated experience in building strategic and operational plans that drive results over multiple cycles.
• Strong analytic and financial acumen; demonstrated experience in budgeting, and contract negotiations is a plus.
• Knowledge of transportation policy and law accompanied with knowledge of transportation technologies, databases and telematics systems is an advantage.

People management skills:

• Works with an ‘authentic / servant leader’ mindset. Leads by example.
• Fosters a team culture that encourages trust, open and constructive discussion.
• Insists on the Highest Standards. Setting right expectations is a determinant of success.
• Good at prioritization, effort estimation, job assignment and communication
• Frugal. Knows sustainable success is a teamwork.
• Perceptive to feedback and owns his/her own development and performance. 
• Assists in recruitment, coaches the junior team members, supports onboarding.
• Curious, Open to learn, develop and share. Encourages/ puts leverage in his/her learning.

Requisite Education and Qualifications:  

• A Bachelor’s degree from relevant departments of universities required. A Master’s degree and PMP / lean sigma certification preferred.
• Minimum 8 years of relevant work experience in an advanced supply chain and/or transportation management environment (relevant consultancy included) 
• Within which 3 years of relevant team management / people leadership experience