Associate Vice President, Procurement and Payables

The Associate Vice President, Procurement and Payables (‘AVPPP’) will have a broad set of responsibilities, which will include developing a shared mission and vision for NYU’s procurement and payables function, He/she will champion and lead efforts to continue the transformation of procure-to-pay (P2P) activities at NYU, ensuring the University’s strategic sourcing, procurement, travel and payables policies, procedures, financial controls, operations, and practices are effective, streamlined, and provide efficient and excellent customer service.

As a member of the senior leadership team reporting to the Senior Vice President for Finance and Budget/CFO, the AVPPP will provide sustained leadership and operational services in support of the University’s mission to be a top-quality international center of scholarship, teaching and research. He/she will initiate procurement best practices to leverage the University’s $1BN + in annual spend to provide long term value, increase efficiency and effectiveness, and reduced costs whilst leading accounts payable and expense management activities to adopt robust governance practices, ensure best in class internal controls and reduce risk.

The AVPPP will maintain strong senior leadership level relationships across the university, to communicate and obtain support of strategic P2P initiatives and ensure that customer service, P2P value and cost savings goals are met or exceeded. He/she will work with key stakeholders throughout the University and beyond to develop and implement policies, strategies, and best practices that deliver and measure results. He/She will develop and maintain collaborative relationships with key strategic vendors to NYU, including vendors providing software and applications to facilitate key P2P processes such as eProcurement and Travel & Expense Management.

The AVPPP will directly supervise the Procurement and Accounts Payable functions and will ensure the Procurement and Accounts Payable team has the appropriate structure, talent, and resources to deliver best practice delivery performance. In carrying out these responsibilities, the AVPPP is expected to encourage a cooperative, consensus-building, decision-making process.

Required Education:
Master’s Degree Business, Finance or other related field

Required Experience:
10+ years of progressive leadership experience in procurement, strategic sourcing and accounts payable within a complex organization.

Preferred Experience:
Progressive leadership experience in procurement, strategic sourcing and accounts payable within Higher Education.

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:
A strong strategic and business understanding of how procurement and accounts payables processes enable organizations to meet overall business objectives. Demonstrated proficiency in the management of procurement and accounts payable programs and services. Significant knowledge of current procurement and payables trends, standards, management principles and methodologies. Demonstrated ability to implement and sustain a strategic procurement plan linked to a budget with savings and performance goals. Understands the linkage between P2P and accounting in the general ledger and how procurement savings flow through the budget and annual operating expenses. Experience with development and assessment of internal control processes and procedures, and system integration including, planning, evaluation and implementation. Demonstrate leadership to guide, motivate and direct team members Strong knowledge of and experience with automated eProcurement and Accounts Payable systems such as Jaggaer and Peoplesoft. Must possess outstanding communication and interpersonal skills that can be leveraged in dealings with vendors, University departments and leadership, strategic partners as well as cross-functionally across the organization. Must possess strong analytical skills, exhibit a strong business orientation, and a demonstrated ability to assess, evaluate, and implement organizational initiatives.

Being Organizationally Savvy: Maneuvers well to get organizational objectives accomplished; understands how to navigate through a complex organization; knows where to go to get what needed support; politically aware and agile; knows what the right thing to do is; presents various views and options well. Works well in a collaborative, decentralized organization.

Creating New and Different: Is able to come up with the next great breakthrough thing to do; is creative, a visionary, and can manage innovation; is an effective strategist full of ideas and possibilities; sees multiple futures; has broad interests and knowledge; can both create and bring exciting ideas to market; comfortable speculating about alternative futures without all of the data.

Keeping on Point: Can quickly separate the mission-critical from the nice to dos and the trivials; quickly senses what’s the next most useful thing to work on; focuses on the critical few tasks that really add value and puts aside or delays the rest.

Making Complex Decisions: Can solve even the toughest and most complex of problems; great at gleaning meaning from whatever data is available; is a quick study of the new and different;adds personal wisdom and experience to come to the best conclusion and solution, given the situation; uses multiple problem-solving tools and techniques.

Managing Diverse Relationships: Relates well to a wide variety of diverse styles, types, and classes; open to differences; effective up, down, sideways, inside, and outside; builds diverse networks; quick to find common ground; treats differences fairly and equitably; treats everyone as a preferred customer.

Relating Skills: Warm, friendly, and interpersonally agile; easy to approach and talk to; relates well to all kinds of people; makes a pleasant first impression and builds solid relationships.

Understanding the Business: Knows the business and the mission-critical technical and functional skills needed to do the job; understands various types of business propositions and understands how businesses operate in general; learns new methods and technologies easily.

NYU aims to be among the greenest urban campuses in the country and carbon neutral by 2040. Learn more at nyu.edu/sustainability.

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