Nick Balkaran

Assistant to Vice President - North America Procurement @Manulife

Create fact based comprehensive sourcing strategy for entire portfolio.• Lead cross functional and cross geography teams, deals and initiatives.• Lead monthly executive meetings to highlight savings and category strategies.• Lead monthly steerco meetings with executive stakeholders to discuss strategies and opportunities.• Proactively create multi-year pipeline plan with savings opportunities quantified, and creative ideas presented to stakeholders.• Collaborate in continuous optimization of processes and policies to drive efficiency.• Lead Supplier Diversity for North America• Thoroughly understand spend category, vendor landscape, industry trends, and new emerging developments and service offerings• Apply analytics to identify cost and demand reduction opportunities• Partner closely with the leadership team(s) of the businesses you support to understand their business unit goals and priorities, provide thought leadership on emerging vendor models, and align and set the sourcing agenda• Triage intake requests and assign projects to team members; work with them to quantify spend associated with commodities under your responsibility• Quantify savings achieved, drive efficiencies, centralize competencies and improve the value of vendor relationships• Define and report on vendor metrics, both strategic and tactical• Influence and develop supplier negotiation strategies in partnership with the team• Holistically understand and leverage key vendor relationships within a specific category• Lead supplier negotiations, particularly for large complex transactions, and ensure execution of developed strategy