Customer Support and Assistant Buyer

North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC) is based in Sheffield and hosted by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT). Our aim is to deliver best value procurement outcomes for the NHS through collaborative working. A wholly NHS owned organisation NOE CPC brings together a wealth of experience, understanding and knowledge, providing collaborative procurement and commercial solutions to the wider NHS and is one of the leading players in collaborative procurement within the NHS in England.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for the right candidate to take up the role of Customer Support and Assistant Buyer within our Procurement Operations Team. This is an important role with the NOE CPC, helping to manage and respond to customer enquiries via our Support Desk system as well as providing essential procurement and administrative support to our specialist category procurement teams.

This role has a dual focus to assist in managing and responding to customer enquiries that come into the NOE CPC Procurement Support Desk and providing administrative and procurement support to the NOE CPC Procurement Category Teams.

You must be professional, highly motivated, and enthusiastic with a desire to make a positive difference in

the NHS. You should be able to demonstrate strong communication and customer service skills, have a basic understanding of public procurement practices and strong administrative skills.

The Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) is the main provider of Mental Health and Learning Disability services in Leeds. We also provide specialist inpatient services in York and some highly specialised services across the country. As a teaching trust with strong links to local universities, we are a centre of excellence for teaching, research and development.

There are many benefits of working for LYPFT including fantastic employee wellbeing support, 27 - 33 days annual leave, flexible working and remote working arrangements, the NHS Pension Scheme (LYPFT pays 20.6% into your scheme each year), coaching, support and opportunities for career development and training and education support alongside a range of exclusive discounts and payment schemes including for cars, extra leave days and more organisations such as Blue Light Card, Health Service Discounts and NHS Discount Offers.

We also have an incredible bank department, offering variety of roles in nursing, allied health professions, healthcare support worker and administration clerical. Permanent employees are automatically added to bank. Bank-only workers can choose the hours they want to work and will have the opportunity to gain additional experience, keep skills up to date, develop new ones and earn extra money without having to commit to a permanent role. For an informal discussion or more information please contact the teambankstaffingdepartment.lypft@nhs.net

The role will require you to be able to:

• Take a proactive approach to managing and responding to customer enquiries to the NOE CPC Customer Support Desk, providing advice and guidance to our customers in relation to accessing and using our frameworks and services, assisting to resolve issues that arise and fostering an excellent customer experience.
• Provide a range of procurement support to the NOE CPC Category Teams and the Procurement Support Officers including administration of some tender activities, running further competitions for customers under supervision, supporting the launch of new frameworks etc.
• Support our Category Teams with the administration of supplier records, arranging supplier and other stakeholder meetings and taking minutes and actions as required. Support in the issuing of framework agreements for signing and ensuring supplier and customer details are kept up to date on our CRM system.
• Have a strong work ethos, able to manage your own workload in a proactive and professional manner and be able to deliver consistently to agreed deadlines and standards.
• Be proficient in the use of excel to support Category Teams in some data analysis around supplier spend and benchmarking of customer spend against framework prices etc.
• Build excellent working relationships with peers, colleagues, customers, suppliers and other external stakeholders.

Building effective relationships across diverse teams is essential to succeeding in this role and those who can manage and organise a diverse workload will find this post rewarding. This role will provide a candidate that shows dedication with the opportunity to progress in their public sector procurement career and the successful candidate will be provided with a range of development opportunities to help them thrive.

Further information on the NOE CPC can be found here: www.noecpc.nhs.uk