Buyer

Description

This role will have responsibility for purchasing goods, materials, and services to ensure that the company's operational needs are met. The Buyer is a subject matter expert in Verisk’s end to end procurement process, supporting both business stakeholders and the wider SSP Team in issuing POs.

This role reports to the Head of Vendor Management with input and support from the Senior Buyer.

Responsibilities

1. Procurement of Goods and Services

• Purchase services supporting IT and Corporate Spend Categories
• Ensure purchases align with budget, compliance, and strategic goals

2. Supplier Management

• Identify and evaluate third-party vendors
• Negotiate commercial terms
• Monitor vendor performance and compliance with contracts
• Manage renewals, escalations, and dispute resolution

3. Cost Optimization and Budget Control

• Identify cost-saving opportunities without compromising service quality
• Perform cost-benefit analyses and total cost of ownership assessments
• Monitor spend against budget and forecast future procurement needs

4. Stakeholder Collaboration

• Engage with internal stakeholders to understand needs and priorities
• Act as a trusted advisor in procurement-related decisions

5. Compliance and Risk Management

• Ensure all purchases comply with internal and external regulatory and compliance policies
• Analyze data and make useful recommendations to improve process and procedures
• Evaluate and mitigate vendor risk (e.g., financial stability, data handling) 

Qualifications

The following standards are expected of the person(s) fulfilling this role. These are not an exhaustive list of tasks but rather expectations around key tasks within the role.

SSP-wide

• Acknowledge all Service Now tickets (SNTs) within 24 hours

• Discuss SNT with Stakeholder via Teams call to better understand their requirements

• Understand the Procurement Policy and add all breaches to the spreadsheet

• Use SNT notes for all communication, updating stakeholders at least once per week, when new information on ticket progress is available

• Update SNT workflow status/ stage gate to align with ticket progress

• Create Draft contract on Icertis

  • Ensure contract type is correctly selected, and contract hierarchy is correctly aligned to the agreements in question

  • Ensure all Icertis contract & associated metadata is correct, and aligned accurately to the contract

• Review all contracts using the MS Teams integration (when trained)

• Execute all contracts in Icertis, following the list of preferred signatories

• Capture all savings in the savings tracker

• Escalate issues preventing tickets progress, particularly those outside SLA, to line management

• Close all tickets in a timely manner

Buyer-specific

• When needed, issue vendor self-registration link to prospective vendors

• Ensure quotes are received from vendors and update ALL SNTs 

• In collaboration with stakeholders, update REQ number on SNT

• Ensure all order forms/ SoWs match the negotiated quote and are received from the supplier

• Ensure all Order Forms or SoWs contain the PO number when sent for signature

• Target all POs to be issued within 2 days of REQ approval

• Update REQ/ PO spreadsheet at end of each day to show what has/ has not been converted

  • Provide quality comments with “Category” update and next steps where not

• Update PO number on SNT when REQ converted

• Ensure change orders to PO have a clearly articulated rationale presented to the approvers

• Manage the Purchasing mailbox, responding to emails in a timely manner