Procurement Operations Specialist

About the Role: Procurement Operations Specialist

You will be an integral part of a sub-team within the Accounting department at Booking.com. In this role, you will collaborate closely with both the Procurement and P2P (Procure-to-Pay) teams, providing essential support to internal and external stakeholders. Your responsibilities will include addressing payment queries, facilitating new vendor registrations, guiding on S2P (Source-to-Pay) & Procurement processes, and assisting users with our Purchasing tool, Ivalua.

Your core objective will be to support the business and its vendors by ensuring accurate registration within the Ivalua purchasing system. You will also perform quality control over the vendor database, provide guidance to stakeholders on S2P & Procurement processes, and ensure all activities comply with company policies, ultimately leading to timely payments.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement all approved financial practices and processes.
• Educate all stakeholders (buyers, approvers, and vendors) on the S2P/Procurement process to ensure invoices and payment requests are authorized and paid on time, adhering to company policies, accounting regulations, and Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.
• Provide support to the business for PR/PO (Purchase Requisition/Purchase Order) related queries through ticketing systems and chats, as well as conducting regular and ad-hoc training sessions.
• Work collaboratively with vendors, the Vendor Enablement team, Accounts Payable team, and PayOps team to resolve overdue invoice issues promptly and implement measures to prevent future occurrences.
• Monitor blocked invoices, ensuring they are actioned and paid within agreed payment terms.
• Track Non-PO invoices by generating reports and contacting relevant departments to ensure Purchase Requisitions are raised for all non-PO invoices not covered by an exception rule, in line with the 'No PO No Pay' policy.
• Act as a primary point of contact for analyzing specific areas of responsibility, focusing on progress, trends, deviations, and exceptions.
• Take ownership of the ticketing system, resolving tickets across various categories, and proactively monitoring the 'New' queue to address issues outside of standard allocation.
• Ensure the enforcement of monthly and quarterly (non) SOX Controls, Finance Policies, and Documented Procedures.
• Support the Global Senior Manager Procurement and Team Lead in their daily operational activities and necessary reporting.
• Serve as a role model for Booking.com values and formula, actively supporting team members.
• Perform any ad-hoc tasks related to the PO team as required.

Communication Expectations

• Demonstrate the ability and willingness to educate colleagues and expand reach across different teams.
• Share knowledge and best practices to empower existing and new colleagues in resolving problematic tickets and issues effectively.
• Clearly explain the 'why' behind tasks or issues, alongside demonstrating 'how' to solve them.
• Engage actively in cross-team collaboration.
• Communicate management/team lead vision on best practices to drive high-quality support.

Craftsmanship Standards

• Possess the ability to identify and implement scalable solutions for support-related issues.
• Apply extensive knowledge and experience to get straight to the core of any issue.
• Display thorough knowledge of all internal and external systems utilized.
• Function as an escalation point and a primary source of knowledge for Procurement Operations.

Commercial Awareness

• Exhibit the ability and willingness to balance multiple tasks of varying sizes and business importance.
• Immediately identify business-critical and/or urgent tasks or issues.
• Make logical trade-offs between individual workload and business-critical requirements.
• Base decisions on informed knowledge, ensuring positive impact and consistency.

Required Education, Qualifications And Experience

• Bachelor's degree or qualified education in Finance.
• 3 years of relevant job experience.
• Proficient in both spoken and written English.
• Strong spoken and written communication skills.
• Ability to multitask and adapt to changing situations.
• Excellent attention to detail, with experience handling high volumes of data according to specific instructions.
• Experience with SAP, Ivalua, and/or any other Procurement and Sourcing system is a plus.

Key skills/competency

• Procurement Operations
• P2P Process
• Vendor Management
• Financial Compliance
• S2P Process
• Ivalua System
• SAP Experience
• Stakeholder Support
• Issue Resolution
• Data Quality Control