Enterprise Supplier Governance Consultant

Northwestern Mutual • Milwaukee, WI

23h

About The Position

The Consultant, Enterprise Supplier Management supports supplier governance, supplier development, regulatory readiness, and obligation-management activities within the ESM operating model. The role coordinates moderately complex supplier-related workstreams, partners across key stakeholders, and translates supplier performance, service delivery, regulatory expectations, obligations, and business feedback into practical plans, documentation, reporting routines, governance materials, and recommended actions. It helps strengthen supplier accountability, oversight consistency, performance visibility, readiness, and follow-through across assigned supplier relationships and ESM priorities.

The consultant may also support ESM data, analytics, reporting, and technology capabilities, including data and metric standards, data quality and governance, reporting priorities, and tool design, configuration, integrations, access, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree.
• Minimum of 5 years of prior experience in supplier management, vendor governance, sourcing/procurement, business operations, performance management, third-party risk, compliance, or related functions.
• Ability to manage moderately complex workstreams, coordinate deliverables, track action items, and drive follow-through with limited oversight.
• Strong analytical skills, including experience reviewing supplier metrics, KPI/SLA reporting, service performance trends, scorecards, dashboards, or business performance information.
• Ability to collaborate and influence stakeholders without direct authority.
• Ability to communicate clearly, synthesize information, and translate supplier performance or governance issues into practical recommendations and next steps.
• Ability to operate in ambiguity, manage competing priorities, solve operational problems, and recommend improvements that increase governance consistency and supplier accountability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Focus on specific details to identify and correct errors, maintain accuracy, and meet quality expectations.
• Ability to apply knowledge of general and organization-specific business issues and financial implications to solve problems.
• Knowledge of systems that facilitate or automate business solutions, including workflow management and requirements acquisition.
• Ability to establish, analyze, and interpret compliance metrics; define monitoring controls; and communicate compliance status, risks, trends, and results to stakeholders.
• Ability to facilitate collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning across functions and areas of expertise to achieve common goals.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience supporting vendor or supplier program management, supplier performance management, governance routines, service reviews, or stakeholder coordination.
• Experience supporting supplier governance frameworks, supplier segmentation or tiering, supplier scorecards, executive or operational review routines, supplier remediation, tool adoption, or enterprise supplier management transformation.

Responsibilities

• Execute supplier governance routines, supplier review forums, oversight activities, performance monitoring, issue tracking, escalation support, and stakeholder follow-through.
• Gather and analyze performance results, scorecards, service delivery insights, business feedback, supplier trends, and recurring issues to identify gaps, risks, and practical improvement opportunities.
• Support interpretation and operationalization of supplier-related policies, standards, obligations, controls, and expectations into usable processes, trackers, evidence packages, and stakeholder materials.
• Maintain supplier governance records and materials for internal reviews, audits, regulatory readiness, and leadership visibility.
• Partner with business owners and key stakeholders to gather inputs, validate needs, coordinate handoffs, support decisions, and drive timely follow-through.
• Use tools, data standards, reporting, and process guidance to strengthen data discipline, improve supplier visibility, and support continuous improvement across assigned supplier relationships.
• Recommend improvements to supplier governance processes, reporting, documentation, handoffs, stakeholder engagement, ownership clarity, supplier accountability practices, and operating discipline.
• May support ESM data, analytics, reporting, and technology capabilities, including establishing data and metric standards, ensuring data quality and governance, defining reporting priorities, and managing tool design, configuration, integrations, access, and continuous improvement.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level