Location: Buffalo Grove or Chicago

Company Summary: 

In the past seven years, Zoro has grown from a group of 6 people working out of a 2,000 square foot building, offering fewer than 100,000 products to a group of 300+ working out of a 60,000+ square foot building, offering more than 2,300,000 unique products.

Primary Function:

The Supplier Performance Analyst (SPA) will help drive the implementation of Zoro’s Digital Supply Chain order fulfillment strategy and will own execution the Supply Partner Performance Management program. Reporting to the Director, Supplier Performance Management, he/she must work with internal and external stakeholders to enable supply partners on the Zoro ecommerce platform. 

The SPA will own supplier performance and on-time delivery execution, including reviewing and resolving transactional exceptions due to the supply partner integration. He/she will act as a liaison between internal teams and supply partners to optimize suppliers’ drop-ship, direct-to-customer and packaging operations to improve the Zoro customer experience.

The ideal candidate is an energetic team and goal-oriented with a high comfort in big data analytics and process improvement. This candidate thrives in a fast-paced environment and is able to adapt to change quickly. He/she understands how to effectively drive results with technical knowledge of systems and business processes to help develop optimal solutions for operational processes.

Duties and Responsibilities: 

Digital Supply Chain Network Enablement

•  Assists in developing and drives implementation of a supply partner segmentation strategy to prioritize the suppliers that should be enabled. Once highest value supply partners are chosen, this role interacts directly with all stakeholders, seeking feedback and approval of targeted supply partners go-live with Direct-to-Customer integrations.
• Serves as the project manager for supplier enablement projects with an assigned group of suppliers and owns the overall integration and transactional performance for those assigned partners; Perform investigations/ analyses on day-to-day operational issues, and advising on fact-based solutions.
• Acts Liaison between internal teams and supply partners to manage communication and escalations in a manner that aligns to our aspiration to be “Customer-Obsessed”.
• Implements the electronic trading relationship (standard PO, Invoice and related messaging) with supply partners using developed standard documents and maintains strong relationship with supply partners through the enablement phase.
• Drives operational excellence in day-to-day digital supply chain partnership operations and reporting activities including maintaining existing partnerships and leading new partnership launches.

Improve Product Availability and Supply Partner Performance

• Owns supply partner performance and on-time delivery execution, including reviewing and resolving transactional exceptions due to the supplier integration.
• Personally follows-up, or oversees the follow-up, of active backorders with suppliers to ensure customer deliveries are as timely as possible during back-order events.
• Develops operational plans with supply partners to manage key performance metrics within expected guidelines, including performance management tools & dashboards to be leveraged by multiple cross-functional teams; Ensures plans will be reviewed and modified on a consistent basis to ensure Zoro standards are upheld by supply partners.
• Prepares, trains, and educates supply partners on internal processes, supply chain best practices, and key performance indicators prior to and throughout operations with Zoro. 
• Uses Supply Chain data and business process analytics to identify establish and monitor performance trends; proactively identifying sub-optimal trends in supplier performance and corrective actions to avoid customer delivery interruptions.
• Partners with suppliers to review their operations, make recommendations for improvement, and influence change.
• Serves as the liaison between internal and external supply chain stakeholders to report out on supply partner performance.
• Collaborates with Product Management to escalate and proactively resolve Supplier Performance Management issues
• Elevates supply partner performance through the use of escalation and integration business rule enforcement to meet performance benchmarks for the timeliness of resolution and exception level. 
• Builds reports and perform analysis, and based upon the supplier scorecard/dashboards, specifically delivery performance and transactional quality
• Facilitates supply partner audits and technical meetings to monitor and assess supplier performance, improve supplier communication, discuss existing or potential problems, review deficiencies, review analytical data, review improvement opportunities, identify new or improved technologies, and educate suppliers on Zoro customer requirements.

Qualifications:

• BA/BS or equivalent. 
• 3+ years of supply chain, operations, purchasing or industrial engineering experience preferred.
• High energy with a positive attitude, proving a desire to succeed. Ability to hit the ground running – a confident, entrepreneurial self-starter.
• Demonstrated experience establishing high standards and holding people accountable for results; Assertive and strong willed – not easily intimidated.
• Articulate and persuasive communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Innovative problem-solving skills – dissect and determine root causes of problems, and implement solutions.
• Comfortable analyzing large data sets and using that analysis to drive business plans and priorities.
• Experience in business and data analytics with intermediate proficiency in programs including G-suite productivity tools, Microsoft Word, Excel, SQL, Access and other database and reporting tools. and Outlook.
• Strong project management skills with financial acumen, with a focus on understanding the cost/benefit of varying solutions.
• Strong interpersonal skills that foster collaboration within team, with business partners, and with cross-functional stakeholders at varying levels.

Zoro is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.