Akshita Bhutani

• Support the implementation of procurement strategies for complex projects across the BT Group's spend categories.
• Reviews the vendor market to identify suppliers that meet BT Group compliance and governance criteria, providing alternatives, and ensuring supply chain resiliency.
• Supports in the evaluation, assessment, and negotiation of RFPs based on specifications set, identifying areas of concern, proposing ways for mitigation, proposing the preferred vendor, and providing solid rationale for the selection of the most efficient solution for the BT Group.
• Leveraging AI-powered analytics and procurement technologies such as Cirtuo, Suplari, Globality, and SAP Ariba for trend analysis, market intelligence, and cost efficiency.
• Managing the spend of almost $80 million and driving the hard savings, and soft savings. Total savings contributed to date: 20 million.

Gained professional experience and achieved the banking and insurance targets during the internship program.

Strategic sourcing:

• Develop and execute strategic sourcing strategies that support stakeholder requirements to cater to high delivery and short lead time requirements.
• Identify and implement cost-reduction opportunities to drive procurement value.
• Lead the negotiations for large sourcing engagements globally, including process activities such as RFX/MSA/SOW

Vendor Management and Contract Management:

• Sourced and identified potential vendors based on stakeholder requirements; collaborated with Legal and Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) teams to negotiate commercial contract terms, ensuring vendor service offerings aligned with organizational needs.
• Ability to draft and maintain agreements (MSA, SOW, NDA, Novation, LOA) with vendors, and ensure that they are current, up to date, and compliant with company policies.

Supplier Management:

• Conduct review meetings with the business owners to share the performance of the suppliers through effective service level agreements and supplier performance methodologies.
• Manage supplier performance, facilitate issue resolution, and respond to business user queries.
• Establish standards and guidelines for vendors, and monitor vendors to ensure that company policies are being followed

. Recognition:

Recognized as an "Excellent Performer" for outstanding performance in sourcing vendors for a COVID-related project, achieving cost optimization, and ensuring timely project delivery.

• Responsible for managing the U.S. line of business procurement day-to-day functions, with adherence to the TAT.
• Managing procurement requests and supporting stakeholders with any troubleshooting and navigation queries.
• Managed IT and non-IT commodities and services, like hardware, software, telecom, facilities, office supplies, publications, and consulting services.
• Create a purchase request (PR) after performing due diligence, and ensure that purchase orders are created, optimizing the entire process and ensuring compliance with policy.
• Manage and maintain catalog and non-catalog orders of products and services, ensuring accuracy and completeness of information.
• Review contracts in Ariba workspace to verify commercial and legal terms like end date and type of contract
• Handling Match-Exceptions and Ageing PRs to ensure that the discounts are not lost (MetLife NET2%30) Close liaison with the Accounts payable team for timely payment of invoices, adherent to the vendor payterms.

• Escalations: Identifying customer issues/complaints, and making appropriate recommendations for corrective resolutions to meet client needs and requirements.

• Issue Management: Track, analyze, resolve, and review any issues faced by the line of business under the Issues Management process.

• Recognized by management for providing exceptional customer service.