Buyer - Commodities

Job Opportunity At Border States

Be part of a growing, successful company in an exciting and challenging field. Border States is a leader in the electrical supply distribution industry with approximately 130 locations in 31 states. Employee-owners are second to none in delivering top-notch customer service and in demonstrating extra-ordinary people skills. This position will be located in Maple Grove, MN or Kansas City, MO, or Salt Lake City, UT.

Job Summary

Facilitates daily purchasing and inventory management activities. Administers and coordinates the SAP / GAINS purchasing and inventory system functions on assigned product families. Manages supply flow on assigned product families through consistent communication with applicable branch and supplier contacts. Utilizes inventory service management tools and other exception reports and tools to identify critical low inventory situations. Improves inventory performance through reduction of overstock and non-stock inventories. Analyzes inventory requests from sales or marketing teams and implement stocking parameter changes determined to be appropriate to support sales growth.

Responsibilities

Essential Functions :

• Maintains collaborative relationships with branch sales, warehouse, and operations staff.
• Provides proactive and responsive support for branch staff and deliver excellent customer service in response to branch inventory requests.
• Responds to actual or predicted stock-outs and identifies larger trends in supplier service levels that affect the supply chain.
• Monitors and takes steps to ensure healthy inventory service levels on high velocity items, and products important to key customers.
• Facilitates review, submission, and expediting of stock purchase orders.
• Makes trade-off decisions with respect to inbound freight expenses, inventory service levels and inventory turnover.
• Maintains collaborative relationships with suppliers and manufacturer's representatives.
• Evaluates excess inventory on products or product families with low inventory turnover and takes action to improve inventory turns including supplier returns, order point or order quantity adjustments, branch to branch stock transfers, de-expediting inbound supply orders, or sales promotion opportunities.
• Maintains expected delivery dates on inbound supplier orders to improve date confidence with branch teams and customers.
• Responds and resolves invoice, shipping, and carrier discrepancy issues in a timely manner.

Non-essential Functions :

Qualifications

Four-year business or technical degree or the equivalent in work experience. Prior procurement, inventory management, or supply chain management experience with knowledge of electrical, utility, industrial products preferred. Solid understanding of customer service and conflict resolution, purchasing, purchase order management and supplier returns, inventory management and stocking parameters, such as reorder points and lead times. Competency with Excel or another spreadsheet application. Previous knowledge of SAP or an MRP platform is preferred.

Skills and Abilities

Multitasking, organization, and time management skills. Excellent customer service skills include being competent, accurate, responsive, and engaged.

Physical Requirements

Frequency at which you would carry / lift in a typical day : Occasionally 0 - 33% Frequently 34 - 66% Continuously 67 - 100% Lift from Waist :

Additional Information

This job description is a summary of the job duties and responsibilities and is not intended to cover all possible job duties and is subject to change at the employer's discretion. Employees must be able to perform the essential job duties and satisfy job requirements either with or without a reasonable accommodation. Hourly pay range $24.00 - $35.00 per hour based on experience. Our History Border States is a 100 percent employee-owned company. We practice open-book management and our employee-owners are empowered with clearly defined levels of authority to be innovative and decisive, allowing us to respond quickly to the needs of customers. Employee-owners understand their roles in the success of the company and care about customers' needs, which drives our focus on adding value to everything we do. We recognize that not all customers are the same and each has specific requirements. Our employee-owners understand these diverse needs and have the commitment, resourcefulness and flexibility to outperform all others.