In anticipation of the forthcoming ProcureCon meeting in Brussels this November, we met with Ralf Garczorz, Vice President Value Chain OTC/CH, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Europe to hear his thoughts on the role of procurement currently and going forward.
Q. How was 2009 for the procurement industry and how has 2010 been different so far?
"During 2009, the Procurement function in many industries had to focus (once again) on saving the bottom-line and serving the very short-term needs. Meanwhile, we see clear signs of economic recovery and also a growing appreciation at the C-Level in many companies that building the top-line is the most critical challenge. For Procurement this translates into two major missions:
1. To ensure supplies to meet higher sales & demands, while the capacity of the upstream value chain has not yet followed enough the emerging economic recovery. So managing and mitigating scarcity will be a major challenge for Procurement in support of their companies’ growth opportunities during the coming years.
2. To establish ways to contribute to the top-line, e..g by linking external innovation capability of suppliers into the company’s new product pipeline."
Q. What’s the most important issue in the procurement agenda now and for 2011? What are the challenges awaiting CPOs?
"I expect this change in focus to continue in 2011. In consequence, CPO’s are now well advised to anticipate the increasing demands to support and enable growth. In terms of scarcity, we are also seeing a that the ‘War on Talent’ heats up. In fact, many companies, as they start to get out of the crisis, are now hiring externally to jumpstart building their new Procurement teams. Hiring CPO’s are well advised to do so carefully and pay a lot of attention on proper selection, on boarding. To counter, the other CPO’s are well advised to spend quality time on retaining and developing their existing talent base."
Q. How can these challenges be overcome?
"In my mind in starts with a positive attitude. One may easily feel overwhelmed by the challenges, but a more promising reaction is to see the opportunity that lies in managing these challenges better than competition. Add some good degree of courage and creativity plus hard work and discipline, and then success will come."
In your opinion, how can procurement practitioners become more sophisticated to talk the business language and be linked to the P&L? What’s the experience in your organisation?
"Practitioners in my mind should seek any opportunity to gain true insight into the broader business. This includes broadening assignments, very active work on cross-functional teams without too much of the Procurement hat on, but also investing personal time to reach out to trusted business partners and to ask questions to learn to pick up the business jargon and to always seek first to understand the true holistic business need and only then translating it into a sourcing solution. Where broadening assignment are not possible, maybe there is a chance to join a sales person in the field for some days, to join customer visits, to join R&D in upstream meetings to understand their discovery and development processes."
Q. What do you hope to get out of ProcureCon 2010?
Personally, I am very much looking forward to the conference. Formally I am not in a Procurement role right now, in fact I am enjoying the opportunity of a broadening assignment in an end-to-end Supply Chain leadership role. So it will be a true pleasure for me to get back into a dialogue with dozens of Procurement professionals. I am very excited about this year’s Procurecon theme. I have been advocating already for quite a while that Procurement must play a strong role beyond serving the bottom line. It seems that this is getting more and more recognized, which is truly encouraging and speaks for the great perspective and contribution that the procurement function has to offer!
Over 120 CPO’s and Procurement Directors have already registered for ProcureCon 2010, to see who else has registered along with Ralf Garczorz, click here. To find out how you can join Ralf Garczorz at ProcureCon 2010, please call +44 (0) 20 7368 9465