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CEE e-Procurement Summit 2018 in Šamorín

With its second event, the CEE e-Procurement Summit on 18th April 2018 once again addressed procurement experts in Central and Eastern Europe. Almost 150 participants attended the event, which was held once again in the Slovakian city of Šamorín and offered an exciting programme. Workshops on procurement and process optimisation were also offered this year for the first time.

The challenges facing the countries in Central and Eastern Europe are not exactly easy to overcome, even ten years after the 2008 financial crisis. The opening statement by Dr Péter Ákos Bod, the former Governor of the Hungarian National Bank, had a sobering start. “We are facing the challenge that above all young and well-trained workers are emigrating from these countries,” he noted in his presentation. Demographic change and increasing wages are also causing the previous success model of the countries Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic to reach its limits. Nevertheless, he explained in his talk there are opportunities for these nations to be economically successful in the future. It is above all young people who could contribute significantly to economic success in these countries thanks to their language skills and confident use of digital tools.

 
Based on the economic analysis of the previous speaker, Dr Marcell Vollmer, Chief Digital Officer at SAP Ariba, discussed trends that are set to characterise future economic processes and also change procurement. Digital solutions not only mean that fewer workers would be needed, but the collaboration between companies would also become much more important. He considers one question crucial for allowing as many people as possible to share in the growth: “How can we ensure that the automated processes really take into account people’s needs and create added value?” Companies and societies would have to find these answers through a personal exchange. The partnership becomes more important in this regard, not only as a value creation factor.

Some of the trends identified previously were also highlighted by Zoltan Werle, Managing Consultant at Horváth & Partners, as important developments that purchasing managers would have to take into account. “We have identified four trends that we consider to be starting points for the digitisation of procurement: cloud technology, mobile technology, Reporting 2.0, and big data and analyses.” Companies that are able to integrate these trends into their organisation could tap into strong competitive advantages. “Analysts of big data are also highly sought-after in Hungary. We need talented individuals, the right people, who are able to do this. We are talking about millions of statements and pieces of data that arise in companies. We need to extract knowledge from this that can form the basis of decision-making.”

The human element plays keyrole in company’s success

However, acquiring knowledge from data is often easier than incorporating it into the company organisation. Magdalena Matczak, who works as Chief Buyer for Interprint Polska, presented why projects often fail and why it can be challenging for employees to accompany changes. She has accompanied numerous projects in change management and has frequently encountered five phases of grief that accompany the change processes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are said to be very normal processes when coping with these changes. Project managers who take this pattern into account could work with colleagues much more successfully: “Essentially, people don’t like change – and that’s a problem we need to solve. There are many good projects that fail because a lot of people are afraid of them.” With her talk, she brought a viewpoint to the CEE E-Procurement Summit that Dominek Akós picked up on in his presentation.

In the view of the Chief Procurement Officer at Suez Energy Hungary Holding Zrt, digitally supported procurement processes are important in order for companies to gain key competitive advantages. Change processes are unavoidable here on many levels: “What are the benefits of electronic procurement? A system must be implemented so that procurement can become digital. This can create greater transparency, the process can operate completely automatically, which can reduce costs and save time. The work content of many employees also changes because the processes and the tasks change. And, particularly important for large companies, compliance directives can be observed better in this way.”

Purchasers as innovation drivers in procurement

Martin Jonastik from IKEA Austria was able to demonstrate the benefits of a digital procurement solution in purchasing using specific figures. He claimed that regulations alone are not enough to efficiently shape procurement organisations. “Experience shows that a new regulation triggers a battle to ‘beat Central Purchasing’. Every employee wants to show that he can purchase better and find lower prices,” he explained. This is why it is necessary to have a standardised platform that is available to all employees and can map as many requirements as possible from a company viewpoint in advance while allowing purchasers to have the greatest possible freedom. He successfully supervised the introduction of this kind of platform at IKEA Austria. “The employees have now regained this freedom. We have control over what we buy, but the employee can quickly decide for himself whether he wants this item, at what price and under what conditions.” In addition, he claims the company has been able to save over 100,000 euros in process costs by introducing a standardised procurement solution.

The plenary session at the CEE E-Procurement Summit 2018 was brought to a close by the presentation by Mário Biňas, CEO at the BM GROUP SK, s.r.o. from Pezinok in Slovakia. In his view, purchasers above all need to overcome internal challenges. “Purchasing does not exploit its full potential,” he noted, before explaining: “The purchaser’s most important customer is the company in which he works.” Purchasers could make a major contribution to company success if they were to successfully maintain strategic partnerships and shape these both internally and externally. “We no longer talk about management and leading – we have alliances with our suppliers, strategic alliances and partnerships,” he explained, going on to say: “When we have strategic partners, we can discuss problems with the supplier in good time and not one month later.”

Workshops and negotiation trainings in the end

The CEE e-Procurement Summit 2018 came to an end with two workshops. The participants were able to choose one of them and thus immerse themselves more deeply into specialist topics. In the workshop by Benjamin Storm, Partner Manager at Mercateo, he presented a process cost calculator based on the results of the study ‘Indirect Purchasing in Focus’. The study was undertaken in cooperation with HTWK Leipzig (Leipzig University of Applied Sciences). In discussion with the participants, it became clear that some processes and the costs resulting from these are not sensible compared with the benefits, such as when a goods receipt is always booked for ordered goods. “You only have to discuss with the supplier again if goods are actually missing,” explained Benjamin Storm. However, this is rarely the case in procurement processes for indirect materials, so the additional inspection mainly results in costs and effort that can be saved.

In the workshop with Thomas Puchmayer from the automotive supplier Nemak and Stephan Knapek from TWS Partners in Switzerland, the participants discovered how they can achieve better results in the negotiation process as purchasers. They also gained practical tips on how they can shift from the role of a negotiator to become a negotiating actor who can successfully present the interests of companies, suppliers and customers.
The event’s feature-packed day was rounded off with a Champagne reception, during which the participants were able to discuss the most important findings of the day once again and network. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and there was a clear desire for the event to be held again in the future.

Impressions