Don’t be Seduced by the Latest Technology!

Listen to a podcast of this interview: Shared Services Tips from SAPPI Helen Winsor: A few questions for you today. First, what does moving beyond the transaction to value-add mean to SAPPI and what are the main focus areas driving this transformation? M Url: Let me answer for operation procurement. There, the key answer is we want to avoid transactions by automating them. In practical terms, what we are doing is instead of manually transferring the purchase requisition to purchase order, we try to do automated catalogues or a fixed source of supply, so that the requisitioner asks for something and then it gets automatically sent to the supplier and delivered. In the area of strategic purchasing, this is clearly a transparent and easy access to the data so that for a strategic buyer there shouldn’t be any thresholds to excess spend data or the excess consumption data. Those, I would, say are the two key areas in procurement. In the area of invoice certification, it is, of course the workflow, automated workflow, and avoiding paper circulating, even though we are a paper company. Your presentation will focus on Spend analytics. In what area has this made the biggest impact, eg, spend by commodities, improve visibility, etc? What we have done for Spend analytics is we have deployed a product by SAPPI called Business Object Explorer, and this enables us to have a clear overview on the Spend, not only on SAPPI Europe but also on SAPPI North America and SAPPI South Africa. The buyers can clearly see what did I spend with the purchase order, or was there no purchase order, was it never spent. We also can clearly say was it against a contract, a pre-defined source of supply, or was it just a one time payment. So we have clear visibility what mill, or what site is doing what. To give you some examples our IT category buyer was astonished and happy to see what in the IT department was actually being bought without a purchase order, without involvement. So the buyers, the category buyers love this product. The requisite is, of course correct data, correct master data, and a tool which can easily be used by a non-technically skilled person. What’s one piece of advice you would have for ambitious procurement professionals in today’s environment? It is not easy to pick out one piece of advice, but let me answer for the area of processes in systems, as this is my expertise. I would say you should avoid being seduced by the technology. E-procurement and all these things are cool and they look nice, fancy, but you have to apply good business judgment - for your company, is it worth the effort, do you need this or don’t you need this. In this context I also encourage you to listen to a consultant, but it’s more important to trust your peers. By saying that, I mean you should have a look at what is working at other companies in your industry and then copy relentlessly if it’s working well. Also, please make sure it is really working well because in meetings people give fancy slides but you have to work out whether it is really working - ask for the metrics - is it just a concept or are the people really using it. That’s what I mean by applying good business judgment and that’s the piece of advice I would give. SSON: That sounds like a very sensible piece of advice learnt from experience. Thank you. Shared Services and Outsourcing Week Europe will take place from 14th to 16th May, 2012 at The RAI, Amsterdam, Netherlands. For further information, please visit the website: www.ssoweek.com, or contact the enquiries team on email: enquire@iqpc.co.uk, or call +44 207 368 9300.

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