The Vodafone Procurement Company in Luxembourg – dubbed the “global shopping department” – visualises all the different areas of its work like the rooms of a house.
Ninian Wilson, who has been group procurement director and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company since 2016, came up with the concept with colleague Neil Cocker and said his team has since run with it and made it their own. “It’s their house, it’s where they live,” said Wilson.
The house comprises five rooms that are all underpinned by the foundations of “category management, health and safety, sustainability and responsibility, and inspiring its people”.
The five rooms are:
Kitchen
The kitchen is “where all the works gets done”, effectively operations for SCM.
Games room
This is where procurement trials various new digital tools and ideas.
Gym
This is where the function delivers all the savings and benefits it’s required to.
Dining room
The dining room is “where external customers come for dinner with us and can see what we’re doing”.
Garage
This last one is its innovation room and draws on work being done by Tomorrow Street, the start-up incubator Vodafone set up with the Luxembourg government, which is independent from Vodafone but housed on the top floor of its building in Luxembourg.
The “global shopping department” – as Wilson describes it to those outside the profession – covers the requirements of the two dozen operating companies and a combined reported group revenue of €43.6bn. The group has approximately 640 million mobile customers, 21 million fixed broadband customers and 14 million TV customers.
• Find out in the next issue of Supply Management how the team is reducing time to market and has cut procurement costs using AI and automation to supercharge its procurement – out on Friday
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