Global Category Management Transformation

Background

This global leader in enzyme manufacturing based in Europe had a Global Purchasing team of almost 60 staff managing a combined spend of €450m covering both direct and indirect categories. Purchasing was geographically split across three continents covering Europe, Asia and the Americas and the sourcing practices were inconsistent.

Challenge

The VP Buying wanted to raise the bar in terms of its savings delivery and committed to the Executive Board to deliver €20m over a three year period. To achieve this several areas needed to be addressed:

• Number and quality of Purchasing staff needed to be improved
• A well structured but easy to use sourcing process was to be introduced
• Supporting IT infrastructure was to be significantly enhanced as a key enabler to improved performance all round

FP Approach

• Future Purchasing set up a design team from within the Purchasing group to oversee the development of a new Category Management process.
• The roll out was planned in phases with each region.
• An interactive Category Management workshop was run in each of the three regions to up-skill the Purchasing team members.
• FP ran an Opportunity Analysis Workshop to identify potential category projects for the first wave of cross-functional projects.
• FP then supported each of the category projects with a mixture of coaching, facilitation and hands-on support to deliver the savings

Benefits Delivered

• Savings target exceeded
• New way of working adopted across the organization
• Cross-functional stakeholder interaction significantly improved
• Category planning introduced