SAP Ariba is on a mission to help our customers make procurement awesome. The key element to achieving this - besides a beautiful solution and the power of a business network - is change management. And effective change management requires strong leadership.
During my SAPPHIRE NOW session “Digitize Your Supply Chain and Make Procurement Simple with SAP Ariba Solutions,” I sat down with Melanie Singh, Vice President of Procurement at Loblaws, to discuss her organization’s digital transformation. Not only did the Canadian retailer reduce supply ordering down to three keystrokes and mere seconds for its business users, but it also consolidated 30,000 separate orders into one solution to uncover opportunities for maximizing every contract and ensuring regulatory and corporate compliance enterprise-wide.
As Loblaws has proven, the real opportunity for procurement today is shedding light on risks hidden in the supply chain. By going beyond the top tier and looking at every supplier in the network, procurement can better protect the business. For example, instead of creating an efficient ordering system when a piece of technology breaks down, the real task is building a system that predicts when a device will fail and orders the replacement automatically.
To me, this is the beauty of a business network. By empowering buyers and suppliers, networks make procurement more strategic and predictable. And more awesome.
