2023 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
CASE STUDY SAVILLIS
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That work - carried out in collaboration with suppliers - was shared across the industry to improve standards and safety for all. “You can’t attach a monetary value to life. We considered improving equipment to help everyone and shared it freely.” Maxi said that work demonstrated that if you collaborate with peers both in procurement and on the supply side, you can become a driving force behind positive change. “Buyers of the future need to be far more rounded individuals who not only have negotiation and sourcing skills, but who consider the wider environment and economic impacts that drive business change.” In her view, as both a practitioner and former consultant, procurement doesn’t spend nearly enough time with suppliers. “Innovative solutions are out there, procurement just needs to spend more time with service partners and become ‘idea scouts’. They need to move away from traditional sourcing and seek out end-to-end solutions, by not only working - or hiding behind - big suppliers but also finding newer, smaller firms.” Collaborating for Change Glas’ role is to focus on vision, strategy and policy within Property Management at Savills. As part of that, she is working on developing strategic objectives and bringing together teams within the company’s source-to- pay arena. She is working on evolving service partner relationships and makes procurement available as a shared service to anyone in the wider business who wishes to make use of it. “We’re doing the development with team members in the procurement department, having discussions and group sessions with them so that they may articulate their thinking. Change is driven by team,” says Glas.
And from the supply side there is an “amazing appetite to work with us to share intelligence and knowledge”. “Every service partner I’ve met so far has had fantastic ideas,” she adds. In addition to the larger players, Maxi plans to look to smaller suppliers, particularly for help with the social agenda and ensuring its supply chain is more diverse. “We’re considering how we can help working with local companies to become part of our extended family and need to formalise this thinking in a supplier diversity programme.
“Email has become a haystack in which critical pieces of information are needles. We needed one source of truth.”
“The main thing for me is that what success looks like is articulated in its simplest form. That way, the receiving party knows when a service is done well and vice versa; there should never be any surprises. Everyone will speak with one voice. “To be a customer of choice you need to be easy to deal with and crystal clear on your expectations. Agreements that are open to interpretation lead to problems, but if your goals are explicit and understood, it doesn’t matter who is managing the relationship.” Challenges can come, she adds, when people think they are nice and cosy and that things will always stay that way. “Good communication is required for any strong relationship and that doesn’t mean things are always hunky dory, tough conversations can be had, and that’s how you build trust.”
AI is a huge enabler in supplying information and offering the ability to monitor and control remotely. “Everything is much smarter and more intelligent,” adds Maxi. “It has a massive impact on the way categories are structured because now it’s all about buying solutions, which removes the dividing lines between them.” Seeking Solutions Maxi suggests procurement as a whole take a more enquiring and analytical approach to discover new, and better, ways of doing things. “I recently visited a large UK shopping centre we manage and was delighted to see how it incorporates recycling into the heart of the centre. From metals, plastic, wood, food and oil waste - one way or another - it was all reused or recycled.”
It means instead of sourcing goods and services for a shopping centre and separately organising for the removal of waste produced on site, you’re considering how you can combine those two elements and make them work together. In addition to turning a potential cost into a financial benefit, staff who work on the ground are proud of the difference they are making. This same pride can be applied to the social impact Savills is achieving in the community through its thoughtful approach to employment. “Much of the ESG [environmental, social, governance] agenda focuses on sustainability; the social element is not discussed often enough,” she says. “Within Property Management, we are focused on levelling up working conditions for operational roles. We are actively working to establish
programmes and relationships with organisations to create jobs to support those who may have otherwise found it more difficult getting into a role.” Maxi would like to see more procurement professionals working alongside suppliers for new ideas, and sharing that knowledge with the broader industry outside of their own company. While working in the telecommunications industry she and peers from other telcos collaborated to improve contractors’ health and safety by improving the equipment they used. “We discovered the cages surrounding the masts weren’t making them safer, so we changed the design of ladders and harnesses to make them more secure and comfortable.”
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