CASE STUDY / UBER TECHNOLOGIES
VALUE
people,” said Aronson, who has been responsible for the global sourcing team since mid-2016. He grew the team from half a dozen to 72 with global category leads based in the US and regional heads in Asia, South America and Europe. The team worked on its supplier relationship management (SRM) framework over the first three business quarters of 2019 and began rolling it out in Q4. “It’s pretty fresh,” said Aronson, “and it was going really well until Covid-19 hit. But we’re still talking to our supply base every day, so it continues to drive conversations and the work we had already done is absolutely making a difference to what we have to focus on now.” The closer collaboration with some of its key suppliers has enabled the business to lean on them for help as it copes with the fall in income. “We’ve had some manufacturing capability that have converted some of their lines for PPE [so it can supply drivers]. And we’ve asked for support given our current lack of revenue, so a lot of our top supply base is actually helping us on cost, without changing scope or resources. It’s been fantastic from a partnership perspective because at the end of the day they want to be around long term so they’re helping us through a tough time.” And Aronson credits closer working with suppliers for the positive successes that have already been achieved. “We’ve seen some innovation on the telecoms side of our business, voice messaging and call and anonymisation has really driven some competitive advantage for Uber. And on the technology side, we’ve built some really cool products – that I can’t go into – but that too has really given us a competitive advantage.” He says the formal programme is resulting in the right level of engagement and investment from some of the key supply base the business already had. “Some suppliers come to you proactively, but for the most part we find SRM drives the right conversation. It gives them an insight into where we’re going, which enables them to have tailored conversations with their leadership team to go after the right dollars to help fund things.”
Uber is driving innovation with supplier collaboration
Suppliers like the SRM programme because it gives
visibility to leadership and insight into where we’re going as a company. It’s win-win.
The SRM programme at the company is less than a year old, but it has already resulted in competitive improvements and support for the business through a tough time.
W hat started in 2008 as an idea dreamt up by two friends struggling to catch a cab one cold winter’s night in Paris has grown into a multi-billion dollar global disrupter. Months after that evening in France the two entrepreneurs developed a smartphone app that let people tap a button on their phone to hail a ride using their GPS location. In 2010 the first Uber rider requested a trip across the company’s home city of San Francisco and since then there has been more than 10 billion trips in 500 cities across the world. And the company has diversified into not only moving people, but food and other items; it has moved into the use of driverless vehicles and has ownership of a number of subsidiaries. There have, inevitably, been ups and downs along the way. It has had the highs of rapid growth and financial investment, and the lows of losses, such as those caused by opposition and blockades from the taxi industry. The company is used to adapting fast, however, and today is no different – only this time, it hopes its closer collaboration with key suppliers will help it through its current rough ride and lead to securing future growth. We spoke to Neil Aronson, Global Head of Strategic Sourcing & Logistics, in May, just as the company had been forced to make drastic cuts to secure its long-term health. “It’s been a rough week, no-one is travelling and we’ve had to lay off some good
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2020 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT 19
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