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The 14th European Round Table was held from 6th to 8th June 2007 in Divonne, France. It was devoted to Purchasing Contribution to Business Excellence: Driving Value through Innovation.
The EIPM was pleased to welcome 17 Chief Purchasing Executives from all over the Europe.
This year our objective was to approach “value creation” in its broadest sense whether the leveraging of the supplier base as a source of product innovation, process improvement or brand building.
A distinguished body of speakers included Mr Ball from EATON, Prof. Billington from IMD, Mr Conway from SHELL, Dr Johnsen from the Bath school of Management , Dr Laurence from EIPM, Mr Parviainen from NOKIA, Mr Sijbring from UNILEVER, Mr Bernard Gracia – the Director of the European Institute of Purchasing Management.
The presentations given were on:
“Innovation: Transforming creativity and new ideas into sustained competitive advantage”
“Collaborative innovation – dream or reality”
“Procurement in the upstream oil & gas sector, with emphasis on innovation in delivering value to the business”
“Collaborative Innovation in fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry”
“Sourcing – Connecting the Inside with Outside”
“Managing across borders – is it realistic to expect innovative actions from emerging markets?”
In order to optimise exchange among participants, a number of workshops were organised on the following themes:
1 – What is value creation and how should we leverage our purchasing resources?
• Do we really understand how value is created? Value comes from many sources: product, process or service related. When can purchasing play a role?
• Purchasing benefits from a unique standpoint, potentially influencing both internal and external resources. How should this be leveraged?
• Should purchasing be proactive or is their role to orchestrate pro-activity in others?
2 – Do our processes, organisation and performance measures encourage collaborative innovation?
• How do we move buyers away from the cost agenda to promote collaboration, teamwork and the development of enduring partnerships?
• Can the corporate BSC and the functional performance metrics be positioned to encourage rather than stifle innovative actions?
• Would a process driven organisation have more success than functional direction in encouraging innovation?
3 - How does maturity in the customer – supplier relationship enable value creation?
• Is the company behaviour towards suppliers encouraging innovation?
• Are suppliers prepared to share innovations in the absence of a long-standing relationship – at what cost?
• If mature relationships is a key point to leverage supplier value – can we afford the timelines required?
• What sort of behaviour changes can drive the creation of superior value?
In the spirit of the Round Table concept we were glad to see honest and open dialogues taking place. Each participant was able to draw personal conclusions, enabling real improvement of business performance in these areas.
Of course, the limited time did not allow the full complexity of such issues to be covered, but the proposition was to exchange opinions in the high-level debates, to share experience in a secure environment and seek solutions and common approaches where applicable.
It is encouraging to know that, according to the opinions of most participants the Round Table has attracted a large variety of experience and industries and gave the possibility to lead “open and honest discussions” as well as to build a network providing a high degree of privacy. We remain committed to our goal of positioning the EIPM European Round Table as the most important event in the agenda of European Purchasing Executives. |
