In the first edition of VALUE. Supply Value interviewed several experts about the future of the procurement landscape and the CIO office, among others. In this insight, we share the key trends they identified. The common sound each of them makes is the importance of working together and looking at the same goal together. Building a future-proof ecosystem in which everyone does his or her part. After all, together you get further than each on his or her own.
Supply Value spoke last month with Jeroen Harink (general director Nevi), Bert Voorbraak (CIO Raad voor Rechtsbijstand), René Coppoolse (CIO Allinq), and Manuela van Es and Richard Lennartz (senior procurement consultant and director UBR|HIS respectively). Each shared the future vision from his or her own expertise. In this insight, we only gave a hint, you can read the whole interviews in our VALUE. magazine.
If you keep giving, you will automatically get something back
Manuela van Es and Richard Lennartz of UBR|HIS talk about how they are building an ecosystem. UBR|HIS is a procurement execution center for six departments within the national government. What Manuela, Richard and their colleagues convey is that sometimes you have to dare to do something for the benefit of someone else, without necessarily benefiting yourself. It takes a lot of perseverance to achieve this. Richard says of this, “It’s mainly in not making the mistake of doing some kind of arithmetic; that you’ve given something three times and haven’t gotten anything back yet, so I’ll stop.” Only in such a selfless way does an ecosystem emerge in which you all grow and prosper together.
Bert Voorbraak, CIO of the Legal Aid Council, shares this same view. The Legal Aid Council is an Independent Administrative Body (ZBO) under the Ministry of Justice and Security, which is responsible for implementing the Legal Aid Act, the Sworn Interpreters and Translators Act, and the Debt Rescheduling of Natural Persons Act. Bert states in this regard: “The individual interest sometimes has to give way to the interest of the citizen. If you have such an institution with the whole chain then you are representing the interest of the ecosystem instead of just yourself.” He emphasizes that – especially in the public world – organizations are partners rather than competitors. With that conviction, knowledge and information should be shared more among themselves, so that people help each other along the way based on best practices. In this way, everyone’s input is handled efficiently and effectively and together you deliver the best result for the customer; in this case, the citizen.
The customer first
René Coppoolse talks about putting the customer first. René is CIO at Allinq: the partner where telecom network owners invest the full lifecycle management of their physical telecom infrastructure. He says that basically everything Allinq does is done with the goal of providing the best possible service to the end customer. Allinq does this as a governing organization throughout the chain: they make innovations available to their subcontractors so that the customer receives better service. This sometimes means that Allinq invests in developments and innovations, which are currently not yet requested by the customer and from which the turnover does not yet come. However, René is convinced that this will eventually pay off, as long as the customer is put first.
Quality is key
Finally, Jeroen Harink, general manager at Nevi, shares from his procurement experience, “quality is key.” Nevi is the knowledge network for procurement, contract and supply management. They offer education, training and tools for procurement professionals to develop themselves and organize events that bring procurement professionals in contact with each other. Jeroen is convinced that the performance of teams or organizations ultimately depends on the quality of the (procurement) professional. These professionals are able to respond to the changing environment around them, such as increasing digitalization and agility of organizations.
