INNOGY
16 success , but other industries didn ’ t pay attention , meaning a large chunk of costs weren ’ t managed professionally . In the 80s when I left university , procurement was the fifth wheel on the wagon . It was just transactional work .”
Heading up a large organisation means being able to transform this process through procurement engineering . “ If you don ’ t have the right organisation , you cannot become a successful value creator bringing lots of money to the company . You must create a larger , centralised procurement organisation including the right people . You have to engineer the right organisation and all procurement processes .”
‘ Procurement engineering ’ for Piepel involves bringing together processes , measurements and set-ups to go through one department . “ This helps you make sure your organisation is following the best in class processes , with the same set of KPIs ,” he says . Perhaps unsurprisingly , the most important KPI at Innogy is return on investment . “ In the past , when procurement was transactional , people only looked at the cost involved . You have to keep that in mind , but the most important thing is to establish RoI as a key factor to ensure we ’ re saving a multiple of what we ’ re spending . This is long-term added value .”
Procurement is so vital in value creation that it ’ s hard to imagine how innogy functioned without this strategic department . Piepel is
AUGUST 2018