The Purchaser Issue 3

THE SUSTAINABILITY CHAMPION

RODRIGO TONA ON DRIVING HARMONY BETWEEN PEOPLE AND PLANET

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In putting together this issue, I came across numerous recent reports, whitepapers and insight pieces around quite possibly the most important topic facing the procurement function: sustainability. And all of them had one thing in common.

Technology is – of course – crucial in improving an organisation’s ability to drive sustainability, but it will get you nowhere without a significant change in cultural mindset, a sense of ownership across the business and individual responsibility for making real change. The leader’s role in this is indispensable. Rodrigo Tona is one such example. The CEO of Ternova Group is as passionate

about the environment, sustainability and driving harmony between us and our planet as he is about any other aspect of business.

And it shows. Under his stewardship, the company has become a global leader in cutting-edge sustainability initiatives, working with some of the biggest brands on the planet. His is a story of what’s possible when you allow your passion to drive the success of your business. But so are countless others in this edition of The Purchaser. Whether it’s the technology transformation at Epiroc that’s brought significant emissions savings across the supply chain, entrepreneur Colin Curtis’ Support the Goals initiative, TrusTrace’s ingenious supplier visibility solution or even the incredible, space-age hyperloop of Zeleros.

They’re all clear demonstrations of the power of innovation, progress and evolution with purpose. And that’s real leadership.

Matt High.

Content Director

Matt High

Creative Directors

Daniel Crawford

Steve Shipley

Marketing Director Jack

Pascall

Project Director

Manuel Navarro

Managing Director

James Pepper

60 | ENTREPRENEUR COLIN CURTIS

Supporting the UN SDGs

62 | INTERVIEW

PINE CLIFFS

On delivering a digital luxury experience

76 | LEADERSHIP CYBERSECURITY

Culture, compliance and the role of the leader

86 | INTERVIEW

WIK GROUP

On culture and the evolution of procurement

94 | DISRUPTOR

ZELEROS HYPERLOOP

The transport system of the future

96 | CITY GUIDE

48 HRS: BERLIN

Business and pleasure in the German capital

104 | CALENDAR EVENTS

The best virtual events for 2021

TOYOTA: CONfIdENCE IN ExPErIENCE

“Do we foresee any major impact? No,” said Toyota CFO Kenta Kon on a recent company earnings call. Kon was referring to the global semiconductor shortage impacting the automotive and other industries. In this instance, said Kon, Toyota has escaped the fate of its industry rivals because of its experiences during Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Kon said the disaster had seen the firm hone its ability to make assessments of products rapidly, thus mitigating potential supply issues. www.global.toyota

TECH-VISION

Cloud is the priority technology currently being scaled, according to Accenture, which found nearly all of those executives surveyed expect 50% or more of their business to be in the cloud within three years. The consultancy’s Technology Vision 2021: A Supply Chain Perspective set out executive priorities for the next year or more, chief among which were greater adoption of AI, improving dedicated training to raise digital fluency and scaling of critical ecosystem partners. www.accenture.com

TOP OF THE CHAIN

This year’s iteration of Gartner’s Top 25 and Master supply chain companies has earmarked those organisations that have embraced three key trends: being an integrated, purpose-driven organisation, driving an accelerated level of business model transformation, and accelerating digital roadmaps during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cisco Systems topped the list for the second year in a row, followed by ColgatePalmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Schneider Electric and Nestlé. www.gartner.com

SUSTAINABILITY VS RESPONSIBILITY

How do you incentivise executives, employees and suppliers to take responsibility for sustainability? In many ways, the million-dollar question, but one that executive search company Odgers Berndtson has tried to answer. It interviewed 29 global CPOs on the subject, finding that when organisations set clear sustainability targets and make the topic central to strategy, it is more likely to be integrated into everyone’s daily decision making. Those CPOs interviewed highlighted the importance of a collective or common sense of ownership and the incentivising of those most successful at already integrating it into their work. Close to 80% of them linked executives’ salaries to sustainability goals. www.odgersberndtson.com

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

Following President Joe Biden’s signing of an executive order to assess supply chain vulnerability in the US in February, the White House has said a newly established task force will address key supply challenges. It will focus on semiconductors, transportation, agriculture and food, and homebuilding and construction; the White House added that actions have already been taken to address supply chain disruption, including tackling cyber vulnerability in the US. www.whitehouse.gov

VISIBILITY IS KEY

Your coffee this morning, where was it sourced? Your diamonds (if you’re lucky), the same question. Consumers want these answers and more today, according to an IBM blog that suggests 70% highlight traceability as very important in decision making. In the context of our industry, the consequences of that shift in mindset are significant, says IBM. The tech giant proposes technology as a solution for providing the visibility needed, setting out three areas of focus for supply chain and procurement leaders: inventory management optimisation tools, fulfillment optimisation technology that can control order management systems, and blockchain technology to bring greater provenance to the supply chain. www.ibm.com

Analytics ‘lighthouses’ are emerging in procurement, says McKinsey, showing the gains possible when analytics are applied at scale. Lighthouses:

> Define precise questions they wish to answer with analytics

> Invest in a robust data backbone, including clean, structured and enriched data

> Make transformational change in their organisation

> Transform organisa tional culture and build capability

> Are systemic in their approach to design, running pilots and scaling McKinsey: Designing procurement through analytics

81%

of supply chain executives say the COVID pandemic has been the largest stress test faced by their organisation

CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF

Drone innovator Flytrex has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly over people, a move that will further expand the drone delivery programme the company is working on with Walmart. The pair have been focusing on home deliveries – to those [detached] homes with suitable backyard landing space – since last year. If you’re lucky enough to live in Fayetteville, North Carolina, expect to see the drones hovering over yards, before lowering goods to the ground, very soon. www.flytrex.com

Goldman Sachs leads a $202mn investment round in real-time, digital supply chain infrastructure innovator Project44 , doubling its valuation to $1.2bn.

Amazon announces the creation of a new robotics innovation hub to serve as the company’s epicentre of robotics development.

HP states its intention to take steps towards inventory increases and the signing of longer term supplier contracts in light of an industrywide component shortage.

Walmart introduces faster payments and overhauled financing options to help diverse and minority suppliers facing challenges with accessing capital.

Jeff Bezos says new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy will “never let the universe make us typical” during his final annual meeting heading up the business.

Levi Strauss and other brands say they have increased their use of air freight to ensure stock levels are met in light of inventory delays.

Apple’s latest supplier responsibility report says 83% of its suppliers are assessed as high performing, representing a 36-point increase in five years.

THE SUSTAINABILITY

Ternova Group CEO Rodrigo Tona discusses sustainability and assisting some of the world’s biggest companies drive harmony between people and planet

WORDS JONATHAN DYBLE

SUSTAINABILITY CHAMPION

Alot happened in the 2010s. Be it terror attacks and natural disasters that shook the world, or seismic events like Brexit and the 2016 US Presidential Election, historians will have a lot to analyse when reflecting upon this century’s second decade. And that’s before we even reach the 2020s, which will undoubtedly be defined by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Such an unprecedented period has drastically changed the way in which many of us live our lives. But so too have key global trends, many of which are too pressing to ignore. In the context of today’s world, arguably no single word has become more important for our future than sustainability. Indeed, sustainable goals, practices and objectives are shaping the strategies of organisations, global corporations and entire countries.

“This really is a time in history where every business is going to be shaken,” affirms Rodrigo Tona. “Companies will have to find harmony between their financial goals, social development and the environment. That, to me, is what sustainability means.”

Tona is better placed to comment on the matter than most. As CEO of Ternova Group, he’s helped oversee the transformation of what was once a small El Salvadorian company manufacturing plastic products to become a global leader in cutting-edge sustainability solutions.

As to how and why that has happened, “Ternova Group is first and foremost a family business,” Tona explains. “The company has always had a long-term vision of creating and sustaining a business that would be there for future generations. We therefore wanted to expand and grow quickly. To achieve that, we needed to reconsider our entire strategy and anticipate major trends, propelled by growing consumer consciousness and regulatory requirements, as they began to emerge.”

CSR, CLIMATE AND THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Ternova began to develop a comprehensive sustainability strategy 15 years ago, focusing on three core areas. First, it wanted to be recognised as a sound corporate citizen; second, it sought to have a positive impact on climate change; and third, it aimed to adhere to circular economy-centric principles throughout its entire value chain.

Substantial commitments were made. The company became the first organisation in the region to sign the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative; the firm also signed the UN Global Compact. Likewise, it outlined a number of aggressive goals, aiming to become the first organisation in the region to achieve carbon neutral status, and establish itself as one of the top 10 best places to work in Central America.

In order to achieve these ambitions, however, drastic changes had to come from within.“Realising that you need to continuously change, adapt and adjust is really the first step in a sustainability journey, but it’s not easy,” Tona reveals. “We were a company focused on operational excellence for years, and our

innovation would be geared towards products. When you want to incorporate innovation in terms of sustainability, it’s a different type of innovation. Now we’re innovating the business model, which requires the organisation to reconfigure how top management thinks, acts and measures itself.”

“WE NEEDED TO RECONSIDER OUR ENTIRE STRATEGY AND ANTICIPATE MAJOR TRENDS”

This overhaul has manifested in a threepronged continual review of internal operations, product portfolio and external alliances, designed to ensure all parts of Ternova’s value chain act as effective cogs in a wider sustainability-fuelled machine. In doing so, the company is able to accurately measure its impact, and in turn prioritise sustainable initiatives based on these measurements.

POWERED BY INTEGRATED PARTNERSHIPS

Ternova has made a series of incremental and meaningful sustainable changes,

particularly relating to its use of energy, raw materials and technology to bolster production efficiency. This includes the establishment of a reverse supply chain, the company sorting and recycling the waste of its customers efficiently, then providing them with sustainable, recycled products.

Two such partnerships were formed with Unilever and Nestlé, with Tona highlighting both enterprises as pioneers, owing to their declarations of intent to sustainably transform their product portfolios.

Rinso Natural is our first brand in the region made with 30% of recyclable material (Via Post Consumer Resin) while we guarantee that all of our brands contains resin that can be recyclable. We co-created this technology in packages, through our alliance with Ternova since we share a mutual environmental responsibility. With this initiative we are proud to be aligned towards our 2025 Clean Future purpose: using at least 25% recycled plastic in all of our brands.

“We’ve been working with both Nestlé and Unilever to create sustainable solutions that go way beyond the norm,” he affirms. “Yes, we’ve been incorporating recycled content into their products, but we’ve also ensured their packaging is recyclable, and for those sources of waste that can’t be recycled, we’ve been creating bricks, stools for schools and other alternate products.”

Ternova has also been collaborating with Dow Chemical, co-creating pellets that use postconsumer recycled content, while garment brands Fruit of the Loom and Haynes have also consulted the company for support regarding their sustainability goals related to sustainable packaging and the circular economy.

EMBRACING INNOVATION

Underpinning many of these ventures is an unrelenting focus on innovation. In order to remain at the leading edge, Ternova introduced an entrepreneurship model, encouraging its employees to focus on developing business enhancements. Here, an incubator, accelerator and funding strategy was launched, providing the time and resources that its staff needed to thrive.

But when COVID-19 hit, it seemed that such innovation efforts would need to be put on hold. “The first four months of the pandemic were really hard,” Tona explains. “I unfortunately became stuck in the US for 120 days when we were hit by COVID. It was immensely challenging – not only was I not there, but the whole team had to sustain the business remotely during a period of extreme uncertainty.

“WE HAVE BEEN SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE MODELS FOR SOME TIME”

“At the same time, owing to travel restrictions, we had to increase capacity in specific regions to continue to serve our customers under very complex conditions. Even now, the availability of materials and movement of goods has really been an issue, adding a new layer of complexity to our supply chain.”

Here, however, the company’s team rose to the challenge. In the first three months of the pandemic, through proactive, collective and innovative thinking, Ternova was able to shift its entire manufacturing operation from the production of sustainable packaging to the creation of medical gowns, producing over one million units that were distributed to healthcare facilities in the Central American region.

“I’m extremely proud of my team, of how they led by example,” Tona states. “By the end of 2020 we were ranked among the top five places to work in Central America and the Caribbean – a true reflection of how we managed the toughest possible challenge together.”

“THIS REALLY IS A TIME IN HISTORY WHERE EVERY BUSINESS IS GOING TO BE SHAKEN”

OPTIMISM AND OPPORTUNITY

As we move through 2021, it seems that there may be a glimmer of hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight. For Ternova, the future looks increasingly bright. In the eyes of Tona, the coming months can be summarised by two simple words: optimism and opportunity.

“Things are going to change incredibly fast, and we want to be a part of that change to capture as many new opportunities as possible,” he says. “Our vision is to be a player in the transformation of industries, and part of the legacy of COVID-19 is the acceleration of those transformations. People have come to understand that the responsibility in terms of sustainability lies with us humans. Remember how Venice became clean at the beginning of the pandemic? It was incredible.

“This realisation has been music to our ears. We have been swimming against the current to create sustainable models for some time, without always having the support of others. Yet now, everything is becoming more aligned with sustainability, making it easier for us to create, or co-create solutions. We’re moving out of the pandemic with a stronger, more sustainable customer base, and that is tremendously positive.”

www.ternova.group

Portfolio

i nnovative and ins P ired items for work, leisure and travelling in style

ASTELL & KERN A&ULTIMA SP2000

Remember the Walkman? Don’t. Really, trust us. While the need to block out the world, or take a moment for introspection still exists, you should do it with high-end engineering and style. The A&ultima SP2000 delivers both. Beyond its lavish sandblasted aluminum chassis, the innovative personal audio player packs a punch. Specifically, MQA file support, 512GB of internal storage – or around 2,000 albums for the layman – dual-band wifi and bluetooth, and built-in access to Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon and Apple Music and Deezer. The perfect travel companion.

www.astellnkern.com

Portfolio

i nnovative and ins P ired items for work, leisure and travelling in style

COWAROBOT R1

A robot suitcase that follows you is, in reality, all we need to say here. But we’ll indulge you.

COWAROBOT R1 is the world’s first full autonomous smart suitcase, meaning it’s packed with innovations that allow it to follow you while also avoiding obstacles in its path. It does that through clever AI that recognises you, meaning it stays faithful however busy the airport. Other features include a ‘find me’ function, a smartphone app that sets an alarm if the case moves more than three metres away and a battery that can charge other electronic devices.

www.myrobotcentre.co.uk

Portfolio

i nnovative and ins P ired items for work, leisure and travelling in style

FINIS SMART GOGGLE

Ah, travelling in summer. The relaxing, the sun, the pool, the unrelenting quest to beat your own PB... The latter comes courtesy of Finis’ Smart Goggle, an innovative and modern take on the classic swimming goggles that, thanks to a real-time display screen that sits in the corner of the lens, shows you laps, splits, set times, rest times and more. Smart Goggle also tracks your swims and connects to an app that gives a breakdown of your day’s work and lets you share it with friends.

www.finisswim.com

Portfolio

i nnovative and ins P ired items for work, leisure and travelling in style

INSTA360 NANO

Everyone shares holiday snaps. But share immersive experiences? For that you need Insta360 Nano, a high-quality 360 degree camera that turns your iPhone into a VR camera. Insta360 Nano takes great photos. It also allows you to share real-time 4K video with anyone in the world, has high-tech gyroscope technology for real-time stabilisation, and can be used in VR mode with the accompanying VR headset (part of the camera’s packaging and similar to Google Cardboard).

www.insta360.com

Portfolio

i nnovative and ins P ired items for work, leisure and travelling in style

NEBULA SOLAR PORTABLE

Nebula promises to ‘make the world your movie theatre’, regardless of where you go and, presumably, however good or bad the TV is in your hotel room. Solar portable is a 1080p projector that connects to your smartphone or other devices, allowing you to watch cinematic quality visuals on a projected screen of up to 120 inches. High-tech audio is delivered by dual 3W speakers and the system can also be used as a portable bluetooth speaker. It’s almost enough to make you hope for rain...

www.ukseenebula.com

How are ai , data and mac H ine learning driving t H e cognitive P rocurement revolution? c a P gemini’s d avid a sfa H a tells us

e are in the age of the cognitive enterprise, an era in which innovative exponential technologies such as AI, machine learning, IoT, automation and 5G are transforming the way we do business. In such an environment, leaders have a unique opportunity to shift the procurement function’s role to one that is a source of value, efficiency and innovation to their organisation. According to IBM’s Cognitive Procurement: Seizing the AI opportunity, for example, “the procurement function is at the centre of cost, quality, sustainability and risk, as well as

the customer, employee and supplier experience. As a result, it has a unique advantage in spearheading the transformation to a cognitive enterprise in a fast-emerging platform economy.”

The advantage of cognitive solutions that have capacity for self-learning is evident in a data-heavy industry such as procurement – they can, for example, analyse the vast amounts of data that are inherent in a modern supply chain. They can also use that data to increase the procurement leader’s understanding of an increasingly disparate and disrupted supplier network.

David Asfaha understands these capabilities as well as anyone. An AI Architect at leading consulting and technology services company Capgemini, Asfaha believes AI to be an essential asset to the modern cognitive procurement function. He tells us more...

technologies promise to make a wider range of data available for use in cognitive procurement. This includes innovations like IoT, which can collect data from the environment and assets, and blockchain, which promises an exchange of information across organisations.”

EFFECTIVE DATA STRATEGY IS

ON THE RISE OF COGNITIVE PROCUREMENT

“Cognitive procurement is the application of AI and machine learning technologies to the challenges faced by procurement departments. In terms of technology and innovation, it is largely underpinned by developments in AI. More specifically, these include things like natural language processing, virtual assistants, knowledge graphs, and decision support-enabled machine learning.

These AI technologies are essential as they promise to reduce the time it takes for staff to make sense of complex contractual agreements. They also help them find complex patterns in internal and external data sets.

Of course, AI is impossible without data. With that in mind, other emerging

ON DATA, DECISION MAKING AND VALUE

“The greater use of data and analytics has led to an interest in better support for decision making and the automation of processes using data. When clean and structured procurement data is easily available then the decisions made by frontline procurement specialists becomes easier, trivial even.

Cognitive technologies like machine learning offer a way to automate these tasks, but also surface more complex patterns, which means the procurement function can focus on higher-value tasks.

An effective data strategy is vital for companies embarking on a cognitive procurement transformation. The opportunities for cognitive procurement are abundant, but without a focused approach to

“AN

VITAL FOR COMPANIES EMBARKING ON A COGNITIVE PROCUREMENT TRANSFORMATION”

establishing data foundations and putting analytics in place, future cognitive procurement initiatives risk failing.”

ON THE ROLE OF THE PROCUREMENT LEADER

“Executives can use knowledge graphs to explore deep relationships in the procurement process. They can also exploit deep learning-driven natural language processing and virtual assistants.

Knowledge graphs are rich representations of knowledge on which automated reasoning techniques can be applied. This technology makes it possible to relate extracts of a contract to third-party

information about a supplier (for example, their suppliers, market data, and so on) as well as internal data (rate of replacement, geographical location of the project or lead times).The use of knowledge graphs also enables reasoning over this data to find deep relationships. For example, the graph may reveal that a part from a distributor which is often late for delivery can also be obtained from a distributor closer to a project. Natural language processing can be used to extract structured information from contracts. With this, a procurement professional can engage using a virtual assistant to extract information quickly.

ON OUR AUTOMATED FUTURE

“Procurement can be automated through a combination of pure machine learning solutions and machine learning solutions that make use of robotic process automation (RPA) technology.

As many procurement actions, unlike marketing or customer service, are fully data driven and lack an emotive or creative component, it makes them an ideal

candidate for machine learning automation. In addition, procurement is a process-rich environment. It is also technologically heterogeneous, which makes it a prime candidate for RPA as well as, in the future, its successor: cognitive process automation.”

“PROCUREMENT IS A PROCESS-RICH ENVIRONMENT. IT’S ALSO TECHNOLOGICALLY HETEROGENEOUS”

David Asfaha is an AI Architect at Capgemini, a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation.

Innovator

©Filippa K

TRUSTRACE

THE FUTURE PROOFERS

If you don’t know where your products come from, how can you expect your customers to trust your brand? Well, you can’t. Which is why traceability over your supply chain is one of the biggest challenges in improving our planet.

TrusTrace puts it more succinctly: “there is no sustainability without traceability”. The tech innovator was born out of a simple, yet crucial objective discussed in the obligatory coffee shop setting of so many startup births. That mission is ‘bringing transparency to producers who really want to know what they sell, and for consumers who really care what they buy’. And it starts and ends with the supply chain.

The Stockholm-based company’s stateof-the-art digital platform automatically collects suppliers’ data and holds it on a tamper-proof blockchain network, thus giving complete product and supply chain transparency and building competitive advantage through sustainability.

www.trustrace.com

TrusTrace founders

Epiroc’s Jess Kindler and Petra Grandinson discuss the company’s transformational use of supply chain technology

when your work requires you to maximise the productivity of your customers – to a degree where even the smallest downtime or unplanned stop can bring significant and costly consequences – there is no greater asset than an efficient, effective and well organised supply network. Add increasing complexity to that equation in the form of geographically diverse, and often hard-to-reach customer locations, global pandemics and a growing appetite for regionalisation, and managing that supply chain becomes a balancing act of good leadership, strong strategy and the adoption of innovative digital technologies.

The latter, as Jess Kindler and Petra Grandinson explain, is the main thrust of a significant and ongoing transformation programme at Epiroc aimed at giving greater visibility, understanding and forecasting, and control over the company’s supply chain. Kindler and Grandinson – President, Parts & Services Division and Vice President Supply Chain respectively at the productivity and sustainability partner for the mining and infrastructure industries – are both playing a significant role in driving that change.

“The main goal is to make the supply chain a real competitive asset in the work we do for our customers,” says Grandinson. “You break that down and it’s focused on several core goals: availability of parts and supplies, reducing inventory and also making sure that we’re using any inventory that we tie up in the right way and at the right location, reducing costs, and driving sustainability including lowering the CO2 impact of our transportation. It’s a very substantial programme that’s been running over several years and broken into steps that can be managed effectively. It’s been about focusing on our different regions and different parts of the process in a step by step fashion that will make us a regional organisation with global control.”

Expanding, Kindler reflects on the breadth of change the transformation is bringing. “I’ll give you a flavour of where we started four or five years ago,”

he states. “On reflection, we probably had two or three times too many stocking locations and trouble with availability; you look at the whole picture and you’ll see an inefficient use of the resources we had – if a customer needed a part, the chances are that we’d have it, but it’d be in the wrong place and difficult to ship. Making the whole network and every node in the supply chain take care of itself by effectively connecting everything was critical. At the same time, so was removing complexity, which is something we’ve been doing one step at a time.”

COMPLEXITY AND AN EVOLVING MARKET

That complexity is both a product of the mining, infrastructure and minerals industries that Epiroc serves and a reflection of a market evolving at pace, say Kindler and Grandinson. The company develops and provides equipment and spare parts to its customers, from surface and underground equipment, machinery and technology to essential parts and services that maximise production. It is, says Grandinson, “all about customer centricity; our job is to make sure we’re doing our utmost to deliver and exceed the customer’s expectations”.

That in itself is no simple task. The industry has several inherent challenges that add layers of complexity to an already complicated supply chain process. Chief among these are location and environment. “Typically, mines are situated in the more remote locations

worldwide,” says Grandinson, “which means that a strong level of service to those places is essential. At the same time, the logistics and transportation often isn’t as developed where there’s mining activity, particularly in places like South America or Africa.”

“When you’re an industrial concern you can be quite confident that 80-90% of your customers are within 100 kilometres of a major metropolitan area; we can safely say that 80-90% of our customers are not,” Kindler adds. “It’s really about getting out to those far reaching spots and using all the modes of shipment available to do that. It’s a complex thing to manage, which is why bringing next generation technology to the table so that you can track and organise your shipments from origin to site – every step of the way – is essential.”

Epiroc already does this in a highly effective manner, working through regional locations with a presence in more than 150 countries worldwide. For a business expected to meet customers’ needs anywhere in the world and in

REGIONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

“THE MAIN GOAL IS TO MAKE THE SUPPLY CHAIN A REAL COMPETITIVE ASSET IN THE WORK WE DO FOR OUR CUSTOMERS”

PETRA GRANDINSON, VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN

Is your supply chain future-fit?

Volatility and uncertainty are pushing companies to lift and shift supply chains quickly. Maximum visibility over product content, supply chain financials and logistics flows in near-real-time has never been more critical than today. The global pandemic provided businesses with a real-life supply chain stress test: putting pressure on supply chains in all kinds of sectors, as market demand for certain products and services rapidly rose and fell.

The resilient, future-fit supply chain is a more connected and self-orchestrating ecosystem, allowing companies to quickly anticipate opportunities and address challenges and risks before they arise, according to PwC’s Connected & Autonomous Supply Chains 2025 report.

1,600+ Executives surveyed from companies across seven industry sectors in 33 territories

‘Digital Champions’ - companies pioneering supply chain excellence – are the exemplars of future-proof supply chains.

Digital Champions are ready to face major and unpredictable disruptions (such as the pandemic).

Digital Champions lead on supply chain transparency. For example, almost half (47%) of Digital Champions create digital twins of their supply chains. This compares to just 12% of all companies surveyed.

~9% Of supply chain costs invested in advanced capabilities by Digital Champions

The majority (70%) of Digital Champions use financial data to make supply chain decisions. On average, only 31% of all companies leverage this information to drive decision-making.

~7% Digital Champions achieved strong cost savings

Are you ready to reshape your organisation to foster supply chain excellence?

Do you want to be fully equipped for the inevitable upcoming supply chain challenges?

~8% Revenues of Digital Champions were also up sharply

minimal time such a way of working is crucial, says Grandinson. “Our regions are key. We have six, and one of the reasons they’re so successful is the way in which they’re managed. We have a very decentralised management that is all about empowering and giving the regional organisation the authority to work closely with our sales organisations and the customers. It’s a combination of regional responsibility and global governance, whereby we want to ensure we’re working in one unified way with the same tools, processes and so on, but

we still have the local proximity to the customer that’s essential.”

Practically, that relationship with the customer is built on a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the machine or equipment they use, says Kindler. This requires knowledge of the critical components for that equipment, as well as those parts that are essential to ensure it remains operational, followed by the securing of the supply chain for those components from supplier to customer. “With that base, you then look at those ‘fast moving items’,

“MAKING THE WHOLE NETWORK AND EVERY NODE IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN TAKE CARE OF ITSELF BY EFFECTIVELY CONNECTING EVERYTHING WAS CRITICAL”

JESS KINDLER, PRESIDENT – PARTS & SERVICES DIVISION

SUSTAINABILITY ROADMAP FACTS & FIGURES

ACCELERATING SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS 2021-2030

• <29m tonnes by 2030: Science-based target for carbon reduction

• €7bn spend on green technologies by 2030

• 30% ESG-related targets in the Corporate Board’s annual bonus

GROUP STRATEGY 2025

With around 570,000 employees in 220 countries and territories we are an essential driver of global trade, economic growth, and individual prosperity. Sustainability is our responsibility and well embedded in Strategy 2025.

Purpose: Connecting people, improving lives

Values: Respect & Results

SUPPORTING UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS GOALS

As a longstanding partner to the United Nations, DPDHL Group supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on 6 in particular.

SUSTAINABILITY MILESTONES

1st Environmental Report UN Partnership: GoHelp Code of Conduct Target 2050: Supplier Code of Conduct GoGreen 2008 2005 Zero-emission logistics 2017 2003 GoTeach 2009 2006 Strategy 2025 2019 COMMITMENTS 2020 GoTrade Sustainability Roadmap 2021

ENVIRONMENT

Clean operations for climate protection

Our aspirations by 2030:

We will invest €7 billion until 2030 in clean operations to reduce our emissions from 33 MT in 2020 to under 29 MT by 2030 –despite the expected further growth in our global logistics activities. We thereby commit to Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi)*

GREEN LAST-MILE & LINE-HAUL

LEADER IN SUSTAINABLE AVIATION

Increase sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blend to >30% by 2030

CARBON

GREEN PRODUCT PORTFOLIO

Offer green alternatives for 100% of all core products & solutions

* MT = million tonnes; We measure our carbon emissions (CO₂e) using the Well-to-Wheel (WtW) measurement logic. www.dpdhl.com/sustainability

“IT’S A COMBINATION OF REGIONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE”

PETRA GRANDINSON, VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN

service components that wear quickly and are being constantly consumed,” he adds.

“You secure that supply chain and make use of the master data you collect from it – the information that lets us decide where we position things based on information like how many borders it will cross, how many times it will have to clear customers and so forth,” Kindler continues. “It basically becomes a networking exercise that’s all about building a network around our distribution centres, matching locations with suppliers to minimise shipment and handling times, and then considering the customer side. The latter is focused around the specific maintenance strategy they’ll employ for the machine or equipment they use. It’s a dynamic process and the ability to respond quickly is vital.”

TRANSFORMATION, DATA AND PARTNERSHIPS

Technology makes that possible. For Epiroc, a significant focus of its transformation programme has been on building an effective and powerful supply chain control tower that uses data to effectively give a single picture of the company’s global ‘reality’ along those key objectives set out by Grandinson previously.

“YOU SECURE THAT SUPPLY CHAIN AND MAKE USE OF THE MASTER DATA YOU COLLECT FROM IT”

JESS KINDLER, PRESIDENT – PARTS & SERVICES DIVISION

The tower, Kindler explains, serves as a bridge between the company’s disparate operations and locations. “I like to think of the data flowing through our supply chain as water,” he enthuses. “You have these stagnant pools around the world that aren’t connected. Your control tower in that analogy builds the streams and canals between those pools, giving you a flow of data that you can monitor and, at any time, see what’s happening in realtime and make adjustments accordingly.”

Of course, such change doesn’t happen overnight. And while Epiroc was established just four years ago in 2018, it’s

history dates back to the late 1800s as part of the Atlas Copco organisation. Those well versed in technology transformations will understand that such a legacy makes the adoption of new technology – and the moving away from legacy processes – challenging. However, both Kindler and Grandinson explain that effective change management on the part of the company has brought a quick understanding of the benefits of an innovative mindset.

“We’re built on committed and resultsoriented people, and the control tower is actually an enabler for everyone across all our regions,” Grandinson states.

“I can see the same picture as my regional manager and our sales organisations, and that’s very powerful. If you deploy technology in the right way like that and you have that drive and initiative in the organisation, it becomes a fantastic tool for allowing everyone to work more proactively for our customers.”

Such a significant programme requires collaboration with dedicated and powerful technology partners, in this instance PwC, DHL and Geodis. Grandinson explains that any such collaboration

The bigger your business grows, the more there is to ship across the world.

Good to have a partner who also knows how to help you keep your supply chain green.

Behind every great success, there is great logistics.

GEODIS is one of the global players in logistics. We bring your goods safely and reliably to their destination and help you reduce the carbon footprint of your supply chain. Learn more at www.geodis.com!

must be underpinned by a shared commitment to Epiroc’s core values and dedication to innovation as well as demonstrated excellence in the respective field of the partner. In short, she says, any partnership is viewed as ‘an extended arm of the business’ that is both transparent and focused.

“When it comes to partners,” Kindler adds, “our expectation is that they invest with us. This is a transformation effort and so we all have to be invested in the same goals. But we also expect that where there is a lack of expertise on our side, the partner fills that gap. Take DHL as an example. In terms of e-commerce and marketplace solutions, they’ve been absolutely crucial in showing us new ways of doing things. We’re now one of the first companies in the B2B space to

offer real-time shipping quotations in four different modes of transport, as well as real-time tracking, and that’s something that both us and DHL have invested in together with the view of building a long-term relationship.

“Our work with Geodis and PwC is no different,” he continues. “For Geodis the focus has been on doing things differently, and us being able to make a significant transition in the way we ship our parts. PwC has been critical in helping us work through the transformation process. Often you look at such a big project and you want to tackle it systematically; it’s been very beneficial having the experience of a PwC to help us establish the overall governance around such a project and set out an effective methodology through which we can tackle the work.”

SUSTAINABILITY AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

To date the transformation has proved successful. Not least in expediting Epiroc’s ambitious and aggressive sustainability objectives for 2030, which cover a broad spectrum of change from the reduction of emissions from transport and electrification of the company’s fleet, to achieving greater workforce diversity and contributing to the growing circular economy movement. So far, efficiencies brought about by the changes and improvements in planning, modes of transportation and optimised processes have seen the business stop transporting 700 metric tonnes of cargo by air per month, instead moving by sea.

“Right now, reducing emissions is the most important focus,” Grandinson adds. “We have some very challenging targets but have made a big impact with more than a 30% reduction of our CO2

emissions from transport as part of the transformation. More long term, we’re looking at how we manage our inventory as part of this, and there’ll be future developments around our battery business and electrification, too.”

“The shift to batteries presents it’s own challenges,” says Kindler, expanding.

“In terms of sustainability, it’s about thinking far more in line with the circular economy approach – if we’re going to put all these batteries out into the field, how do we control how they’re reused, disposed of or recycled? To address that, we provide Batteries as a Service (BaaS), a concept whereby rather than selling batteries we offer them as a service to the customer – once the battery has performed its intended function powering a machine, it can be reused in a battery wall or for a municipal power generation company. It’s about supporting the full lifecycle of the equipment.”

Future sustainability measures will result from the transformation programme. With such ground already made, both Kindler and Grandinson have very firm objectives for ongoing development.

Kindler, for example, expects a securing and expanding of the foundations put in place by the transformation over the next couple of years in line with the agile methodology ‘pilot, nail it, scale it’ approach. Epiroc, he says, is now in scale-it mode. In line with the appetite for innovation and technology adoption, the company will also pursue new acquisitions related to electrification digitisation and automation, he adds.

“We need to finalise the transformation work in the near- to mid-future,” explains Grandinson. “When it comes to new technology, I think we’re scratching the surface. There’s plenty of opportunities around automation and digitisation, as well as looking at the integration of robotics and artificial intelligence. We’re creating a very strong foundation that we can build on with acquisition; there’s an exciting and promising journey ahead.”

www.epiroc.com

“WHEN IT COMES TO NEW TECHNOLOGY, I THINK WE’RE SCRATCHING THE SURFACE”

PETRA GRANDINSON, VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN

Colin Curtis

FOUNDER OF SUPPORT THE GOALS

Follow your passion and success will follow, as the saying goes. And so it is with Colin Curtis. “ Support the Goals brings together my three business passions: technology, sustainability and supply chain,” says Curtis, who founded Support the Goals to raise awareness of and support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in several areas including supply chain and procurement.

The Support the Goals premise is remarkably simple, yet effective – to act as an initiative that rates and recognises businesses that support the SDGs through work such as promoting the scaling of activities across supply chains. Awareness around sustainability in the supply chain, says Curtis, has increased significantly over the past years due to greater scrutiny from investors and customers.

“My biggest frustration is the lack of standardisation of sustainability as a concept,” he says. “My heart goes out to procurement teams who create complex questionnaires for suppliers in an area they’re not comfortable with; we have to make it simpler.” Support the Goals does so by using technology to research and rate supply chain members, offering advice and recommendations on sustainability and fostering a spirit of collaboration to improve how we treat the world.

The Sustainable Development Goals are the UN’s blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice

UN Photo/Manuel Elias

UN Photo/ Evan Schneider

UN Photo/Mark Garten

UN Photo/Manuel Elias

UN Photo/Cia Pak

t H e art of lu X ury

at t H e algarve ’ s lu X urious P ine cliffs resort, covid downtime H as B een used to accelerate digital activity focused on delivering an en H anced customer e XP erience , says MANUELA f IGUEI r E d O

WORDS TOM WADLOW

Monday 17 May was a landmark day for UK holidaymakers and a select handful of international destinations. Dubbed ‘green list day’, it denoted the lifting of travel restrictions by the UK government, enabling citizens to travel without quarantine requirements to countries considered to be in a similar or better position regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

The prime beneficiary, without doubt, has been Portugal. At the beautiful Pine Cliffs Resort, nestled in the Algarve’s Albufeira, bookings soared by a factor of three in the space of a few days after the UK’s green list announcement.

The resort has never actually closed during the pandemic, instead operating at a very

limited capacity to cater to its long-term residents and owners, in line with protocols issued by Portugal’s health department.

Now, however, the five-star destination operated by Marriott International is seeing its rooms fill up to levels much closer to expected occupancy.

And although uncertainty remains as to the road ahead, the lifting of pandemicrelated travel restrictions to Portugal is a huge boost for the country’s tourism industry, a sector which has suffered tremendous hardship on a global scale since the start of 2020.

Huge adjustments have had to be made, not least in making premises COVID-secure.

“ t H e resort is a ma J or reference P oint in P ortuguese H os Pitality circles and is a destination t H at ’ s known worldwide ”

At Pine Cliffs Resort, this challenge has been faced by Supply Chain Director Manuela Figueiredo, responsible for procuring essential equipment during the pandemic downtime period to help prepare the resort for the resumption of business.

“We had to contact new partners as there was such great demand for new products that ordinarily we would not have,” she says. “This includes items such as masks, hand disinfectants, steam machines for luggage disinfection and so on. We also

had to reconsider our strategy and day-today business by renegotiating contracts and services with our partners.”

Figueiredo and hospitality are a natural fit. Born and raised in the Algarve, the experienced procurement specialist has a deep-rooted passion for the industry that stemmed from her childhood, with hotels having always been present in her daily life.

Prior to joining Pine Cliffs Resort, Figueiredo worked for Hilton, a tenure which

“ t H e a PP H as B roug H t a new dimension to customer e XP erience ”

prepared her well for the transition to Marriott’s internationally-renowned processes and procedures.

“I proudly accepted the position at Pine Cliffs in 2016,” she recalls. “The resort is a major reference point in Portuguese hospitality circles and is a destination that’s known worldwide. The first few months I would describe as a major learning curve. Pine Cliffs Resort is like a small village, and adjusting to this new environment was certainly a challenge, but one that I continue to enjoy tremendously.”

MANUELA FIGUEIREDO

OLD MEETS NEW

The Pine Cliffs estate, located at the top of the dramatic Algarvian red cliffs with views over the Atlantic Ocean, is home to approximately 800 room keys of several accommodation options (from guest rooms and suites, to fully equipped one- to three-bedroom apartments or up to fivebedroom villas), a nine-hole golf course, tennis and padel courts, an awarded spa, eight swimming pools and an array of eating and drinking establishments.

And while Figueiredo and the resort’s management team have been busy making these facilities COVID-secure for new arrivals, the pandemic has also enabled time to digitise other elements of the customer experience, including the launching of a newly developed app.

Recent months have been spent enhancing the app’s scope and usability and, today, visitors are encouraged to download it on arrival and use it to manage their stays.

“We have replaced almost all of our paperbased collateral with our guest app,”

Figueiredo says. “Guests can avoid queues by booking tables at restaurants and appointments at our spa, among many other things. Resort agendas and events, key contacts and exclusive promotions are also available through the app, which has brought a new dimension to customer experience.”

DIGITALISATION WITH A HUMAN TOUCH

Despite the app representing Pine Cliffs Resort’s stepping into the digital age, Figueiredo is quick to express the importance of striking a balance between technologically-driven convenience and the human touch.

“I must admit, I’m old school when it comes to customer experience,” she continues. “I’m passionate about communication and face-to-face interactions. While my English is far from perfect, I always enjoy making conversation with guests. I believe communication creates magic.

“We humans are social animals. Technology can’t replace human interaction, so we need to combine the human and digital elements. We have guests that have been coming here every single year for almost 30 years. They already have a friendly relationship with the older associates who they know well and who really make all the difference, staff who pamper them with every detail.”

SUPPLY CHAIN INNOVATION

The ‘old school’ Supply Chain Director has also embraced technology in her own domain. Figueiredo’s remit upon joining Pine Cliffs was to review the supply chain function of the business and help create greater value from optimising various processes. This is an ongoing and everevolving task, and has stretched into joining synergies with numerous partners in the supply chain ecosystem.

“Having been in the hotel business for a while now, I’ve witnessed quite a few changes over the years,” Figueiredo says.

“ tec H nology can ’ t re P lace H uman interaction , so we need to com B ine t H e H uman and digital elements ”

“Globalisation has impacted us in such a way that the speed with which technology evolves is undoubtedly one of the great changes of our time.

“Access to information and data is quick and easy. In minutes we can know the total purchase values of the year for any supplier. We can analyse the best price

and services at the touch of a button. Having this visibility over our supply chain is so important, and accessing data makes this possible.”

Ironically, technology has also enabled Figueiredo to appeal to her old school face-to-face communication inclinations, albeit in a virtual sense.

“In the past we used to talk on the phone, sometimes for years, without ever meeting the other person,” she explains. “This meant that our imagination was more fertile as we pictured through our voice a person that sometimes didn’t match the truth – it could be funny for both parties.

“Sometimes, meetings were scheduled and people had to travel hundreds of kilometres and, in addition to the inconvenience, the costs were huge.

Today, however, you can schedule meetings via video call with any country around the world in a matter of minutes, and you can see who you are talking to. Seeing a person’s face establishes a very important connection, which is vital in this business since it’s people who are increasingly becoming the building blocks of companies.”

Indeed, as Pine Cliffs Resort resumes something close to normal business, it

“access to information and data is Q uick and easy, in minutes we can know t H e total P urc H ase values of t H e year for any su PP lier ”

will be down to its people to ensure the newly enhanced technological offering is flanked by the personal touch that helps to create lasting memories for visitors.

Seeing smiling guests is a major motivator for Figueiredo, and while she is cautious about the coming months due to events

that continue to be outside of the resort’s control, she remains wholly upbeat.

The past year has been a huge learning exercise for all involved, an experience that will only serve to better prepare Pine Cliffs Resort for future disruptions.

“While we must act with caution, we are quietly optimistic that our busiest month, August, will be somewhere close to normal,” Figueiredo concludes.

www.pinecliffs.com/en

Cybersecurity, culture and compliance

Want to get serious about cybersecurity?

It all starts with the culture you set as a leader, according to Chris Clements

SolarWinds was [at the time of writing, at least] the last big one. A cybersecurity breach on a scale big enough to make us all reconsider the effectiveness of any threat prevention measures in place. And for good reason, too. The attack, which originated in the Orion network management software from SolarWinds, wrought damage across an enormous supply chain, with victims including the Pentagon, the US Treasury Department and the Commerce Department.

But how would you deal with such an attack? It’s a question every procurement or supply chain leader should be asking – and not just when prompted by the next SolarWinds. Technology is a good place to start. But so too is culture, according to Cerberus Sentinel’s Chris Clements. We tracked him down and, across as secure a line as we could muster, fired some in-depth questions on everything you should know. Here’s what he told us...

The Purchaser: How has the cybersecurity landscape evolved over the last five to ten years and what have been the key drivers of change?

Chris Clements: From an attacker’s perspective, why would you target a hundred individual victims when you can focus your effort compromising vendors with access to potentially many thousands? Even in organisations with mature security programmes, vendor solutions including applications and appliances can occupy a kind of no man’s land where the first and last line of defence is trusting that the vendor is impervious to compromise.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Vendors are just as susceptible to compromise as any other organisation and are increasingly targeted not only by ransomware gangs flush with funding but also by nation-state actors with teams dedicated to developing zero-day exploits targeting their products.

It’s critical that all organisations realise this and plan their security risk management strategy accordingly.

TP: What or where are the biggest risks in the modern supply chain and how do you secure the many stakeholders or parties across a global network?

CC: The more you try to unpack the true depth of supply chain interdependency the more it becomes apparent that it’s turtles all the way down. The vendors you depend on depend on their own vendors, and on and on.

It’s a herculean task to ensure that every potential piece of software or cloudbased SaaS that could be in use in a given organisation is identified, put through the appropriate vendor management process and included in larger risk management programmes. While there are ways to attempt to ensure that the organisations you deal with directly are doing their best to adhere to security best practices contractually, there’s little other influence you may have to mitigate risks further downstream that have the potential to affect your organisation.

In another vein, the applications your organisation develops likely depend on third-party frameworks or libraries that could cause significant damage if unknowingly backdoored or otherwise maliciously modified by an attacker.

practitioners contrasting going on a diet with adopting a lifestyle. The diet is a temporary action likely to only achieve temporary results. Adopting a lifestyle is an ongoing commitment to principles that will ensure long-term success.

Information Security Culture means embracing the principles for ensuring the safety of your and your customers’ technology assets, whether they be sensitive data or computing resources.

It starts with a commitment to informed education from executive leadership and flows down through empowering all levels of the organisation to identify and respond to potential threats, whether that be through education programmes or budget for security-specific initiatives and testing.

TP: Your mission statement, ‘cybersecurity is a culture, not a product’, sets the bar for organisational security; what does it mean in practice?

CC: I use the analogy of health

TP: What are the biggest challenges to instilling such a culture?

CC: A lack of understanding of just how easy it can be to completely take over an entire organisation’s network. From my experience it can take only a few hours to a day or so to go from zero to having full control of all systems and data in an organisation. It often only takes one or two dominos to fall, mostly due to insecure default settings or vulnerable orphaned systems or applications for a skilled attacker to quickly get to a ‘game over’ situation for their victim.

I can count on one hand out of the hundreds of offensive penetration tests conducted when the customer was alerted or noticed the attacks from the testing team. Had we not been the good guys hired to proactively do the testing, the

targeted organisation might not have noticed until all its data had been stolen or its computers encrypted by ransomware. That’s the reality of the threat landscape, and almost no one either knows or takes it to heart.

“Why would you target a hundred individual victims when you can focus your effort compromising vendors with access to potentially many thousands?”

Executive leadership needs to have the awareness they have a highly skilled team experienced in identifying attacker actions, and that they are at significant risk of business interruption or liability from cybercriminals. Technologists that manage systems and applications likewise need to realise that security products are not silver bullets for preventing a compromise. Too often I see overconfidence in the security products deployed for protection. Our offensive testing teams regularly bypass even the more sophisticated anti-malware solutions.

If the plan for preventing malware or ransomware starts and stops with your anti-malware product, you have already lost. And yes, that’s even true for the new whizz-bang, next-gen, AI fed, machine learning algorithm on the dark-blockchain products. They are not enough on their own.

TP: Where does technology come into play? Does supply chain and procurement digitalisation increase the risk?

CC: To quote Bruce Schneier: “technology magnifies power”. That’s true for both good and bad actors. The same technology that increases efficiency and reduces costs can introduce new risks. Solutions that digitise what were formally paper records vastly increase speed, efficiency, and storage of data. They also allow attackers the ability to steal, alter or encrypt for ransom your data at an organisationwide scale in minutes or hours.

“If the plan for preventing malware or ransomware starts and stops with your anti-malware product, you’ve already lost”

To reduce risk, it’s vital to understand both the pros and cons of the specific technologies selected. It’s fashionable these days to adopt a ‘move fast and break things’ mindset to technology, but this can quickly lead to situations where systems or data may inadvertently be put at risk.

TP: How do you effectively protect your vast amounts of data?

CC: First, understand what you have, where it’s stored and how it is accessed. Once this has been identified, a strategy can be formed for mitigating risks for both intentional and inadvertent loss or disclosure. Access controls are critically important to ensure that only authorised personnel are able to view, edit, or delete sensitive data in organisations. If access is not necessary for every user, it should be restricted to the minimum necessary for business operations. Likewise, audit and logging controls to record access or changes to data are crucial for ensuring that a history of actions over the data’s life cycle are maintained.

It’s important to consider controls over data proliferation. It doesn’t matter if you have the most secure file server in the world if users with legitimate access can just download it to their home computer or send it to their personal email account.

Finally, a pre-planned recovery strategy if the worst is to happen is absolutely essential. Of particular concern is who can access the backup files, as well as the effectiveness of the restoration process at scale.

To avoid that, ensure security benchmarks or best practices guides are consulted for any new technologies or platforms prior to introducing sensitive data.

In ransomware attacks, cybercriminals quickly escalate their privileges and set about looking for where the backups are stored. If your backup files are accessible by the same administrative accounts,

this can give attackers access to delete them. For that reason, backup files should be secured separately and more tightly than the rest of the organisation. It’s worth considering that the normal restore process that works well enough for a server failure here or there can completely fall down in a ransomware situation that requires hundreds or thousands of systems at once.

TP: What lessons can we learn from more recent hacks or breaches?

CC: Nothing in security can be waived off as someone else’s problem. Far too many organisations’ supply chain defence strategies begin and end with ‘the vendor will handle it’.

Now more than ever it’s important to look beyond blindly trusting your partner’s operations or contractual security requirements. It doesn’t matter whose fault a breach is, the end result is the same: your data or the information your customers have entrusted to you has been lost with no guarantee it will be returned or not resold on the dark web.

We must look at what additional controls may be introduced to vendor managed software or systems to limit damage that may stem from another supply chain compromise like SolarWinds, for example. The options may be limited, but they’re likely never none.

TP: How has COVID changed the landscape? Did the disruption and changing operations caused by the pandemic bring new threats?

CC: The biggest change was the mass migration to working from home. Most companies built their security controls with the assurance that most communication would be centralised to their internal network: access controls, monitoring controls, centralised patching, basically everything.

Work from home completely upends this paradigm and, in addition to bypassing these centralised controls, introduces additional threats. Is the wifi properly secured or wide open? Are there other

“Solutions that digitise what were formally paper records vastly increase speed, efficiency, and storage of data. They also allow attackers the ability to steal, alter or encrypt for ransom your data at an organisation-wide scale in minutes or hours”

potentially malicious devices that lurk on the home network like Xboxes, random IoT devices, or bored teenagers on laptops? Personnel working from home may also be less on guard due to the familiar surroundings and more easily fall prey to social engineering attacks like phishing.

TP: What does an effective cybersecurity supply chain look like and what are the key actions every organisation or leader should take?

First, if possible, you carefully vet vendors and partners before engaging with them. Second, make sure you have the appropriate contractual language in place to ensure that the vendor is adhering to information security best practices through compliance certification and regular security testing.

“Nothing in security can be waived off as someone else’s problem. Far too many organisations’ supply chain defence strategies begin and end with ‘the vendor will handle it’”

Chris Clements is VP of Solutions Architecture at Cerberus Sentinel. He designs solutions that ensure customers get the most value from their security budget and helps them manage supply chain risk in ways ranging from evaluating or developing vendor management programmes, through to implementing technical and operational security best practices to mitigate risk from potential supply-chain attacks.

Third, take steps to minimise the sensitive data stored by or exposed to the vendor – after all, they can’t lose what they never had. Finally, investigate what additional controls may be possible to add on top of your supply chain entry points.

TP: How do you see the threat landscape changing or evolving and do any trends grab your attention?

As long as cryptocurrency provides cybercriminals with an easy method of extracting money from their victims, ransomware will continue to grow in size and scope. However, I do expect that as opportunistic victims become fewer, attackers will target individual verticals to make their campaigns more effective. Companies inside a vertical are likely to have similar operations, similar products and vendors. Being able to familiarise themselves with these details allow attackers to better tailor social engineering lures to up their success rate in compromising their targets.

Modern ransomware gangs are highly skilled with massive budgets for offensive operations. These groups will focus their efforts on ways to maximise their effectiveness and absent a commensurate rise in the security posture of their targets will continue to be successful. There has to be a cultural change on information security for organisations serious about protecting their data and operations from compromise to have any chance at surviving these increasingly advanced adversaries.

THE CULTURAL SHIFT

Daniel Chua has witnessed first-hand the changing dynamics underpinning procurement practices over the past three decades. Here, he dissects them in more detail

WORDS TOM WADLOW

The rules of the game are being rewritten by the pandemic.” A succinct, yet highly revealing summation of what it’s been like to be in the world of procurement since the start of 2020, courtesy of Daniel Chua.

Few could have predicted the upheaval that COVID-19 has caused and continues to cause. Global shortages of key materials have led to scrambles to keep production lines moving, a dynamic which has created something of a new paradigm in supplier-customer relations.

“What I’ve witnessed is that suppliers are now turning things around far quicker than in pre pandemic times,” Chua continues. “Where there was once a resistance to change and a fear of doing things that may be considered a waste of time and resources, a new sense of urgency has emerged.

“Panic buying and unnatural stockpiling has caused havoc, without a doubt, but overall I believe the opportunity to restart and rethink how procurement is conducted will provide benefits in the longer term.”

A veteran with more than three decades of experience under his belt, Chua is better placed than most to dissect modern procurement, particularly the drastic events of the past year or so following a gradual but fundamental shift which has seen purchasing rise up the corporate hierarchy.

“ THE RULES OF THE GAME ARE

BEING REWRITTEN BY THE PANDEMIC”

Daniel Chua, Head of Global Sourcing, WIK Group

“In the earlier days of my career, procurement was never seen as a senior activity,” he says. “But over the last 15 years or so that’s changed. Company leaders are seeing the value of effective purchasing operations – while these activities do not lead directly to sales, they have a huge impact on margins.”

Raised and educated in Singapore, Chua’s path to procurement began in the UK, where he launched his career at what was the country’s most revered furniture retailer, Courts. In the early 2000s, the company granted him the opportunity to return to Singapore via the electrical

years at German high-tech firm OSRAM, for which he spearheaded procurement activities across the Asia-Pacific region.

Today, he serves as Head of Global Sourcing for another German multinational, WIK Group, a contract designer and manufacturer (ODM/OEM/CM) for electrical appliances and devices.

BUILDING COLLABORATIVE CULTURE

Chua is responsible for group-wide purchasing activities, covering all manufacturing sites and direct and indirect materials. It is a broad remit, and one that reinforces what he has observed in

division of the business, where he became deeply involved in telco purchasing.

From here, he was headhunted by tech giant Philips and held a senior purchasing position for more than seven years, an experience Chua identifies as a huge learning curve and one which has informed much of the success he has enjoyed ever since. This includes several

regard to how procurement best practice has evolved.

“Purchasing made its way up the boardroom because the business case was realised in a financial sense, we showed that if taken seriously, it can lead to huge cost savings,” he explains. “But procurement has evolved well beyond simply being all about dollars and hard numbers.

“IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIP BUILDING AND CREATING CULTURAL SYNERGY BOTH IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN AND OUR OWN ORGANISATION”

The future is already here.

Introducing a new era for human-machine interaction

Genbyte combines machine learning, voice recognition and many other methods to our embedded systems to empower our products with the ability to observe, to listen and to communicate.

It’s about relationship building and creating cultural synergy both in the supply chain and our own organisation.”

Chua is quick to point to the importance of soft skills and teamwork in delivering a slick procurement operation, a process that involves collaboration across multiple departments of WIK Group.

This enables transparency across the organisation. For example, before presenting any proposal or update to company bosses, Chua ensures all financial and savings claims are analysed and validated by WIK’s financial team.

Although a small example, it represents

a wider movement being driven by Chua and adopted by senior management to unify corporate culture in a broader sense.

“When I joined WIK two years ago, I saw how many capable people the organisation had, but that the company’s many operating centres were localised and not aligned to a common culture,” he adds.

“I brought in some experienced heads from multinational giants like Whirlpool, and the difference in mindset started to create some morale issues. It was a problem that we had to fix quickly. We had to move beyond being a series of local companies to an international organisation pulling in the same direction. We’re now seeing this being put into action.

It’s a transition that does not simply finish overnight, and requires sustained proactive efforts right from the top of the company.”

DRIVING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Indeed, Chua points to sustainability as an example of how WIK is creating a clear global vision that every location, team and individual staff member can identify with. It will form a key focus from 2022, the ultimate ambition being to transition to a true circular economy protagonist and become a carbon neutral company by as early as 2025.

Chua is the first to admit that this is no

straightforward task. “Like with any corporate culture initiative, it is easy to communicate nice words,” he says.

“The challenge lies in backing those words up with actions and going beyond sending out an email. Training and the involvement of people is key, and that means everyone in each layer of the organisation, as there will be some employees who have no idea what the term circular economy means. If you don’t know what it means, you cannot attach yourself to this crucial component of our corporate culture. At WIK, younger generations of leadership are pushing

GENERATIONS OF LEADERS

PUSHING OUR CSR AND SUSTAI ABILITY AGENDA FROM THE TOP”

our CSR and sustainability agenda from the top, and this is starting to filter down through the rest of the company.”

OWNING THE FUTURE

Chua explains that the sustainability agenda at WIK has been embodied in the

term ‘owning the future’, a good segue into how he plans to future proof procurement and purchasing in the months ahead.

Technology takes centre stage here. “Over the past 18 months, we have been making a move towards becoming a 4.0 enterprise,” says Chua.

“What do I mean? WIK is a German company and has always utilised state-of-the-art German machinery for its manufacturing operations, the focus is now being turned towards the back office. Historically and still today, many processes and systems covering things like approvals and other records are paper based. Digitising internally is the next step.”

Indeed, Chua is eager to introduce a procurement management system similar to the one he worked with while at OSRAM, a move which would optimise processes and provide a solid foundation to absorb any scaling up in purchasing activities caused by company growth.

“Smaller and mid-sized companies tend to channel their tech investment into frontline machinery, so it’s encouraging to see WIK putting more resources and investment into crucial back office functions,” he adds. “This will help us on our journey to revitalising the organisation and taking WIK to the next level.”

www.wik-group.com

“ YOUNGER

ARE

ZELEROS HYPERLOOP

Pioneering t H e H y P erloo P

To say that the hyperloop is a 200-year-old invention is akin to saying Da Vinci invented the helicopter. It’s true, in a way, but there is a significant leap from a reputed UK study in the 1800s to an innovative ground transportation system that can carry cargo and passengers at speeds of more than 1,000km/h.

Zeleros has made that leap. The company, which is the brainchild of co-founders Daniel Orient, David Pistoni and Juan Vicén, is building an energy and cost efficient hyperloop system for city-to-city travel at unprecedented speeds. The system, they say, is up to 10 times more energy efficient than an airplane for the same inland route and operates with zero direct emissions.

When deployed, hyperloop vehicles will run autonomously throughout the tube infrastructure network, using a disruptive levitation system that lets them ‘float’ and carry their cargo at top speed. The company expects the system to be used globally, slashing transportation time and cost.

www.zeleros.com

B E R L I N

Berlin is iconic for any number of reasons. It is, of course, famed world-over for its nightlife where you’ll find never-ending nightclubs, energy, music and a carefree but embracing attitude. That’s after 5pm, of course. For the hours prior to that, the city is reputed as one of Europe’s best for startups, boasting an ecosystem of tech-driven innovators like fintech firms N26 and Raisin, social music platform SoundCloud, and many more. Including Uberall, founded by Florian Hübner. Here, Hübner takes the reins on a guided tour of the city, pointing out the best places for business, sustenance and pleasure. Hold on tight...

WORDS FLORIAN HÜBNER

BUSINESS

The most impressive coffee and laptops workspace (because it’s so unusual) is Café St Oberholz. I haven’t worked there too often, as I am a Berliner, but I first saw it in the 90s, when I was visiting my uncle. In those days, it was a coffee shop where people would work with their (then huge) laptops. Later, I remember visiting again in 2003, when I’d started studying computer science, and there were loads of people ‘hacking away’ there.

Now Café Oberholz has expanded to more locations, with co-working spaces on the upper floors. As our first office was 100 metres from the café, I used to conduct

meetings and interview job candidates there for some time. It has great memories and it’s still nice to go there for the occasional meeting or coffee now.

betahaus is a workspace created by six students back in 2009, before coworking was even a thing. It’s still a place for startups, entrepreneurs and freelancers to come together, and if you’re looking for a place to host a hybrid event – yes, even those can be blended virtual and in-person now –betahaus has two locations (Kreuzberg and Neukölln). Its event spaces have been updated with socially-distanced seating, and all the livestream equipment you need.

BETAHAUS

CAFÉ ST OBERHOLZ

I don’t have much to say firsthand, as I’ve always lived in my own places here in Berlin. But since I can’t offer you the chance of some couch surfing, I can tell you out-of-town visitors like nhow Berlin for its funky design and music-themed vibe – the hotel even offers free guitar and keyboard room service. We had one of our Christmas parties there and loved the killer outdoor terrace on the Spree.

Downtown Apartments is great if you’re looking for more of a ‘home from home’ experience. It’s 24-hour self-check-in, and all its apartments have kitchens and open out onto a balcony or terrace, with views over a nearby park and across the city all the way out to the TV tower at Alexanderplatz.

Airbnbs are also a great way to discover Berlin in a way that’s tailored to you, from city apartments to more quirky options like houseboats and at least one baumhaus (treehouse!).

NHOW BERLIN

NHOW BERLIN

DOWNTOWN APARTMENTS

AIRBNB

FLORIAN HÜBNER

Florian is CEO and co-founder of Uberall, where he is the main technical and product lead for the company.

Florian started the business with his oldest friend, David Federhen, in 2013 to enable local businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers and communities by becoming more visible and engaging online.

Uberall started with a small team of four people and now has more than 300 employees and is still growing rapidly. Before founding Uberall Florian spent several years as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he advised leading companies across a variety of industries. He has also worked at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam.

EAT / DRINK

My heart is with Standard Pizza . Sure, it’s ‘just’ a pizza place, but it’s a great one. For business related dinners, I often get dragged to stuffy, fancy places, but that’s not a great representation of who we are and how we think. So I might bring anyone – my team, our board, clients – to my favourite pizza place, and it creates a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere for real conversation.

For something a bit more gastronomic, Cookies Cream in Mitte is great. It’s probably one of the few Michelin starred restaurants in the world with such a dodgy looking entrance (through a car park and past a dumpster), but the vegetarian menu is inventive and delicious. I’m a veggie but even die-hard carnivores would agree it deserves its Michelin star.

COOKIES CREAM

COOKIES CREAM ENTRANCE

MAUERPARK KARAOKE

LEISURE

A bit tricky after a year of lockdown. I’ve lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years and it’s my home. I’d say it’s one of Berlin’s best neighbourhoods for walking around and exploring. Kastanienallee is a chestnut tree-lined street full of cafes and specialist shops – organic ice cream, art, streetwear – and it’s home to Prater, the oldest biergarten in Berlin.

One thing that amazes me again and again is Mauerpark Karaoke , which takes place every Sunday at 3pm in summer. It’s held in an open-air amphitheatre, and anyone can show off their talent (or lack of it!) to hundreds of enthusiastic people. It’s fantastic! Inspiring, different, honest, fun... and to me, very Berlin. It’s a place where you can do and be whatever you want.

NEUES MUSEUM

THE MALL OF BERLIN SHOPPING CENTRE AT LEIPZIGER PLATZ

glo B al events calender

PROCUREMENT SUMMIT

22-23 JUNE —

Hamburg, Germany

Two days of world-class speakers, discussion rounds featuring leading experts and workshops offering timely procurement expertise.

> VISIT WEBSITE

PROCURECON EUROPE

08 JUNE — Europe

*ONLINE*

Where CPOs and procurement executives benchmark their strategies and build on their greater influence gained during the COVID crisis.

> VISIT WEBSITE

PROCURECON ASIA

14-15 JULY —

Asia *VIRTUAL*

The event to engage with Asia’s top CPO’s and heads of procurement in collaborative activities to drive forward your business.

> VISIT WEBSITE

SCTECH

04-07 OCTOBER —

Central Europe *VIRTUAL*

A global event connecting supply chain professionals and practitioners with leading technology decision makers.

> VISIT WEBSITE

WORLD PROCUREMENT CONGRESS

13-14 OCTOBER —

*VIRTUAL*

A virtual meeting place for CPOs, digital leaders and supply chain professionals to discuss the future of procurement.

> VISIT WEBSITE

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