Sony
A beacon of procurement excellence.
In the past, Sony BV Europe’s procurement team struggled to quantify its work in tangible terms. Besides clear financial impact, Sony BV’s challenge was to demonstrate the full, value it brought to the organisation through committing to– and achieving – the CIPS Procurement Excellence Standard Programme, all this has changed. Now, the function is recognised as a key and trusted partner within Sony Europe – and its sights are set on expanding operations across the wider corporation.
SVP and CFO,
Sony BV Europe
“Procurement brings focus on current ways of working to drive financial benefit and offers innovative proposals on how the business could increase efficiencies – both from an internal way of working point of view but also from adopting new ideas and technologies from within the market as evidenced by Procurement’s approach to vendor management.”
Working in partnership
The function partners with many areas of the business to help them meet their corporate objectives, both directly and indirectly. They actively engage in contract lifecycles, and their focus on vendor management activities has become increasingly more important to their internal customers and senior management.
This capability has led the team to be given responsibility for several large discretionary business-spend areas, such as temporary labour and car fleet management. However, given its geographical spread and the nature of its projects, there are very few opportunities for the whole function to come together to share knowledge, processes, ideas and experience. That was one of the key benefits of choosing to embark on the CIPS Procurement Excellence Programme.
Stronger, together
Beyond adding value to the business, Alastair notes how the award has had a positive impact on team spirit and morale. Staff retention has increased, and many individuals have seen a significant development from both a team and personal perspective. So, what’s next?
Having now received the CIPS Standard in Procurement Excellence award, the team intend to use it internally, across the Sony group of companies, to increase spend under its control.
Head of Business Support & Service Delivery,
Sony Europe BV
“We felt it was important to benchmark ourselves against an internationally-recognised standard. What we didn’t expect was the way the programme would enable everyone in procurement to work together on achieving the award, gathering evidence, sharing ideas and working with individuals we otherwise don’t have the chance to on a daily basis...Sony Corporation globally has very few procurement functions. This recognition from CIPS will add further weight to our service offering and ultimately see us a global Centre of Excellence for procurement.”
CIPS Procurement Excellence Programme
CIPS is the world’s largest professional body dedicated to procurement and supply, enabling businesses to improve performance and develop their people to globally recognised standards.
This independent, comprehensive, procurement-focused award will help procurement to become fundamental to your organisation’s strategic operations. The programme measures your function against our world-class, globally recognised standards, and will act as a catalyst for transformational change to help you achieve sustainable value, meet challenges and drive continuous improvement across five assessment dimensions:
- Leadership and organisation
- Strategy and policy
- People
- Processes and systems
- Performance management
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