Foodpanda pushes the boundaries, driving innovation to the max
Roberta is one of this year’s Procurecon Asia keynote speakers discussing how COVID-19 has changed the way we think of resilience, globalisation, regionalisation and localisation, and what strategies foodpanda have deployed to remain both competitive and balanced in this new reality. Roberta talks to us about forming successful strategic partnerships, drawing on both her marketing and procurement background to apply an eclectic array of skills and experience into her role. We discuss forging successful partnerships, creating efficiencies, digital priorities and spearheading digital transformation to maintain their position as Asia’s leading food delivery marketplace.
1. Can you introduce yourself and your background?
I’m Roberta, Head of Brand Media and Procurement at foodpanda APAC. I started my career in the procurement division at Accenture in Europe, after which I joined Delivery Hero where I started building the foundation of my experience in Marketing. In the last several years at Delivery Hero, I have donned several regional and global roles, right from budgeting, brand strategy, media pricing and country launches, bringing together marketing and procurement. My mission is to create alternative ways to reach customers next to the most traditional media as source of awareness, engagement and customer acquisition, painting APAC pink!
2. How crucial is improving supply chain efficiencies in helping build brand loyalty among its customers? How has foodpanda achieved this?
Supply chain is key to build a strong brand. Every single item produced - either for riders, merchants or customers - represents the brand and allows to create a direct interaction with the users. Our unique pink color is one of our main assets, strategic for Brand recall and Top of Mind, hence we ensure that the items we ideate and source support the Brand direction. The quality of our products and a close consideration for safety is crucial to create a brand which our users, partners and riders can trust, hence QC is a very important stage in our supply chain. To reach these goals, we have a strong procurement process to ensure best production options and quality check, but also an innovative team which focuses on the market strategy. We spend a significant amount of time ideating items, thinking about the best placement and how the customers will interact with them.
3. Foodpanda has forged several strategic partnerships such as with Xiaomi and 7/11. How should brands approach strategic partnerships to better serve their end customer?
Partnerships are a way to get closer to users, multiply touchpoints with the brand and enhance the overall customer experience by the joint efforts and expertise. Strategic partnerships can lead to a whole new variety of products or services that better serve the end customers and their needs. For example, you can now get 7/11 products in less than 30min, anytime and right at your doorstep. In a case like Xiaomi, we provide customers with a streamlined experience, having foodpanda App already downloaded on the phone and ready to deliver food and groceries in a tap. I believe that a collaboration is successful when it’s able to generate added value for both pools of customers and overall greater convenience to the end user.
4. You have an interesting background in Marketing as well as Procurement. How do you bring together the best of the two worlds (marketing and procurement) in campaign development and implementation?
I believe that merging efforts between Marketing and Procurement enables us to close the gap between item ideation, sourcing and go to market implementation, in favour of getting a 360 overview of internal and external factors affecting certain decisions. Having a procurement background and a deep understanding of supply chain allows me and my team to be more considerate from a marketing perspective when we ideate items and we come up with campaigns – it helps us to have rough ideas of budget needed, production limitation/opportunities and a sense of lead times to start with. On the other end, marketing expertise allows us to think more strategically about the implementation and how that product or solution would impact the business, it gives us some more ground for innovation and effective sourcing beyond cost savings.
5. You’re on a keynote panel that addresses the changes in the way we imagine resilience globalisation, regionalisation and localisation – can you tell us how foodpanda proved resilient over the pandemic and what you’re doing to align on these matters?
Pandemic has affected all businesses across the world for the past 2 years and unfortunately, we’re not fully over it yet, especially when it comes to supply chain. We still experience disruptions till date, particularly in the shipping phase as prices fluctuate by the hour and forwarders’ booking slots are stretched. During the peak of the pandemic, we have taken the time to re-think our internal processes and how/where we source. Majority of our suppliers were based in China, now we have a bigger portfolio of regional suppliers. In my opinion, resilience lies in flexibility and adaptation, which allows to find best solutions to new emerging problems.
6. What’s the hottest trend within digital procurement now and why?
Digitalization is the future, and it has already proven to increase efficiencies in multiple industries and departments. In a digitalized world, procurement processes often lack behind and are still very manual, there are various platforms to go through and it’s hard to consolidate information, especially in hybrid models and multi-national businesses. There is often a disconnection in the process starting from supplier qualification ending up to final insights and business impact. On the buyer end, I believe digital procurement is key to automate repetitive tasks which involve order placement, payments, delivery tracking, etc. - all in all increasing transparency and boosting efficiency. On the manufacturer side, digitalization enables more complex production, reduced costs, and faster lead times, allowing to focus on much more impactful topics such as innovation of materials and sustainability – the latter being one of the current hot trends (finally!).
7. Your CEO Jakob Angele describes foodpanda as having an emphasis on speed, scale, and brand to build market share. Can you tell us about how this is reflected in your success?
One of our core values is “Decide fast, take risks, get it done”. We’re not afraid to make decisions and take actions, even when (and especially when) we face uncertainty. We learn from mistakes, keep iterating, and always focus on execution. This is what I consider the base for success as we push boundaries, move things fast and scale if the solution is a good fit to the problem we’re trying to solve. We also know brand is key, especially in a highly competitive market where besides offering a seamless service we also want to continuously “wow” our users, partners or riders with magical experiences. And that’s what me and my team try to do every day through our experiential marketing channels.
8. Looking to the future. How do you plan on making more efficiencies’ and improvements to supply chain and distribution over the next 5 years – what technologies will you invest in?
We’re currently evaluating digital solutions which will allow us to integrate all the different tools currently in use, as well as remove redundant and manual processes as much as possible. The goal is to automate processes to increase time and cost efficiencies, consolidating demand across our 11 markets while maintaining a great level of flexibility given the hybrid sourcing model adopted – global/regional/local. We concluded that as we scale and have more sourcing needs with increased attention to quality, there’s also the urgency to improve our internal processes for a better decision making.
On a different note, we’re also working towards improving our footprint and impact on the environment. Eco-friendly materials, reduction of one single use plastic packages, shipping optimization are some of the topics we’re progressively focusing more on.
9. How do you evaluate where to prioritize digitalisation across different areas of the business?
Prioritization is a must, especially for fast-paced companies as there’s often the need to think and act fast. One of the methods I personally like to use is looking at business impact vs. internal efforts. Digitalization is key to improve efficiencies, but solutions must be well thought through to ensure they fit the purpose and support the overall organization improvement. It’s important to understand how the new platform, tool or system can come in, be adopted across teams, solve issues and elevate internal processes. There are tasks, projects and generally portions of our jobs which have a great impact on the business, but can definitely be optimized as they currently require high internal efforts - those are the areas we normally prioritize first.
10. What will you be sharing at ProcureCon Asia?
At ProcureCon Asia I would like to bring my hybrid procurement-marketing way of thinking and share thoughts and experiences with the other panelists about how we faced and overcome the challenges presented to us by the pandemic. I believe Covid-19 has brought all of us to re-think procurement, putting more focus on the always-on debate centralization vs localization. While one leads to economy of scale, standardization and quality control, the other allows for increased flexibility, reduced risks and a more on-demand approach to procurement. No matter what’s the source of production, a big learning I got from the pandemic is to try and reduce risks given by dependency from specific regions, having a wider range of different productions, suppliers and geographies options, where possible.
11. What are the key topics you are keen to listen to and why is ProcureCon Asia a must not miss event?
I’m really looking forward to getting more insights around the Future of Procurement and learning more about tools and solutions currently available on the market which can boost efficiencies across multiple industries and company sizes. A goal I have is to empower my team to use the latest digital transformation technologies and focus on value-add tasks that REALLY move the needle. I’m also glad to meet other great peers and learn from each other, I think ProcureCon is a great place to learn and exchange.
Roberta will be speaking on the 6th July 2022, 2pm at ProcureCon Asia on
"How has COVID-19 changed the way we think of resilience, globalisation, regionalisation and localisation, and how can you balance these concepts while still remaining competitive?"