The Agile Transition to Deliver on Digital

The situation now is quite familiar as the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly sent millions of people to work from home (WFH), which created an immediate challenge for many organizations – providing secure system access to employees.

However, the sudden requirement to digitize processes, such as previously paper-based transactions, in-person meetings, business travel, and other regular day-to-day operations, was a less viable and more challenging transition that occurred.

Today we have Alex Drew, AVP, Head of Procurement Asia, Sun Life, Kenny Lin, Head of Procurement, China, UCB and Mangesh Kamalakar Agnihotri, Head of Strategic Procurement, APAC, Siemens Digital Industries Software who all will shed some light on “how you can transition yourself to an agile ‘high velocity’ way of working.”

There is no doubt that Digital has become a tool approach for greater efficiency and COVID-19 has amplified digitalization and made it a necessity than a desire.

"From digital product design, supply management, and after-sales activities, all stages could be benefited because of digital solutions to improve quality, efficiency, and access to customers." Kenny Lin commented.

Earlier digitalization only meant converting hard data into soft data but now it has become an important resource for business as more and more clients want a fast and efficient experience as digitalization implies technologies anyway.

Alex added, “Digital is not a destination, it's both the journey and destination: the destination is to become more transparent and more self-serving, the journey is how you get that and how you deliver that and organize it.”

When asked about whether they see the whole organization digitally enabled or part of it being digital?

The speakers were of the view that digitization must start from the top management as digital leadership is the key for bringing a digital mindset.

Every level should be digital, as it's not about a single techy person but the management bringing out a digital culture.

The transformation for digital can be divided into phases: it can start with digitizing some processes which will help to minimize the low valued manual efforts.

What are the technologies, which help you in your business line?

"There are many technologies but what separates you and gives you a competitive edge is how you use them. We can learn from technologies and try to correct our mistakes." Alex stated

The panel shared that Artificial Intelligence for sure will be very helpful in the future but today machine learning has been the most important technology.

Since COVID-19, the role of the procurement leaders has changed and the panel of speakers affirmed it. They added that their role has shifted to continuous evaluation.

Earlier, the procurement leader would follow traditional disciplines but now the job has shifted to leading the change so they can bring more value to the organization.

Before, people ran away from procurement but now, they run behind it as they already believe that they play a big role in digitization. 5-7 years down the track you were free to do trial and error to gather data but it is different now: If you want to find a specific supplier, you can do so easily by using the search engine.

The panel felt though that your relationship with the supplier is something that will not be automated. Yes you can save time and money from not doing face-to-face meetings, but talking with them plays an important role and will remain important in the future.

Since they have so much expertise and knowledge we asked them which are the two most important skills?

They would look for a person who is good in problem-solving and has creative thinking skills as functional skills can be easily given but these 2 skills will automatically bring the digital mindset.

Along with these two skills, the person must be agile in order to deliver real value to the organisation.

The panel concluded that what we feel right today might not be the best for the future. We need to continue learning and improving. And once many are convinced of the value of digital, it will become inevitable.