EUROPE
Group Procurement Director at Sky , Fabio Francalancia , who had created and managed over a five-year period a very successful and visionary team there , was asked to gather together a group procurement team , replicating some of the concepts he had developed in Italy and leveraging best practice from procurement offices in all three countries .
No more back room To say Francalancia approaches his role as Group Procurement Director with passion is , for once , no cliché . “ We Italians are very passionate and anyone who knows me can see how passionate I am . What gives me energy is all the people in the group procurement team . Their work ethic , dedication and desire is amazing , I feel it in every location - together we can achieve amazing things .” It would be very difficult to resist that energy , but why would anyone want to ? Procurement may not have been seen in the past as the most exciting department , but it is a function that underpins all other activities , reaches every part of the organisation and is now losing
its back office image and taking its place in the development of corporate strategy and business growth .
Procurement was the first internal organisation to merge into a single team . “ We are expected to be a change agent , creating a single approach to buying and a single checkpoint before spending any money .” Francalancia ’ s primary goal was to spread a positive attitude . It ’ s easy to fall into the old back office admin attitude , rubber stamping other people ’ s purchasing decisions , he says . But it is better to be a change agent , provoking initiatives and offering internal stakeholders the chance to gain efficiencies through new technology . “ We are that change agent across the three countries .”
The size and composition of the now merged team has changed very little . It already consisted of dedicated professionals , and the team were bought into the vision . Different challenges were presented in each country – the UK for example had a mature procurement platform in place , whereas Germany had an undeveloped one – it was more like a startup . “ Once we had a clear view of our roles , the
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