Jacques Pistorius (CSCP), Procurement Manager at Petra Diamonds Limited, with a vision of continuous improvement and a passion for supply chain, shares details of Petra Diamonds’ ongoing supply chain transformation journey.
London-listed diamond mining company, Petra Diamonds, owns and operates, among others, the Cullinan Diamond Mine, which has produced some of the most impressive stones in the world, with arguably its most famous being the diamonds of the British crown jewels. It has mines in both South Africa and Tanzania.
rocurement Manager, Jacques Pistorius, is responsible for leading and mentoring the procurement operational team, providing direct inbound supply chain support to mining operations, as well as Petra Diamonds’ head office and group support services. This involves driving the process, ensuring effective resource allocation, providing all operational procurement needs on a day-to-day basis and driving excellence in the optimisation of procurement. Jacques explains, “Our entire supply chain department is
broken up into sub-departments including transactional procurement, materials management, quality management and contracts/sourcing. All of these sub-departments are effectively resources in line with their relevant strategies feeding into the supply chain strategy as a whole. As a company, we have recognised the benefits of centralising supply chain services and, with the first phase now completed,
we are moving into considering digitalisation and automation. This will provide additional visibility and a key lever in unlocking efficiencies and standardisation across the operations to reduce cost-to serve operations.”
Jacques believes that visibility creates velocity and mentions that limited visibility was one of the key issues he and his team were keen to address in taking steps
to futureproof Petra Diamonds’ supply chain. Jacques says, “We are aligning different KPIs for contractors, which makes it easier to manage and onboard our suppliers. We have undertaken a complete procurement diagnostic, which assessed 11 components of our supply chain, mainly focused on procurement. The diagnostic provided an assessment of the strength of our supply chain, based on a
set of guiding principles. This then provided a roadmap for working towards the strategic intent and deliverables of procurement. From there, we were able to design a complete project plan to help us to reach our goal. We are in the process of updating our systems and sharing the information with all of our stakeholders to create a collaborative environment. The more information you make visible, the more velocity you have, so it is easier to react whilst ensuring more agile operations.”
As such, Petra Diamonds is leveraging a new contracts lifecycle management system across the group to make it easier to manage contracts linked to spend visibility. Jacques explains, “It gives notifications of
“Petra Diamonds is leveraging a new contracts lifecycle management system across the group to make it easier to manage contracts linked to spend visibility”
expiration dates, recommended actions and even manages your escalation. Some of the workloads involved in manual updates have been eliminated. We have also created a task team to report on our progress on a weekly basis.”
Jacques describes four stages of the supply chain transformation process:
1. Stabilise
2. Optimise
3. Sustain
4. Culture change
He adds, “In the final stage, we look back at what we have done, whether it is still on track or requires improvement to meet the company’s needs. When we started, one of our constraints was the fact that our systems had been designed using a bespoke model. This has resulted in a tendency to create silos between the different systems, and difficulty in including people because of the barrier involved in training, or the lack thereof. Our task was to align our processes to make everything more streamlined.”
The company has simultaneously been driving a cultural shift. All employees have been given the opportunity to discuss what they think the company should be doing more of, and what Petra Diamonds should be doing less of. Jacques elaborates, “Some of the components of our Culture Code include how we address
communication breakdown, working in silos and ineffective systems. From a company perspective, this has allowed for some major changes in the direction in which we are now heading, particularly when we consider the integration of our new purpose statement: ‘Creating abundance from rarity.’”
Jacques believes it is important to partner with companies that share the same vision and partner selection is about becoming deliberate and aligned to a common purpose. He says, “Ultimately, you want to be associated with other companies that have similar values to you. South Africa is a country with lots
“Select PPE has implemented a vendor management solution to our PPE requirements that has resulted in easier management and control of our PPE needs, whilst complying with the necessary safety standards required”
of diversity and inequalities. Partners that will enhance your communities are key.”
Petra Diamonds partners with a few key stakeholders who actively participate in this shared ideology including Select PPE and Realyst. Jacques continues, “Select PPE is a company that provides our personal protective equipment. Select PPE has implemented a vendor management solution to our PPE requirements that has resulted in easier management and control of our PPE needs, whilst complying with the necessary safety standards required. They additionally went out to the different communities and partnered with individuals to educate them in essential
business skills. The idea is for that individual to then continue with a similar company and become a potential distributor.
“Realyst is our key partner when it comes to contract lifecycle management. They are a local South African service provider that specialises in contract lifecycle management. They provide our system called RealContract, which has enabled us to achieve automation and greater visibility in our contracting process. A great feature of the system is that it even drafts the contract for you, so you know you are using the most up-
to-date version of the bespoke template. It makes administration much easier because everything is in one tool. It also has some really good reporting functions and assists us greatly in increasing visibility and accessibility from a central repository.”
The rest of 2023 will see Petra Diamonds complete the full rollout of its procurement diagnostic roadmap. Jacques says, “We are looking into having a real-time KPI dashboard for our team, so you can immediately see where you are currently. We have done a benchmarking evaluation to
“Realyst is our key partner when it comes to contract lifecycle management. They are a local South African service provider that specialises in contract lifecycle management”
find out where other companies are in the market compared to us and to learn where we can make improvements. In terms of the procurement function, our continued focus will be to become more agile. We are also looking into cost management, strategic advisor capacity and supply assurance. In our guiding principles, procurement skills and talent management remain huge topics. What is our current skills level, and what can we do to upskill our workforce?”
Petra Diamonds is focused on using technology to enable the
company to perform better in the future. Jacques adds, “We have a full year ahead of us. It is about easier reporting that does not take a lot of time to dissect, without having to create things from scratch. We have made huge improvements in terms of our visibility over the last few months. In parallel, we will continue to work hard on maintaining key relationships with our stakeholders, so it is easier to respond to changes in the market going forward.”
For further information on Petra Diamonds, visit www.petradiamonds.com