Procurement & Supply Chain | Atlantic Grupa

Continued from page 25 of internal stakeholders. This later ushered in the use of AI – complex algorithms that would help to more accurately define optimal procurement strategies, which they called ‘Guided Strategy Creation’ technology.

I am sure that, as time goes by, procurement category managers and procurement professionals in general, with the growing use of advanced digital technologies, will increasingly feel like pilots in the cockpit of modern airplanes. In them, once adequate parameters or data are entered, the technology does a lot and could actually manage everything almost independently. However, the control stick is still in the hands of the pilot who has the opportunity and often the need to choose the direction, altitude and speed that they believe will bring the aircraft and passengers to the desired destination safely and quickly.

I have already mentioned that a good part of the success of procurement organisations lies in the quality of relationships with suppliers, and this is an area where, for a long time, and perhaps forever, social rather than technical or artificial intelligence will dominate.

How do you foresee the relationship between ‘man and machine’ evolving from this point, within Atlantic Grupa?

AI is now a big part of our organisation. In addition to our category management evolution, we have recently introduced a tool that, powered by AI, scans thousands of announcements, news reports and other data sources about our suppliers and purchasing categories on a daily basis.

Based on the risks identified, the tool is able to provide a quantified assessment of the manifestation of these risks on our business. Also, we regularly use several digital tools for monitoring and forecasting commodity price movements - the estimates of which we use when making decisions about hedging production materials and energy.

With each new implementation, we know it won’t have its full effect if we don’t have people who know how to use these technologies and who have the capacity to co-develop these tools with the vendors, by setting continuous requirements for their refinement and improvement. In this sense, we also had to make certain organisational and personnel adjustments to raise the level of competence, motivation and general openness around the use of technology within the procurement organisation.

This process actually never ends but represents the continuous development of our people and organisation, which we carry out by occasionally bringing in people from outside, or ideally through permanent education and competency raising of existing employees. The great thing is that most of the new employees of the younger generation bring with them an innate curiosity and inclination to use digital technologies.

The onus is on us to match this curiosity and to satisfy their appetites for advanced digital technologies.

Presumably that’s where you come in, in creating a culture that blends the best of both manual and automated inputs?

The overall concept of ‘culture’ was actually discussed during Atlantic Grupa’s most recent Annual Management Meeting, and it’s a difficult thing to define.

Thanks to the fact that the purchasing function interacts with absolutely all functions and parts of the company, as well as the fact that purchasing performance affects the company’s financial results more than any other, the purchasing function has truly become the core function of any company.

Therefore, today’s leadership in procurement must simultaneously focus on creating a procurement function that attracts the best talent, while also improving existing employees. This requires leaders to sell a compelling vision of what the procurement function of the future will include. It means enabling the best people using the best technologies to support optimally set processes. It means visualising a department that has its reputation earned through an excellent track record, top performance, and high professional and ethical standards by which it is guided.

Instead of coming up with a specific definition, we agreed that corporate culture is depicted through a series of elements that make up the experience of our employees. This includes the way colleagues from the company greet each other when they meet in the hallway, through the music that is played in the corporate cafe or in employees’ offices, through the way in which employee meetings are conducted and various ideas and proposals are discussed, through the celebration of small and large results of the company or individual departments, or also through the way less favourable results are discussed and dealt with.

These symbolic gestures, dynamics and problem-solving capabilities are inspired and encouraged by diversity and democracy. We encourage democracy in the expression of views so that the best ideas and proposals, regardless of who and where they come from, always get a chance to be realised. We are also ready to accept mistakes that were made with the best intentions, and from each situation we try as an organisation to learn something and draw certain lessons. We consider ourselves a stilllearning organisation and every employee has the opportunity for personal growth and development together with the development of the company itself.

Attributes such as being curious, open, informal, creative and inspiring are the ones that best describe Atlantic Grupa and our corporate culture.

More generally, how significant has the procurement function become in dictating and protecting the overall performance of Atlantic Grupa?

Procurement organisations generally manage costs that sometimes amount to 60% of a company’s income. At times of high price volatility, there is an exceptional opportunity to create a competitive advantage for your company through the optimal timing of contracting goods and services… ‘hedging’, as we call it.

One of the most important tasks of such a strategic function is the protection of the company’s planned business results - ensuring the company’s profitability and liquidity. However, it is often forgotten that procurement organisations in times of shortages of certain goods on the market, by ensuring the continuity of deliveries, actually enable sales and directly affect the top-line results of the company.

In this regard, I think that in the procurement organisation of Atlantic Grupa we can be very satisfied that we managed to enable our company to achieve stable sales growth even in times of hard lockdown, when it was really not easy to secure all goods and services.

That being said, there are very few companies from our industry - food and beverage production - that have been able to achieve operating and net profits equal to results from recent years, and Atlantic Grupa is no exception.

These symbolic gestures, dynamics and problem-solving capabilities are inspired and encouraged by diversity and democracy. We encourage democracy in the expression of views so that the best ideas and proposals, regardless of who and where they come from, always get a chance to be realised.