Purchasing for all

Of course, it always happens late at night or on Sundays: Harvesting is underway, the combine develops a problem, and a missing spare part is required speedily. So quickly send off a request to the local dealer – whom you know and who knows you – and work can carry on.

There will always be exceptional situations like that. Apart from that, however, Rodrigo Kleeberg is convinced that converting our purchasing processes to a global level is feasible without any problems in most cases. The Head of Region responsible for the breeding stations in South America calculates that the order rate for Chile is already around 90 percent – even though the country was the last to switch to GLOBE and the new process just back in October 2022.

Confirm final selection

Based on our Strategic Planning, all order requests must be entered in the Central Procurement Hub (CPH). Our colleagues from Purchasing take care of processing them centrally in Berlin for all locations worldwide, obtain offers, assume the task of conducting negotiations and present the final selection. Anyone who has submitted an order request only has to give confirmation for the order to be processed electronically and transmitted to the supplier.

Our local colleagues are sometimes worried that too much time elapses between placement of an urgent order and delivery if it has to be entered into CPH first. “Supposed problems occur with orders for goods that are needed for the first time and therefore cannot yet be selected as standard,” says Rodrigo Kleeberg to cite an example. However, he plays that down: Most of the orders at the stations are for fertilizer, pesticides and spare parts, or for larger purchases such as tractors or construction materials – in other words, purchases that can be planned. “Locally, we only have to keep an eye on the exceptions.” A solution is found in dialog with the person responsible for the country in question at the Global Transaction Center – and for Chile that person is Ferdinando Bonelli. Local purchasing is allowed only if there is no way around it.

Transparency and savings

For Rodrigo Kleeberg, one advantage of the process is transparency, which helps save money and provides a basis for planning: “We can see in advance exactly what things we need at what time of the year.” Heiko Kraus, Global Head of our breeding stations, corroborates that. “We’re in a better position going into negotiations and we’re on the same wavelength as the vendors. We know more precisely what we need and can also do a comparison internationally.” In turn, colleagues at our locations have more time to devote to their main tasks. Heiko Kraus calls it “global purchasing with a local perspective.” That also creates further opportunities to achieve even more savings, a better cash flow and process efficiencies thanks to automation.