Profile: Regional Sales & Marketing Buyer – Adeline Boyer
“As a regional Buyer for Sales & Marketing, I was responsible for the Point of Sale (POS) category across the EMEA region. This role consisted in setting up a Sourcing Strategy for any POS material across the region, that would be then applied by the local business units. It involved very strong relationship management with the different stakeholders (internal customers) within Cadbury as well as a good understanding of the local businesses in order to set up the right strategy at a European level.
"The objective of the project was mainly to investigate the best POS suppliers for the European region, while identifying some Low Cost Country Opportunities (China, Eastern Europe). The idea is also to maintain or improve the Quality standards as well as identify and deliver significant cost savings. This involved a strong communication with my key stakeholders within local Marketing teams, as well with the local Procurement teams to ensure the project fulfils business needs.
"I was based in Paris but used to travel quite often in the major business units (UK, Ireland, Spain, Poland) to meet up with stakeholders and/or potential suppliers.
I was actually in charge of conducting an 8-Step sourcing process from understanding the current situation, to implementing the appropriate strategy after going through a tender project.
"After conducting this project, I can now say that one the biggest challenges is to involve stakeholders in your project, get them to on board and have their support as well as their input in order to drive this efficiently. This required a lot of communication, meetings and presentations all along the project in order to ensure this is a team project, and not a PBS one! Funny thing is this is also one of the best learning's for me : get to understand the different cultures, avoid the language barrier, adapt yourself to the different characters and learn from them.
"It was a great step into Procurement and a huge learning for me to drive this project at a European level and get to work in a multi-cultural environment.”