Vodafone Procurement: Our House strategy

In February’s edition of Supply Chain Digital, we spoke with Ninian Wilson, Global Supply Chain Director and CEO of Vodafone Procurement Company, about his firm’s transformation journey.

Scottish-born Wilson has been with Vodafone in Luxembourg since 2009 and began as a Technology Procurement Director before becoming Group Procurement Director and CEO in April 2016. 

During our chat, Wilson took great pride in walking me through a unique strategy called ‘Our House.’ It was developed with a clear intention: to be the best digital supply chain management (SCM) team in a connected world, powered by people and partnering to create value through innovation and ecosystem management. Upon beginning the role, Wilson sat down with Neil Cocker, former Principal Manager, Supply Chain Management Strategy & Governance, and realised that forming a long-term and sustainable strategy was essential. “Neil, we need to have a strategy here. This is our house, how do we want to build it?,” recalls Wilson. “We played around with some ideas and defined the different rooms of the house.”

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Eventually, the duo established four key rooms of the house: the kitchen, games room, garage and dining room. “The kitchen is owned by the Chief Operating Officer. The best things happen in the kitchen, so naturally that’s where we run operations from,” explains Wilson. “In the garage, we have our innovation centre where we incubate small companies that can create value, whether that’s increased revenue, profit or taking costs out of Vodafone. The games room allows us to trial new things. For example, we try new technology to use internally in supply chain management. If it works, we scale it. If it doesn’t, then we simply turn it off. Finally, we have the dining room, which represents our supply chain management sales. We work with external clients; not just for Vodafone. We invite those external clients into the dining room to see what we’ve developed and to support them in their procurement activities.”

Having established this strategy, Wilson drew the house on a one page document. He believes that streamlining the message is key. “In today’s world, people are so used to reading 250 characters,” says Wilson. “If you can’t put your whole strategy on one page then you have a problem with communication.”

To read the full feature, check out February’s edition of Supply Chain Digital.

For more information on all topics for Procurement, Supply Chain & Logistics - please take a look at the latest edition of Supply Chain Digital magazine.

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