Modernising a Procurement Organisation

Chameleon International started working with this client within the Aviation Industry around 5 years ago. At that time, the company was embarking on a restructuring program and one of the key tenets to the program was a modernisation of their procurement organisation. This was across both their directs and indirects categories.

Prior to this, the procurement team across Europe had been “operational” in its structure, decentralised in terms of where the employees were based and reactive in regards to how they dealt with suppliers in terms of contractual negotiations for their major commodities. The vision was for the procurement team to become a true “sourcing organisation” that had centralised Category Managers delivering sourcing strategies across each of their main spend areas, with a centralised operational procurement team supporting them with every day administrative tasks.

Details of Project:

Chameleon have been working with the company from the beginning of this program and have become an exclusive, retained provider of external staff for the procurement organisation. Chameleon have made a total of ten placements during this time across the following areas:

• Regional Procurement Process Lead
• Regional Lead, Director of Operational Procurement
• Operational Procurement Manager
• Global Strategic Sourcing Lead
• Regional Category Manager x5
• Regional Procurement Process Manager

The main factor for the success of Chameleon has undoubtedly been the sense of partnership that has been fostered between the organisations. Chameleon have visited the offices on many occasions and have strong relationships within both the procurement and human resources leadership team. This has resulted in a great understanding of the company culture and therefore what type of candidates would be suitable for the challenging environment that exists within the organisation.

Further Developments:

More recently, the company have made the decision to relocate their centralised procurement organisation from Germany to Luxembourg and Chameleon have been instrumental in finding candidates who have been willing to relocate to this new location. This has presented new challenges in finding the right candidates as, in essence, Chameleon have been recruiting for a “start up” organisation rather than a very well established corporate brand.  The expectation is that there will be further hires within the Luxembourg organisation and that there will also be a move towards the globalisation of the major categories. These new external hires will begin looking at the synergies that can be gained from working with suppliers across their global hubs – these are based in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.

Client Appraisal:

“Over the time that Chameleon International have been working with us, they have become a trusted partner in the recruitment of experienced procurement professionals within our German and European procurement organisation. We have met our account manager on numerous occasions and have always valued the advice that he has provided in regards to the candidates we have hired and the roles that we have looked to fulfil – this has been invaluable as we have built our new organisation.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Chameleon as a trusted advisor for procurement resource and look forward to continuing to work with them.”

Global Vice President for Indirect Material