Christian Magnet is the Vice President Finance at BD in Vaud, Switzerland. He has been with the business for almost 17 years, having previously spent more than 12 years at Chevron. Christian started his Finance career as an Auditor at PwC. 

Which is the most important quality for your role today: Personal performance or delivering through a team?

When I look at my current role, the most important quality is the team. This is because I realise that you can only be as good as your team. So, when I look at the time I’m spending on coaching and mentoring, it’s a very big part of my agenda. Every month, I have a one-on-one with my different direct reports, and we go through a structured discussion around their performance, their challenges and their development.

I have seen a lot of value in developing successors, and we have a list of talent pools within my organisation. Whenever we have someone promoted or someone moving to a different position outside of Finance, or outside of the company, we typically have good successors lined up already. That helps a lot in the overall performance delivery of the Finance function of my team, because we don’t have vacancies for a very long time.

To answer your question, it’s important to be a very strong business partner. To be a very strong business partner, I need a very strong team behind me. I noticed, over the years, as I have progressed in the organisation, that spending time on developing the team was really the key to success in a role like mine.

How important is it to select the best possible team?

In terms of selection, we have developed a pretty strong assessment tool. At BD, we focus a lot on diversity. That’s something that I have noticed, in the last few years, brings a lot of value to the team, and trying to have a good gender balance. In my team today, I have about 40-45% of female talent, and I see the benefit of having that gender balance.

Additionally, what is important for me, leading Finance for the EMEA region, is to have good representation from different nationalities. I have about 16 direct reports from about 12 different nationalities. When we have decision-making sessions or problem-solving sessions, I see a lot of value in having diversity in gender, culture, age and nationality.

One of the first things I’m looking at when I have a vacancy is: What is my diversity agenda at the moment?”, “Do I need to look for different talent or similar talent?” That’s one of the first things I consider. What I’m asking my executive search team is to come with a diverse slate; I want to see female and male talents, I want to see different nationalities, and then - from that - we select the best.

To select the best, we are using a couple of things. We have what we call “the BD way”, which is basically all about what our values and leadership commitments are, what our mindset is, and there are a few things there that help to understand if the people or the talent will fit well with the BD culture. The second element that I found even more important is, I’m basing my selection more on potential for the future, rather than for making sure the person has all the skillset to fit the role.

Already, at that stage, we are looking at the potential for the future. My boss is always saying that, if you have high potential and agility to learn new things, they can learn everything. I am looking more for the change management, the ability to adapt to new things, and the ability to work with different models. If they show that they have already managed to work in a complex operating model, had to manage change, that is a good sign for me, which suggests they could adapt to the BD Finance operating model.

What current recruitment challenges do you face?

As I said at the very beginning, we’ve managed - over the last five or ten years - to be a very robust succession pipeline, so I’m currently not faced with having vacancies for former direct reports that I cannot fill internally.

But, we have a few roles where you need a very specific skillset, for example, once you go to a Country Controller role, you need not only the language, but also the local gap skillset, which typically - as we move to this centre of excellence model - in some countries, we might face challenges with a pretty dry pipeline there.  

However, you can find good talent on the market, so it didn’t take us too long to find the right talent for the position I had in France. I’m looking at their career, what type of challenges those people had to face, etc., so I’m more looking at the potential again. And I can be industry agnostic, which makes the talent pool bigger.

Where we face challenges is more at the lower level, and this is something that we want to build for the future of Finance. The new skillset I see that would be required is around data and digitalisation. Finance is not the only one looking for those talents, so, when you think about Data Scientists, they are very rarely on the market, and it’s hard to build up from internal talent.

The next transformation of Finance is really digital, and we want to be ready for that. We are basically looking to recruit more people around data mining, Data Scientists, things like that, which Marketing is looking for, as well. That is where we face some challenges, as there are fewer people attracted to the lower level roles.

What really excites you about working for BD?

I mentioned “the BD way”, so the BD values. I really joined BD for those values in the healthcare industry. I feel energised every morning to come to the office or to work from home - because we are working a lot more from home these day - and really energised by the purpose of BD advancing the world of health.

When you think about whatever you do, even in Finance, at the end, there is a patient that you can help; it gives you a lot more energy. That’s what excites me about BD and, when I joined, that was what I was looking for.

And then I stay with BD because of the people, because of this culture that you infuse in the organisation, where you respect each other and really accept responsibilities – they’re the type of things that we are really driving. It’s really rewarding to hear the new joiners coming from outside saying through the interviews, “I felt those values”, and it’s amazing to see how true it is because, after six months, I really feel it.

That’s a very important part of BD, those values and the purpose. This is really a purpose-driven company. It’s not only on posters that you see it, it’s really something that you can feel every day when you’re working for BD.

How do you see the Swiss economy evolving in the next five years?

When you look at the level of inflation around the world and compare it the amount of inflation in Switzerland, the Swiss inflation level is much lower. From that, you can see that this is a pretty resilient economy, so I see a lot of positive outcomes for the Swiss economy.

I think the big asset of Switzerland is the talent that you can find here. On many different aspects, from Finance to Marketing to R&D, there’re a lot of very talented people on the market, which is similar to what I said about being successful. I think, as a country, you are only successful as long as you have educated and very talented people, along with a variety of start-ups to show that you’re dynamic.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you’re now at?

When I joined BD, I think I took a risk. I was working for Chevron, so oil and gas, and I was about to move to the US to take additional responsibilities, but I realised that I wanted to move into a different industry - especially healthcare.

The opportunity I had at BD was based in a different location, so I had to move my family to a different country. That was a personal risk, because when you have young kids, you have to think about whether they are going to manage the change. My wife was working and had to find a new job. I felt very good about BD, as I mentioned, about the values, about the people, but you never know if it’s going to be successful - so that’s one risk.

Once you start moving outside of your comfort zone - moving into a different industry, into a different job, different company, etc. - you develop yourself the most.

Within BD, I was humble enough, but ambitious, and I was open to accept different positions within Finance at the same level, and the same salary most of the time. That was the right thing to do, as I learned a lot. People saw me in different positions, and I felt I could go and take more responsibility in the job, which helped me a lot.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

Next week, we are organising what we call the career day within my organisation. Every year, we are trying to focus one day for talent. We do a face-to-face meeting with all my direct reports, and we talk about careers in Finance in BD, and we show them examples of leaders and how they have advanced their career. We also ask business leaders to come to say what their expectation from Finance is.

We also give them tips and tricks on how to build your career, personal branding... One of the things I’m always telling them is to be curious, as curiosity for me is a great asset when you want to progress your career. Don’t be afraid to move into an area where the business or the country is struggling, or where you have a bad situation, because if you are offered those opportunities, that means that the company feels you can fix it. If you fix it, it’s a great asset, a great impact you have, and it’s going to be great for your future.

The other thing is what I said about moves. Everybody is very ambitious and wants to go up all the time; sometimes you need to be a bit patient and take the time to move in different positions that really build up your skillset for the future. Once there is another position vacant, you will certainly be in the best position to take it if you have shown you already manage to do a lot of different things. It shows your ability to adapt to new jobs and it gives you a chance to show how much of an impact you can have.

At a certain level, I’m always telling people that - before you move - there are two things you need to work on. One is making sure you can show the impact you had, and the second one is to build a succession pipeline.

For me, it’s always a challenge when I have a leader who is a good leader and shows that they could have an impact moving to a different position and there is no successor ready yet. So, I am asking all my direct reports to build a succession pipeline, so they have a solution for their leader when they want to move.

What’s the most surprising thing that’s happened during your career?

I am not sure it’s surprising, but I was a bit sceptical around all the change management techniques and so on. We went through a major transformation at BD for Finance back in 2015-2016, where we moved from a very general kind of team decentralised. We had people in countries doing FP&A, doing Accounting altogether.

We moved to a very specialised organisation, where you have expertise in FP&A, Accounting, etc., and we also centralised most of this in the centre of excellence and in shared services. 

It was a major change that was necessary, because of the size of BD; it’s much more of an efficient model. We all agreed that it was the right thing to do, but we went through a methodology to manage change, which worked very well.

We managed those changes without major disruption for the business. So, I feel sometimes we need to trust the process and the methodologies and really build on that, but you need to be very disciplined around it.

What is the future of Finance?

The future of Finance is around digitalisation. I’m talking about the next transformation of Finance, because I felt that - in large organisations - everybody is now more or less organised around centralisation. You have shared services, and centres of excellence, and staff supporting the business. For me, it’s what do we do now around digitalisation? We are working on that and we identified that it is three main elements.

One is around advanced analytics. Beyond advanced analytics, you have reporting using an advanced tool, like Power BI, and it gives a very different experience for your business partner. Instead of having static reports, you have a dynamic dashboard, meaning you have one page where you can drill down on the details, instead of having another ten different slides to understand what is going on.

Another part of advanced analytics is what we call predictive analytics - you can use that in artificial intelligence to help you in the financial forecast, for instance, with a learning machine. We are piloting that at the moment in one of our businesses and it’s pretty promising.

The third element is more around compliance and fraud prevention. We are using some of those tools. For instance, for expense notes, with the number of employees, it’s impossible to check all of them. But, if you have machines that are doing that, filtering things, they support the areas that you need to manually check. That’s also something that we want to leverage, to do checking on accounts when you close the books, etc., making sure there are no mistakes in what you report. 

Our auditors are using that to audit most of the transactions. In the past, they were doing samples and then basing their opinion on the sample. Now, basically 100% of entries are audited.

Another part is automation. We are already using robotics for some of our transactions. I think we can go much further, like using technology to help on accounts reconciliation, for instance, which is a very manual process at the moment.

That’s what I see for Finance, really trying to automate or enhance some of the manual works that we are doing today, but also providing more qualitative data to the business, so we can make better business decisions - and faster.

Thank you to Christian for speaking to John Bower, Director in our Finance & Accoutancy recruitment team in Switzerland.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment. 

Alexandra Charles is the Head of Finance at Nexthink in Lausanne, Switzerland. She started her Finance career in an Audit role in France, before moving to Switzerland in 2006. She spent a significant period in the beauty industry, before moving to Nexthink in 2017.

How do you find a job that makes you happy?

It may be reflective, but - with almost 20 years of experience and knowing how to get from here to there - I can think of a few things. All the jobs that I have taken in the past have brought me here, and they brought me to a place where I feel like it’s important to be in line with your values, with what makes you who you are as a person and what you really like doing, what you enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis. I’ve taken almost all my jobs because I was excited by the challenge of creating new things, developing new teams.

For me, it’s always about what makes me happy. I’ve been given the opportunity to start a new job with a blank page where I can create, I can implement in almost all my jobs. I am a very curious person, as well, so that was a big driver for me; taking a job because I’m curious to see what’s going to happen in this role, what I am going to be able to do there, what I will be able to achieve.

That is how I got here. Now, I feel more in line with my own values and who I am as a person in my role today, and in the choices I made and how I’m developing my teams. It is very much linked to my core values as a person.

What challenges do you see for women in senior Finance roles?

That’s a very tricky question, because there is no right or wrong answer, and it can be interpreted differently. I believe that self-doubt is probably our worst enemy as women. I believe that we are in a society that dictates a lot of things; today, we are in a world where women are asked to do it all, we’re asked to achieve it all in all aspects of our lives. I believe that sometimes we block ourselves, because we believe that if we try to achieve something or get to the next step in our career, we’re going to sacrifice something else in our lives.

We’re asked to be the best at everything we do, and I feel that there is some sort of pressure. This is a very personal opinion, but I believe that sometimes - especially in a men’s world like Finance – it’s harder to believe that we are able to do it and we can do it, we can get to these roles, we can access them. I think that sometimes it’s because we doubt that we can do it.

Sometimes, when I am talking to friends, I realise that they are really the ones that are creating blockages on their paths to become a more senior leader, because they have other priorities, which they believe will come next if they give priority to their work.

Sometimes, we have to care more about ourselves and think about what we want to achieve as a person and not what society dictates for us.

How can leaders create diverse teams?

The first thing is, we need to be aware of our own unconscious bias - and I believe we all have some. We need to be conscious of them and put them aside. When it comes to recruitment, I’m really looking at recruiting talents; I am never going to look at where they come from, or if it’s a man or a woman. It is about finding the right person for my team, for this role - are they going to fit into the company environment and are they going to fit within my team?  

When I joined Nexthink, we were only a team of three people. Now, Finance has a team of almost 25. I’ve recruited all these people in the last few years and, what’s funny, is that I have more women than men in my team. That’s interesting to see as a female Head of Finance - the ratio of women in my team is 70%.

I don’t know what led to that, but I guess that - because I am a woman - I was conscious about some of the biases we might have. We all think different things when we see a CV; it is important to put them aside and recruit the best person.

How do you work to retain high potential employees?

I think it always starts with the performance reviews. Like in any company, there are annual performance reviews. Then there’s a mapping that I do during this performance review to see where people fit depending on their role. Are they comfortable in their role? Does it have potential for growth? Do we believe that they can make the next career move in the next one year/two years/three years?

I always do this thinking with the other managers in my team and, based on that, we will identify a few high potential people. After we have identified these people specifically, we will think about what will make them happy and then see how we can make it happen for them.

What’s interesting is retaining talent is not only about salary, it’s not only about compensation; it’s also about what you are going to give them that will make them happy as a person, and I think that can take many forms.

For people that we want to retain, that have potential for growth, it’s important to listen to what they want and find a way to retain them. That might not necessarily be through compensation; it might be through other things like training, because that’s something that they really want to do and we allow them to take the time to do it, to pass their certifications, and grow and learn.

We do surveys internally. Once the survey has taken place, I try to catch up on the answers that are not sometimes satisfactory so I can find out more about what we can put in place as a team to make sure we value individuals’ contributions.

Do you see any difference between pre and post-pandemic in team bonding exercises and requirements, and the attitude to that?

I think it’s harder, because there are people that are still afraid to come back to the office. We currently don’t have a very strict policy, so it’s not necessarily easy to get people together. It’s no longer, “there’s a team building activity, everyone is coming,” it’s, “there’s a team activity building, do you want to join?”

I think that is what changed in the post-pandemic world – now, we need to ask the question, “are you okay to join this event, because we are going to be gathered in a room of 20, are you okay with attending?”

This is because there is still COVID, unfortunately. For people who are okay to come to those events, there is definitely a bigger appetite for these events; they really want to meet more often and I think they miss the connection that we had in the office when we were all together.

What changes have you seen to the employment market in Switzerland over the years and what, in your opinion, have been the drivers for these changes?

I’m not sure if it’s a recent change, but - when recruiting people - I see more and more senior profiles applying to the jobs, people that are maybe 50-plus -assisted protocols to be able to project some scenarios when looking at revenues. That’s interesting that we are kind of expanding and developing our competences.

Also, there is this whole thinking in the FP&A world that it is not purely about managing a P&L; there is definitely much more to it, and I think that is what the post-COVID world has brought, with more uncertainties.

Now, we are trying to think about how we project better numbers, how we make sure we still have cash to be able to cope for scenario A, B and C that might materialise. There have been lots of discussions around it, which I think are really interesting.

Thank you to Alexandra for speaking to John Bower, Director in our Finance & Accoutancy recruitment team in Switzerland.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment. 

Menno Van Zanden is the Director of FP&A – Software Business Operations at Diebold Nixdorf in the Netherlands. He started his career as an Accountant at Oracle, where he spent more than 14 years of his career. He became FP&A Manager Benelux at General Electric, before moving to NetApp, and Diebold Nixdorf.

How do you see digital Finance, business intelligence (BI) and data transformation in the next ten years?

I think automation, artificial intelligence is going to make a huge change to how Finance operates and what our role within the company is, because a lot of the standard processes which we’re now outsourcing are going to be automated and using AI and robotics to get them done.

Which sounds like a threat, but I think it’s an opportunity, because it will allow us to focus on adding value to the business and doing the things we should be doing, and that is helping drive the business forward and helping drive the right business decisions.

I think as we move towards automation of all the standard activities - especially transactions - Finance is going to have to move towards a real time model. I think the traditional monthly cycle is going to be too slow at certain points. Not necessarily always, but we have seen it in the beginning of the pandemic; things changed so rapidly that a monthly cycle is too slow to react and make decisions.

As we move towards automation having a real time financial overview, companies will become a lot more flexible in reacting in changing environments. I think that’s where we need to step in to help drive those discussions and not be the number crunchers, so we move from: What has happened? Why did it happen? What is going to happen? To: How do we make it happen? That is where we add value.

Looking at that flexibility and the real time numbers, a lot of the financial planning and modelling is going to be automated. As we have all these automated numbers in the systems, the planning can become automatic to an extent, and will make it much quicker to run different scenarios and modelling. It will fundamentally change the world of Finance.

When we look at BI, the amount of data that we have now, we are probably not able to do anything manually, so we need the automation to be able to analyse it and use that data to drive the decisions.

One of the things we are working on now in my current role is how we expose the data to the leadership, because we traditionally send around reports in various forms. We need to move to a self-service model, where we have BI dashboards where people can go to anytime that they want in the real time Finance model and they can look at the data. In Finance, we would need to make sure that the way the data is presented is understandable to non-Finance people to drive decisions.

How do you feel that the workplace will have changed now we’re emerging from a global pandemic?

Obviously, it’s changed significantly. In March 2020, we were suddenly forced to work from home and, despite that being a big change, it hasn’t impacted the businesses and how we work together as much as maybe we would have thought; it turned out we have the digital technology to continue to work.

We had some hiccups, but the IT department worked very hard, and it turned out that we could work that way quite easily. We changed meetings and we used Teams and Zoom. Without anyone necessarily introducing it or saying we need to do that, people started turning on their video. That meant that, because of the pandemic, I saw people for the first time that I worked with for a couple of years already. Before that, we would have just a phone call, so I think it brought people closer together who were remote previously.

Now, as we hopefully emerge from the pandemic, we need to learn from the things that we’ve learnt, and think about how we organise our offices and our workspaces in a way that we use it for what they should be used for.

For a long time, the office was a place where you go and work because it’s quiet, and you can be efficient there. We’ve now learnt that you can be very efficient at home, because there’s less distraction. I do think that offices and workplaces are a place where you go to collaborate and be creative together.

So, how do we organise things to make it more appealing for people to come to the workplace, as that is one of the challenges we are seeing now. People are so used to working from home, we are not able to get them to come into the offices, so offices are quite empty. We need to figure out how to create the atmosphere to make people want to come back to the office. The new office environment will be more the campus style environment, where people come to collaborate and get inspiration.

What advice would you give to someone that wants to start a career in Finance?

My answer is probably not the traditional one, because I think a lot of people plan their career - I’ve never done that. The way I’ve gone through my career is by doing the things that I enjoy. The advice I would give is: look for what it is you enjoy, because - for a lot of Finance people - Finance is all the same.

I think, once you are in Finance, you realise it is actually a very broad spectrum of things. With different skillsets, there are different things that you do. I don’t have an Accounting degree, so it wasn’t the logical step to go in the Accounting direction, but I think the reason I managed to be reasonably successful in my career is because I did the things that I enjoy. If you enjoy something, it shows to people you have this energy and you can get across. You tend to be better at the things that you enjoy, and people see that, and I think it interacts.

One of the other things is, I’ve had quite a stable career from a company perspective; I didn’t change companies every two years. I understand why people do that, because it can kickstart your career, especially in the beginning, both from an experience and a financial perspective.

I think the benefit I see is, if you stay longer within a company because you know the company, you can focus your development more. If you change companies, you need to get to know other people, the environment, the processes, the systems. But, if you stay within the same company, you can say, “Okay, what is the development goal that I’ve set for myself?”, and you can focus much more on it, because you don’t have the distraction of learning all the other things.

I understand it can be maybe a bit frustrating at times if you’re stuck in the same role, but I do believe that loyalty does get rewarded within companies, and, as opportunities arise, you can make those steps up within the same company. I worked for 12 years in one company, and I did five or six different roles. They were all within different departments, and kind of a natural progression and extending my responsibilities.

The last thing that is probably a more traditional one as you come into Finance, you need to understand the basics, because, at the beginning, as you do analysis, it may feel a bit boring, but it will help you understand to do an analysis as you get there. One of the most important things at the beginning of my career are the skills to understand the business, processes and hierarchies, and how they can help you analyse things, and this allows you to use the system to better enhance your job.

How did you fall into the industry and get your current role?

Both the fact that I ended up in Finance and in the industry were a bit by chance. My father used to be in Finance, so, when I was young, I was like, whatever I do, it will not be that. I started studying Physics, because what I enjoyed in Physics in high school was understanding how things interact, how things work, and how processes work.

First year Physics at university was pretty much the same as Mathematics and that just threw me off a little bit, so I switched to Business Economics, as that was a bit more practical. I ended up in an internship at my first employer, Oracle, where I was asked to stay, and I decided to do that.

I think the reason why I stayed in the industry is because I’m quite technical; I call myself a bit of a nerd, I like gadgets, I like figuring things out from a technical side. When I interact with people from a more technical side of the company, I understand quite well what they’re talking about.

What I like about the industry is the pace is extremely fast, the developments are extremely fast, because what I don’t like is, if I go into the office tomorrow, that it’s the same day as it is today. In IT, the pace of change is so high that you know that tomorrow is going to be different.

What would you say is the most rewarding part of your role?

The most rewarding thing for me is I like solving puzzles, and that’s what originally drove me to the Physics side of things, as well; you have these puzzles and understanding how things fit together. I don’t think non-Finance people understand those puzzles, and how they fit together and how it helps them; that is what I enjoy the most. What I enjoy the most is those things that make a real impact. That’s on the technical business side of things.

On the people side of things, how we’ve progressed as a Finance organisation within the company I work with right now, I actually don’t have a team; we’ve outsourced a lot of our activities where we have a virtual team. What I find that I really enjoy is helping them grow, develop and learn.

I can say now, having worked for more than 25 years, I realise I have a lot of experience, and I like to share that with them, and explain to them and show them how I do certain things, and helping them understand why I do the things that I do, and that way try to get them to the next level.

I think there are going to be huge changes in the next couple of years or in the future in the financial world. I believe it will be very interesting and challenging, and I think every Finance organisation needs to embrace those changes.

Thank you to Menno for speaking to our Finance & Accountancy recruitment team in the Netherlands, led by Hannah Mallia and David Harper.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment. 

Konstantina Barousi is the Senior Global Category Manager, Natural Chemicals at Givaudan in Zurich, Switzerland. She started her Procurement & Supply Chain career at Amcor in 2014 and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS).

What excites you about working for Givaudan?

The industry of flavours and fragrances overall and my portfolio, in particular, are dynamic, impactful and interesting - every day is an opportunity for a new challenge.

The part that I am enjoying the most though, working for Givaudan, is the international and diverse environment of the company. I am leading a team of three women. We are all based in different continents, we speak different native languages, and we come from different academic and work backgrounds. We collaborate closely with our dotted-line colleagues around the world. Just in our extended team of Natural Chemicals, we have more than ten different nationalities, with the majority of us being women.

Your portfolio within naturals is one that contributes to a significant amount of the company’s product revenue and seems to be quite a high innovation area. What would you say are the biggest drivers?

Innovation is a key pillar for my category's strategy, not just a buzzword. In my category, we have exposure to the business of sugar reduction, vegan and organic formulas, sweets and confectionary, beverages, as well as fragrances and cosmetics.

Our team is working cross-functionally to ensure that the scientific and health advantages, following extensive research, come with competitive pricing through partnerships under different schemes of collaboration. Our suppliers are major stakeholders in this work. The natural and pioneering production processes of some of our raw materials are drivers and triggers for innovation. They are key enablers for our sustainability achievements, and they support targets on Scope 3 initiatives, as well.

You have worked in a number of large global matrix organisations. What are the biggest challenges for a leader overseeing a remote team?

The timezone difference, particularly for global meetings, is a challenge. However, this can be overcome and can also deliver value by having quicker turnaround time in external and internal discussions around the clock.

But this requires good time management, a solid communication structure, and adaptability in ways of working. For example, organising a global cross-functional call is not as easy as inviting a colleague for a quick coffee in the office spontaneously to solve an urgent matter.

As an expat yourself, what advice would you offer to someone moving to Switzerland?

Switzerland is an impressive and very well organised country. I would advise any expat on their way here to not be afraid of logistics, as bureaucracy is minimal, and it is quick to find their way through. They should use their network of colleagues and friends, ask questions, and enjoy the ride!

How can a job seeker stand out in the current market?

I always considered flexibility a key strength – now, more than ever. Taking change as a constant, being willing to learn and staying resilient to distractive situations are all expressions of flexibility in real life.

In other words, my advice for a job seeker would be: do not wait for the perfect match, be ready to learn, find the opportunity and make it happen.

Who is the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

I admire pioneers who start a business with a clear purpose, such as Henry Ford. He introduced the assembly line, standardized processes for mass production, and, more importantly, implemented wage increases and the 40-hour week in the early 20^th century.

However, the ones that I am more inspired by are the stories of people who were born non-privileged and wanted to change the world, by giving back value to the society through their enterprises. Mary Ellen Pleasant and Madam CJ Walker were the first self-made millionaires of African-American heritage in the USA, dealing with real estate and the cosmetics business, respectively. They opened the way for many visionaries after them.

What is the future of Procurement & Supply Chain?

The future will be technology-enabled and human-led. It comes with digitalisation and technological advancements: artificial intelligence, big data, internet of things (IoT); all the tools that we can use to improve efficiency and agility for Procurement’s ways of working.

We need to embrace the speed of change and ride the wave. These tools can offer opportunities for development to our brains, as well; coding, for instance, not only supports business programs to run through our laptops, but learning how to code can boost our problem-solving skills and our creativity, too.

Naturally, human skills are still important; empathy, emotional intelligence and people management skills, as in all business functions, are key for a team's success, particularly in turbulent times, such as the past few years.

In order to overcome an obstacle, when a dead-end is seen by a tool, the strategic thinking and - even more - the passion of a professional, will open the path. Ethical decision-making and leadership skills will always be at the top of the list for a Procurement professional, and cannot be replaced by a robot. After all, we are all human beings - both us and our suppliers - and we need trust for a partnership to work.

Thank you to Konstantina for speaking to Charlotte Cruise, Senior Consultant in our Procurement & Supply Chain recruitment team in Switzerland.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment. 

Véronique Frasnetti has held many different positions with increasing seniority at B. Braun, which is a major company in over 60 countries. She is currently the Vice President of Strategic Purchasing in the Hospital Care Division.

As you’ve been with B. Braun since 2004, how does the company retain high potential employees?

If you show willingness to develop yourself, B. Braun will support you. We have all sorts of internal training. For example, if you would like to be a project manager, we have very good internal training in which you will also get useful tools. Afterwards, you could be running a project beside your activities. There are also chances to learn languages - there is big support to have trainings in general.

Time is flying when you are within B. Braun, because you have so many opportunities to grow both professionally and personally. This is the way they retain talent.

B. Braun has also the advantage of being a big company, with 66,000 employees approximately in 64 countries; there are a lot of possibilities. Perhaps it is more complicated in a very small company.

How did you plan your career?

Originally, I was in cocoa trading. This is what I always wanted to do when I was younger. I enjoyed it a lot, but with family, I decided I wanted to separate from working with stock exchange. It’s very exciting, but it is so exciting that you think, how can I manage to have kids and such a job alongside?

Therefore, I decided to go into Procurement, because it’s very close. However, in a different manner, you do not have all that stress of working with the stock exchanges being totally dependant on what happens there and being bound by the opening hours (that can be during your night, depending on the timezone) - you can better plan your time and organization. Consequently, I left trading and went into Procurement, where I could still use my negotiation and commercial skills. Then I did work for some companies in Procurement, until I found B. Braun, where I thought, this is the place.

The best way of developing your career is to be in a company which also wants to develop itself, to be state-of-the-art, to go for new things. This is what I could find here, so I have stayed working there ever since!

What advice would you give to leaders who are managing large acquisitions and integrations?

I would say not to underestimate the integration phase. I have seen, in certain companies, that after a few months, everybody thinks that the acquired company is integrated just because the purchase is completed. This can cause problems.

It is very important that, when you acquire a company and want to onboard it properly into your system, you harmonise the processes at first. This step will take a certain time, but represents a chance for both entities.

There is also the need to carefully consider the people aspect, as the employees of the acquired company are usually quite afraid, because, when you hear about an acquisition, you say, wow, is my job going to be there still or not? So, reassure your people! This is very important, because - when you acquire a company - beside the products and customers, you also acquire the knowledge of the people, and you don’t want to lose this at all.

I can say that, very happily, we acquired a company three years ago and all went well. We are working really nicely together. But you need to take time to integrate them; this way, everything turns out much better than if you tried to let them swim - especially when you come into a big group like B. Braun. So, I would say the integration part is as important as the due diligence and acquisition part.

Can you define Procurement best practice?

I would say best practice is to have a state-of-the-art and transparent set of processes, which is adapted to your company size, industry sector, strategy... because these parameters also have a very big importance on what you shall do or not, meaning not every state-of-the-art activity is suitable for your company.

You shall of course look at the level of maturity of your organisation. I assume you know the maturity curve, in which you see all levels, from solely transactional actions for Procurement, up to vertical integration. You really need to understand where you are, so you can grab the right set of tools you need. This is something that I would recommend. As well, you should concentrate on planning a proper strategy.

A lot of people are talking about source to contract now, which is of course important, but before the source to contract, you should plan your strategy. Before buying something, you should be sure you’re buying exactly what the company needs, the most suitable product/service in the right quality, from the suppliers you want to grow with the aim to support your company objectives, future plans.

You need to have a Procurement strategy aligned to the company strategy and with the major stakeholders, which will be accepted and followed throughout the company, since not only Procurement is following the Procurement strategy, but the entire company, as well.

In the medical industry, it’s very important that you plan far ahead, so this is something which should be looked at, coupled with supplier development. Beside source to contract, you need to monitor, develop, maybe phase out, some suppliers.

Has your approach to Procurement best practice evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic?

Definitely. It has brought everything upside down. Now, geo-political monitoring is a must. It started with COVID, followed by the RuUkraine conflict. Our environment is permanently challenged. If you do not follow what is happening, then you’re too late - you can only react, but not mitigate.

Therefore, best practice is now a deeper risk monitoring, being proactive and not reactive. Before, of course, that was always something that was looked at, but not life, rather on regular set time. In the past, there were force majeure sometimes, but - since COVID - some are notified almost every week and now, with the energy situation, in addition there are increased fears of bankruptcy.

Understanding your supply chain is getting even more important. In the past, it was almost a given that, when something was ordered, you would get it, perhaps there was a small delay, a slight price increase or something, but it would be available. Since COVID, the way we are working totally changed, some prices sky-rocketed by 500%-plus and availability, as well as transportation, became a hassle. We needed and still need to find ad-hoc solutions.

Is it possible in this current environment to innovate with suppliers virtually when you can’t see them face-to-face?

COVID made us change our way of doing work. Before, people would meet face-to-face a lot. Suddenly, we could not anymore, so another way of working had to be started. Thanks to the available software, we could switch to virtual contacts quite easily, since they are really user friendly; you can talk to an almost unlimited number of participants, share documents, and it’s fully reliable in terms of functionality and quality. If we had faced the same situation five or six years ago, that would have been an even bigger disaster.

We even started new actions, which we could not do before. As an example, we facilitated virtual sustainability meetings with suppliers, having 50-plus people together on the line that were based in various continents. Allowing everybody to have the same information level and benefiting from many inputs. Such meetings would not have been feasible face-to-face, as it would have been too time consuming and cost a fortune in travel. In this sense, the complicated situation made us progress faster.

Of course, there is a moment when you need to sit together. If our supplier really wants to understand some specific needs, for example, they need to see our lines, our products, and we also need to see their production equipment, to exchange, because - at the end - both entities have knowledge they can share. But we were surprised about the big portion that can be done online, which we would not expect before.

I would even say, in some cases, innovation comes easier to us now that we can have more participants online than in a regular meeting face-to-face. The information flow is much faster, likewise the following actions. I really think this new aspect is making our life much easier.

Is there a myth about your profession that you want to debunk?

The biggest one I see is: Procurement is all about price negotiation. Of course, price negotiation is part of it, but it is not all. Firstly, you must have the correct product in terms of quality, at the right place, in the right quantity, at the right time, and at the best possible price. The price comes at the end, because, as an example, if you go for a cheap product that is of poor quality, it might end up in a disaster.

There are a lot more tasks you need to do beside negotiating; a very important one is innovation gathering. Procurement is also about bringing innovation into your company, acting as incoming channel. Procurement is like the eye of the company to the outside, to the beginning of the chain really - the opposite of our salespeople. We are the ones who see external innovation first; we need to monitor this. If we see interesting innovation, we shall take that into the company to the relevant department/person.

Everybody is now concentrating on sustainability. This includes, of course, the actions that you will undertake in the company, such as energy saving, to be green, but it’s also the material you will be buying, trying to go for sustainable materials. Like I said before, we are somehow the eyes of the company into the supply market and - like for innovation - this applies to sustainability.

Also, Procurement is about monitoring the suppliers and the number of them. You don’t need to have thousands of suppliers, which in fact is too often the case. What is important is to have a few (sufficient) reliable suppliers or fewer suppliers that can cover a bigger part of your needs to allow a win-win situation. There, also, it’s not about negotiating prices only; it’s about understanding the capabilities of the supplier, their strategy, the level of risk, versus our needs to see if and where it can match.

It’s also about choosing the supplier you want to grow, the one you want to phase out, and the one you will keep as such, because they don’t have more capabilities, for example, but you still need them for an essential range of products.

When you have a crisis, like we had for the past two years already, if Procurement is not working adequately, meaning having the proper agreements in place and a good relationship with the strategic suppliers, good enough that you can be prioritised when necessary, you might end up in important supply issues.

What does diversity mean to you?

Diversity is a very important topic that is being spoken about a lot currently. In our company, we recently had some diversity meetings, where people could exchange their view on what we should do.

Of course, there is gender, there is religion, but I would say it goes much beyond that; it’s also about personality, way of acting. If you compare people from certain regions to other regions, or even one person to another one, they are different. This is already diversity, and this represents an asset if you can have a mix of various personalities.

I strongly believe that the future is with inclusion, clearly, but in a broad way, going as far as how the people are, how they apprehend to work, to risk, everything, because all that is bringing more value and balance into your teams.

When hiring people, why not have a CV without gender, without nationality and without age? Focusing on the personality beside the pure work aspects. Diversity is also, for example, on age. Younger and older people don’t exactly do things the same way, but they can both be an asset and benefit from each other.

It would be good if we could look at the profiles based on what they achieved, the knowledge they bring and their personality, instead of the gender and so on… We should get rid of that, I would say, and concentrate more on what the person can bring to the company.

How does cultural awareness impact business relationships?

I think it helps a lot. If you speak the language, of course, you’re going to be closer to that person than if you don’t speak the language, but this is not the only way to get close to somebody, or to have a smooth and harmonious business relationship.

In some regions, if you don’t have dinner or lunch, there is no way of talking successfully about business, because for certain people it is very important that you sit together, talk about different subjects, have some small talk, eat something, drink a glass of wine, before talking business. If you don’t know this or just skip it, you will not start in a good atmosphere. You should consider these specific aspects and adapt, like the other party will try to adapt, as well. I think it’s very important.

You could be hurting people, just because you have no idea about their culture. And I would recommend to any person being in contact on the purchasing side or on the sales side to prepare themselves by gathering information about the cultural aspects.

An example, in Japan, if you give someone a business card, you need to hold it with two hands; if you don’t, it’s disrespectful.

We need to create that climate of trust and collaboration with our suppliers/partners to allow successful business relationships, which can be greatly facilitated by having cultural awareness.

Thank you to Véronique for speaking to our Procurement & Supply Chain recruitment team in Switzerland, led by Neil Cope.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment. 

Marie-Sophie Morel is the Procure to Pay Process Lead at ABB in Zurich. She has been with the organization for over six years, having previously spent more than 16 years at Xerox, in business transformation roles.

You have achieved Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification. How do you feel this has impacted your day-to-day work and career?

It had a significant impact, and allowed me to increase my productivity and implement sustainable changes.

Lean Six Sigma is one of many methodologies helping to understand if a given task provides value to the company. It was an eye-opener for me to say there are some tasks I am requested to do that don't bring any value and that is it my responsibility to raise it. This was a radical productivity increase.

When we come across something broken, instead of spending a little time understanding the trigger, we often put in a fix. This was my second eye-opener; by looking at the root cause, we can understand what is triggering the problem, solve it and it becomes a sustainable change.

Was it your choice to originally do the training? Was it something you identified that you wanted to do for yourself or was it the organization you were with at the time?

I had a clever boss at that time who realized that it could be something good for me.

I had just come back from maternity leave. My daughter was six-months-old. For six months, I spent one week in the US, three weeks in Switzerland. It wasn’t easy to manage, but one of the best decisions in my career.

Your roles over recent years have had a strong focus on change management. What are the key factors to allow you to be successful in these roles?

You cannot implement a change against the organization.

The whole challenge and magic rely on bringing people with you. It requires a lot of respect for colleagues impacted by the change. When people are pushing back, they have a good reason. It’s my responsibility to understand and manage what is triggering their reaction.

Designing the solution with the people impacted by change is equally important. It provides them an opportunity to share their challenges upfront and influence the end-solution.  

I could imagine, the larger the organization, the harder it is to manage those relationships?

At the end, you're always interacting with small teams and human beings. I wouldn't say the size of the organization matters, but rather its culture. Every organization has its own culture. As a change agent, it's fundamental to align to it, because the culture triggers the ways of working.

I once received the same transformation mandate from two compagnies with very different cultures – one very top down, and the other bottom up. The scope was similar. However, the end solutions were completely different. Both were assessed as a success. It's all about listening to the organization, to the culture, to the people impacted and designing a solution for them. Then, the change implemented will be sustainable.

Do you feel, as a woman, that you have encountered additional barriers in your career development? What advice would you give to other women aspiring to be where you are?

I have had the chance to work for global companies. Before ABB, I worked for a company which was quite advanced on this topic, and had a woman CEO that was putting in a lot of effort and was an early adopter. ABB is also committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, including gender diversity. I think it’s fair to say that, in general, there is still a way to go to achieve full and genuine equality in the workplace.

My advice is to work on yourself, because that's also some of the bias. Say to ourselves, “Can I do it?”, “Is it really for me to do it?”. These questions are very valuable questions around work-life balance.

When my kids were two, four and six, I got a promotion for a global position located in London. The job needed me to be in the UK from Monday to Friday, coming back at weekends. I asked myself, “Can I manage being away now?” My answer was, “No”.

But that shouldn't be a woman’s decision only; any human being with kids should ask: Does it really make sense for me to be away from Monday to Friday when I have three kids of this age? I can’t answer for everyone, but for me the answer was clear.

Stakeholder management is an important aspect of your role. What do you feel are the key aspects for building trust and relationships?

There are no magic rules.

It's important to understand what is important for your stakeholders. Expect them to come with new ideas and listen to them. Try to understand their personality and build your communication accordingly. Keep in mind that it takes time, and it is well-invested time.

Finally, it’s important to agree on a common definition of success.

How would you describe your people management style and what do you do to get the best out of your team?

Diversity drives success. During recruitment, I always try to get people as diverse as possible, from a skillset, background, personality, country, gender, etc. point of view, which requires a good understanding of my own strengths. The worst would be a team of clones.

Let me give you an example: I am fundamentally positive, but I know that it’s important to have some more negative people in the team. They will be the ones looking at risk.

Collaboration drives results. I expect everybody in the team to have an open way of working and develop an end-to-end approach. In a Procure to Pay environment, it means that Finance may work on Procurement-related topics and Procurement may actively contribute to Finance optimization.

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of your role?

Large transformations have a significant impact on employees. It is when employees collaborate and build a better future together. It becomes even more rewarding when the organization proactively embraces the change.

That's what gives me the energy to push for this solution; when people come back with positive feedback saying, yes, we want to be part of the game.

What have been the major highlights of your career to date?

There are a lot of small moments where you feel connected to people, you see somebody struggling, reluctant to embrace change and then suddenly that changes! The most important thing is the people I'm working with and how I bring them together.

When I see signs that it works, it's much more rewarding.

We’ve already touched on how important role models have been a little bit earlier. Are there any particular people that you would highlight as being your key role models?

If I need to highlight one person in terms of a normal role model, it's Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox when I was working there. She came once to Switzerland and I was really impressed with her ability to listen and take care.

At that time, I was doing Marketing and Communications, and I was managing her schedule for the two days she was in Switzerland. I always had the feeling I was the most important person to her. She had this ability to make people feel important and to listen. An exceptional woman!

It sounds like she's had a huge impact on your approach, as well?

That's the power of a great leader. I was one of thousands of employees in that organization, but through communication and the way she interacted with us, she helped me become a better contributor to the organization. That's something I always keep in mind, that she was really a great woman.

Thank you to Marie-Sophie for speaking to Meriel Graham, Director in our Finance & Accoutancy recruitment team in Switzerland.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.