On 16th June, we hosted our second in-person event of the year with CIPS Switzerland.

It was great to see so many familiar faces and meet some new people sharing our passion for Procurement & Supply Chain.

We had three wonderful speakers commenting on the topic of Perma-Crisis - Michelle Wang, Head of SCM Contracting & Partnerships at Hitachi Energy, Valentina Coco, CEO and Team Culture & Engagement Consultant & Coach, and Corina Cioranu, VP Global Packaging and Personal Care at Unilever. Plus, a very engaging panel discussion led by Pauline King, Head of Group Procurement at SwissRe.

We received some fantastic feedback from attendees, with 70% saying the content was relevant and interesting, 100% of attendees confirming that the evening benefitted their understanding of the topic, and 100% agreeing that they made useful connections at the event. Equally, over 90% of respondents said the event was inclusive and representative across P&SC.

“I think it’s very good having events like this and I’d like to do it more often.”
- Attendee

We expected, with the battle of conflicting priorities - supply issues, sustainability, diversity, inflation, etc. - that Procurement would be entering an operational/firefight mode.

What we heard from our speakers, however, was that they were really driving strategy further and with greater success during these times of increased pressure, and that long-term strategic, solution-led, business impact/value stream approaches that centred around partnerships and engaging wider business initiatives have been crucial to survive and thrive in this environment.

It was interesting to hear from Corina Cioranu and Valentina Coco on the importance of developing the relationship with peers in Finance and how gaining cross-functional internal sponsors is key to executing successful strategies and the Procurement function to effectuate real business impact.

A lovely terminology we will be adding to our vocabulary is “cris(is)-unity”, which really describes how Procurement has been acting as the glue to bring organisations together over the last couple of years. Thanks, Michelle Wang!

It also led to some very exciting conversations/realisations that we are in the midst of a big culture change in the wider Procurement & Supply Chain space. In attendance was a truly representative group of inspiring leaders from a range of different sectors and backgrounds. We enjoyed some healthy discussions showing a much welcomed diversity of thought and innovation, and we would like to thank everyone in attendance for creating such a fantastic evening with honest, authentic and insightful exchanges.

We would also like to offer a huge congratulations to Varsha Asporata for her first successful event as Chairperson for CIPS Switzerland.

If you’re interested in attending similar, future events, please get in touch with Charlotte Cruise, our Senior Consultant: [email protected]