Marco Cobianchi is the Head Global Procurement (CPO) at Schindler Group, Switzerland. He has been with the business for almost 20 years - he was previously Head Global Controlling Supply Chain and CEO at Schindler Electronics. Marco started his career at Bticino in 1996, before joining Mikron.

Before moving to Procurement, you were working in Finance. How would you describe the relationship between Finance and Procurement?

Finance and Procurement need to work closely, as Procurement significantly impact the financials of a company. It is not only a matter of alignment on targets and results, but - most importantly - to achieve transparency and alignment on the impact and timing of Procurement initiatives to the company results.

Working in Finance in the past helped me in building the bridge with the Finance Manager community, get their trust (for example, in the reported savings) and ensure quick alignments.

But, Procurement is much more than savings or payment term optimization; it’s all about supplier relationship management, how to settle and develop relations with our suppliers to enable achievement of company objectives in a sustainable way.  

Procurement in Schindler has recently gone through a huge organizational change. How would you summarize it?

In the past 18 months, we completely reorganized Procurement in Schindler, building a global organization with full responsibility of entire group spend across entities and geography.

We redefined the Procurement operating model, ensuring a strong global category management approach and, at the same time, fulfilling specific regional needs and implementing a Procurement center of excellence to drive best practice sharing, process standardization and harmonization, and provide Procurement analytics.

What do you foresee as your biggest challenges in 2023?

After two years of huge material inflation, in 2023, Procurement is requested to regain cost competitiveness, leveraging the declining trend of raw material prices, mastering the energy price risk and labor inflation above average in almost all markets.

In addition, the supply disruptions driven by the pandemic highlighted the importance of a resilient supply base; a reassess of the supplier risk mapping and implementation of a proper business continuity management is a must.

Sustainability is an absolute priority for Schindler, and Procurement is a key enabler to achieve our net zero emissions target by 2040.

How does Schindler work to retain high-potential employees?

Schindler designed the Schindler Career Development Program (SCDP) to provide challenging and purposeful opportunities for high-potential and high-performing talent that has an international mindset.

After joining the program, the person will be engaged in an international assignment, will take a leadership role, and experience a field operational role. These experiences will fully prepare the talent to assume a senior leadership position and shape our future organization.

How do you approach talent development?

As part of the global Procurement reorganization project, we built up a Procurement academy with development programs tailored for each role profile. This ensures harmony and continuously elevates the competencies and skills of the Procurement community, and develops our talent both on leadership and Procurement competencies.

Furthermore, we regularly review the succession pipeline for our key leadership roles to identify opportunities for our talent early and leverage training plans to ensure their readiness for the role.

What would you say is the most memorable moment in your career?

This year, I’ll celebrate my 20^th anniversary at Schindler. During these years, I had the opportunity to change different roles.

Two of those were the most important moments in my career. The first was in January 2012, when I was promoted to Managing Director of the Schindler plant in Locarno; it was my dream job since my years at university.

The second was in June 2022, when I was promoted to Head Global Procurement. It was not in my plan; I started as Project Director of the global Procurement reorganization, and I ended up leading the new organization.

What are your tips on achieving work-life balance?

Today, it is almost impossible to completely disconnect from work; our mobile devices keep us connected. Also, working from home during the pandemic didn’t help to separate working time from free time.

My passions are my way to disconnect from my work, to free up my mind and regain energy. I never give up in dedicating time to my hobbies; to play sports in the evening and during weekends, and dedicate time and energy to my family.

Thank you to Marco for speaking to Sasha Gill, Consultant in our Procurement & Supply Chain recruitment division in Switzerland.

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