ALLPOINTS FIBRE NETWORKS
According to Stuart, in a world of complex procurement relationships and supply chains, higher inflation, increasing cost of borrowing and the need for cost and environmental efficiencies, procurement’ s role has expanded.
He continues:“ We’ re no longer just about securing the best price and buying‘ stuff’ but are also charged with enhancing value, managing supplier relations, overseeing governance such as sanctions, banking, fostering innovation and ensuring long-term sustainability.”
Furthermore, Natalia points out that the role of finance has also broadened, from being focused primarily on compliance to enabling the company to create future value, as well as putting the right policies and processes in place to protect the value of the business.
Finance areas of responsibility span across financial planning, business partnering to reduce costs and support growth, managing cashflow, ensuring compliance and optimising financial risk exposure, to name a few. These days, there is a significant overlap across the goals of the two functions in growing and protecting value for the shareholders.
Natalia, who joined APFN in early 2024, was able to draw on her extensive background in finance and commercial to forge stronger alignment with the procurement team.
Stuart, meanwhile, states this has been a welcome shift in the approach as he had previously experienced firsthand the traditional disconnect between finance and procurement functions.
He notes:“ It’ s really important to understand that the journeys for procurement and finance are different, but interwoven.”
Ultimately, both functions are aligned on the strategic goals of delivering value for the shareholders and bring their respective expertise to ensure a balanced outcome is delivered.
Overcoming hurdles together“ When embarking on an integration project, it is not possible to plan absolutely everything,” Natalia stresses.“ You are integrating, transforming, growing and delivering business as usual all at the same time and there is impetus to bring all operations into one as fast as possible.
“ There were times when Stuart and I – and our teams – had to figure out answers in real time and it’ s been a great starting point to the partnership.”
Processes which may once have worked for a smaller business were no longer fit for purpose for the national wholesaler.
“ You can probably just about scrape by with the processes we inherited from the legacy businesses, but we knew they would cripple our operations within a year given our rapid growth,” Natalia explains.“ We ended up rewriting and reinventing a lot of processes for this new environment.
“ The other aspect is that you have to be more efficient to deliver results in a timely manner. It might be okay in the startup environment to have manual processes, but, in a large business, you can no longer operate without automation.” allpointsfibre. com 15