SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNER
“ It’ s really about leaving a long-term legacy,” she says.“ Even though we’ re a global organisation now, that lives on: the need to be good stewards, to leave a legacy, to improve every life we touch.”
Asked why“ Delivering Peak Procurement Performance” is the right ambition rather than a successful go-live alone, Chimae draws on her background as an athlete.
“ Like life, there are peaks and troughs, and sometimes the mountains get bigger because the opposition gets bigger,” she says.“ Take running a mile: with innovation and human performance, every year it gets better, and the peak last year isn’ t the peak this year.” Crucially, she stresses that the peak looks different for every client:“ When we run with you, it’ s like a coach watching your heart rate and seeing what peak could look like for you. It’ s not necessarily the same for someone else.”
That philosophy underpins SCP’ s aforementioned three-peaks model of design, implementation and support. The first peak is about establishing what success actually looks like for a client. The danger, Chimae notes, comes when a different partner picks up the implementation without inheriting that vision:“ If you don’ t understand the vision, the strategy and the techniques already in place, and what needs to come alongside and be moulded, you’ ll configure the system in a lopsided way.”
The third peak – support – is where Chimae says many transformation
partners fall short:“ If we leave an organisation there, we can’ t be good stewards in helping them achieve their ROI or KPIs. We’ d just have helped birth the system and then left.”
Left unattended, she warns, systems drift:“ Often one influential person leaves the business and the whole system falls flat, because others don’ t remember why it was bought or implemented.”
The lifecycle approach also has to account for how automation is changing client expectations. As AI absorbs more of the manual legwork, Chimae argues stewardship becomes more important, not less:“ Without someone working with you and understanding the principles behind it, people could be executing
12 scp-worldwide. com