 Maria
is 36 and recently received a Master of Business Administration.
She had been working professionally in Barcelona for several years
when in her early 30s she got the feeling that she wanted more dynamism
and responsibility in her career. That's when she decided to get her
MBA, and over the course of her studies she really fell in love with
all of the aspects of e-business on the Internet. She found out that
so many of the tedious, time-consuming processes that were boring
her in her late 20s at work were no longer even necessary. Things
could be automated and made so much more efficient by taking new approaches
to old problems.
Life in the Faster Lane
Maria's MBA and fresh approach landed her a great job in sporting goods manufacturing as soon as she got her new degree. For three years she's been in materials purchasing for a global corporation with over 14,000 employees. Now she's an associate director and has eight people on her team in Barcelona. They are a mix of e-business process analysts, materials specialists, researchers, buyers, and an assistant. Several of her analysts also have MBAs.
Maria's team buys things all over the world and has them shipped to manufacturing locations in Europe, Mexico, China, Indonesia, and Thailand. Some of the factories are owned by her company. Some are third-party vendor operations. It's all very complex, but that's what keeps it challenging and fun.
AM Round Table
It's Wednesday morning and time for Maria's weekly team meeting. They
typically spend the whole morning on this one. It's a lot of time
away from their desks, but even in the e-business world there's no
legitimate substitute for good communication, cooperation and team
spirit.
Maria runs the meeting. She gives a few updates from the executives
on the quarter and explains that the rumors of an acquisition while
not completely false are now moot - e-business as usual. She also
explains that she's learned from the software vendor that the new
upgrade for their procurement system will be at least two months later
than they were expecting, so it won't impact their day-to-day operations
at all until the fall buying season.
Each of her employees then gives a brief highlight of what they're currently working on and need help with. Highlights include:
Ana - Partners in the SportsNet Buying Consortium want to
aggressively push for another 10 percent increase in discount on their
default e-BID RFQs. She needs Maria to make the change in the profile
settings. Only she has the password with enough authority. Maria should
call David in the New York office if she has questions.
Esteban - He thinks they can save $700,000 per month if they
renegotiate several supplier relationships in Asia. Different vendors
support a variety of English and Dutch auctions in a new e-marketplace.
It's bound to be cheaper.
Pedro - Product Management insists that that the new rock-climbing
gear HAS TO BE made of Neumixx. They don't care how much it costs
or where it comes from. Camille needs to negotiate with the manufacturer
to get an EDIFACT order process in place ASAP. The Ops VP will not
allow any more manual ordering after the end of this month for any
reason, and Neumixx will not be available on any online marketplace
for at least nine months.
Sela - She presents the new workflows she's proposing for
the PO approval process. Accounting is fine with them, but it's likely
to take three to five days to make the coding changes. Can the internal
engineering consulting budget handle it this quarter?
Louis - The same problem from last week is still not fixed.
The Bombei plant is finally set up to handle JIT production, but the
domestic logistics company doesn't have the right software to pick
up orders correctly from the dock or airport station. The nylon from
China is consistently 16 to 18 hours late to the plant. It's not really
their problem, but the plant manager is yelling at anyone who will
listen and wants them to start buying locally. Unfortunately, no Indonesian
nylon they've been able to find meets the Product group's standard.
PM Post Mortem
Maria spends her early afternoon following up on her action items from the morning. Some of them will have to wait until tomorrow, though, because she has a project post-mortem management meeting with all of the senior directors in her division starting at 3:00 p.m. There's good news and bad news. The new online RFQ approach seems to be saving 17 percent per week in bottom-line costs, and they were really only shooting for 15 percent. But they hoped purchasing would be moving 25 to 30 percent faster, and the preliminary reports are only showing about 21 percent. It's probably just kinks that they can work out. Maria just wants to stay on top of it and keep it humming along.
Oh, and she just remembered! She's got to be in the office tomorrow
morning by 8:00 a.m. for the Web Services video conference with London
and Frankfurt. She'll have to print out Pedro's long e-mail from Monday
and read it before bed. There's always more work to do.
The individuals and events depicted in the Day-in-the-Life profiles
are likenesses created to reflect situations that may be encountered
while working in the respective fields or positions and are not intended
to reflect or represent specific individuals, jobs, positions or situations.
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