Business Talk: How Strategic Procurement works in Jaguar (United Kingdom)

International Business Engineering (IBE) Department held the first webinar of Business Talk series that IBE has. The Webinar was held using zoom platform and discussed about “How Strategic Procurement Works in Jaguar”. 

Sharply at 16.30, Indriati Bisono as the head of IBE Department gave a warm opening speech, followed by Hans Tanto as the chairman of Business Talk committee. Having an expert José Mantilla as the speaker, the purpose of this webinar is to give a clear understanding and way of thinking about business especially with respect to procurement of supply chain in a global scale reflecting from a big corporation.

José is an Ecuadorian who lives in England, right now working as Senior Regional Delivery Buyer in one of the famous automotive company in the world which is Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) United Kingdom. José started his session by explaining the concept of J-Lar that he has been in for 5 years. He also discussed about several integral processes in purchasing. In short, purchasing is a process to supply goods/services for the purpose of production activities. José stated that “In purchasing, you have the whole power and you have to be wise in spending it.” José taught us to be wise in managing the expenditure and it can be done by building the company strategy.

For José, building a strategy is one of the most important aspect in purchasing. He shared some methods that he usually uses in J-Lar, one of them is SWOT Analysis. Through SWOT, the company can understand about their Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats with regards to their position among the business environments. Doing this analysis, J-Lar can aim more efficient business results.

José argues that the purpose of purchasing is not only minimizing the expenditure costs, but also developing Team Value Management (TVM). TVM is a process which oriented on finding the best value to fulfil the customer orders. Thanks to TVM, the company can produce the legendary car which is currently used by Queen of Elizabeth efficiently and effectively.

As the José’s session finished, it was followed by Q&A (Question & Answer) session which is moderated by Nova Sepadyati. José was asked about J-Lar strategy to handle the situation of COVID-19. For him, J-Lar is very quick to adapt from the new issue. In example, while China faced lockdown, J-Lar found the new supplier from outside Chine soon. José highlighted the importance of having connections with multiple suppliers from different countries. Therefore, they won’t have difficulty to find other alternatives when things become unexpected.

Managing a company is not easy, especially for a big corporation such as J-Lar. From this webinar, we can realize the importance of strategy to maximize the results and efficiency of a company. Just like the idiom “Having an umbrella before raining”, so it’s better to have a strategy first rather than managing a business. Don’t wait until the results are not satisfying due to lack of preparations!!