In February’s Global Newsletter, we introduced you to UNO, a project aimed at clarifying and defining the responsibilities and structures of the corporate functions that support our operational divisions and provide the fundament for the overall SARIA Group.

Over the past three months, the project teams for the corporate functions Finance, HR, IT and Procurement have continued to work tirelessly to find the ideal set-up for the collaboration between the corporate organizations in the countries, the divisions O2P and Sinova and the corporate functions in the Group.Among others, the development of a general organizational chart for the roles in scope [linked here] was a major milestone. But besides the organizational chart, one might ask: What does this mean in practice?To account for the different needs of the functional areas, the structures and roles were defined for each of the functions individually. We will look at one example here to illustrate some of the aspects that were discussed during UNO and make the idea of aligned structures between all parts of the organization more tangible:

The new set-up: example “Procurement”

In matters of procurement, the initial starting point for a project will often be one of the divisions or a site that identified a need in their operational business. They will get in touch with the global procurement team (i.e., country + group function). Depending on the “commodity”, which can be country-specific or have broader reach, the responsibility will be either with the local procurement representative or a global approach will be taken to capitalize on volume bundling.

What is the benefit?

In this example, one of the benefits is the realization of significant cost savings. When it comes to procurement, bigger volumes often mean better conditions and better prices. For goods that are needed in more than one country or more than one business activity, such as trucks or tires, we can use the size of the group to our advantage. The corporate function in its role as partner to the business acts as a point of coordination and executes the procurement process to allow the divisions to focus on their core competencies, which are product, production, customer, innovation and logistics.

What’s next?

The main mission for the coming months is to start working with the functional teams. The goal is to settle into the new roles, structures and processes and focus on the first relevant processes to look for further development. After some time, there will be a workshop with members of the UNO project teams to feel the pulse and jointly define the next steps.

Did you know?

Within the scope of UNO we also:

• redesigned the SARIA finance organization – more info here
• created a Group IT function – more info here