Why we’re nurturing community of young Supply chain and procurement professionals’
Thirty-three-year-old Obinna Nwodo is a Supply Chain and Procurement professional bent on filling a vacuum in the organisational set-up of businesses. The co-founder of Young Supply Chain Professionals is of the belief that well-groomed professionals in the area would not only enhance operations and fortunes of organisations, it will also change the fortune of Nigeria as a nation. He spoke with Gboyega Alaka.
You are a Procurement/Supply Chain Professional; exactly what does that mean in today’s business world?
Supply chain is the flow of goods and services from point A to point B; from manufacturer to the consumer. A supply chain is the flow of product or service till it gets to the end user. So supply chain management is the integrative and collaborative process that manages that flow. It normally starts from material requirement plan to demand planning, forecasting and everything. From there we move to research; and then procurement. The first stage is the Material Development Planning; from there you move into Demand Planning; after that we have Research and Development. From there, we move into Procurement, which is the acquisition proper. That’s when you’re profiling and engaging the suppliers and vendors. That is one of my core competence areas. From procurement, we move into inventory management, another of my competence area. So inventory management can either be in a store or warehouse. There is also the logistics and distribution, which deals with movement from the distribution centre to smaller stores. All of these constitute the supply chain.
What are the areas or types of business that requires a supply chain professional?
Actually, every industry or business needs a procurement or supply chain expert – be it banks, retail industry, manufacturing, oil and gas, telecommunications, real estate and construction; as a matter of fact, I’ve worked in real estate and construction, I’ve worked in telecoms, and I’ve worked in property management as a procurement and supply chain person.
Clearly, Real Estate involves purchases, supplies and all that, what about radio and TV business, what is the place of a supply chain person or procurement officer?
If you work in radio, of course, you’ll need stuff like administrative supplies; you’ll need to procure diesel for generator; you also have other service vendors; so your procurement person is the person who’ll be managing such relations, issuing them purchase order, liaising with the finance team to ensure a good purchase to pay process. In telecoms where I work for instance, we have the general procurement, those are people who do events and self procurement; we have the administrative category, they take care of the facility managers who buy general office supplies; and then we have the production procurement guys who buy raw materials for production of phones and laptops, although they’re basically domiciled China. Then we come to the engineering procurement department, where I work – we have the telecoms equipment, we have the assurance and management services; here what we do is end-to-end site maintenance for passive and active TX engineers; we conduct Human Resources; we also do facility rounds for telecom sites and cyber maintenance for telecom sites and other properties on ground. Lastly, diesel supplies to the sites. Of course you know most of the mass run on diesel. So there is a lot that could be done under supply chain and procurement.
In Nigeria, most companies rarely worry about putting professionals in charge of these purchases; they just put some member of staff who takes care of diesel purchases, stationery and the likes, and they seem to be faring well. Why should they bother about professionalism here?
Overtime, procurement has become a more strategic function to organisations. And if you notice, the big telecoms companies: MTN, Airtel, Glo, oil and gas companies; are taking very strategic procurement professionals – because they understand their importance. The big companies compete in their supply chains. So for them, it’s not only about how much revenue is coming in; they also understand that an organisation is as rich as the money it keeps. So if you’re not increasing your revenue, you should ensure that you are minimizing your operating expenses. What will help you compete along your supply chain is the realisation that your procurement guy can help you save money. A strategic procurement professional would help you make procurement choices that will pay the company in the long run while just any admin or purchasing staff would only be concerned about just making purchases without any strategic considerations. There’s a concept called Total Cost of Ownership. Let’s assume a company needs to buy a generator and there is one of N100,000 and another of N200,000; what he will then do is look at other considerations, such as maintenance cost over time. If the N200,000 generator turns out to be more cost effective, he would likely go for it since it offers more efficient long term savings. This is the difference between an admin purchaser and a procurement professional.
So basically, you guys are forward-thinking.
Exactly. A procurement professional brings value to the table. And because it is new and emerging, we don’t have many schools teaching it. I had to go to the United Kingdom to sturdy Procurement and Supply Chain.
Yeah, I was coming there. You had a bachelor’s degree in UNILAG, and a master’s degree at the University of Salford, Manchester. Tell us about these forays.
During my NYSC, I saw opportunities in procurement and supply services. I was working in the Supply Services faction; and I thought ‘Yeah, I think I like this.’ Based on my exposure and interactions with other organisations, I saw how procurement operated and I was intrigued. I decided to think about it; and then one day my dad just mentioned it, even though I hadn’t spoken to him about it. So I said, that’s it. So for me, it was an intentional journey. I saw it, liked it and went for it; and since then, that’s all I’ve been doing.
You are founder of Young Supply Chain Professionals, what’s the idea behind it?
The Young Supply Chain Professionals is a community of highly intellectual professionals in Supply Chain, adding value through social responsibility and thought leadership. Our members are from all sectors across many industries are well mentored to position Supply chain as the heartbeat for 21st century business success. The aim is to build future supply chain leaders and become the cynosure for supply chain excellence in Nigeria and even the world. What we’re trying to do is to establish a background whereby young professionals would imbibe global procurement best practices, so that there would be hope for the sector in the future. Meanwhile Supply Chain is big in the US, the UK and all over the world. I started it with my co-founder, Pelumi Adesiyan to bridge the existing gap, encourage young people to take it up as a course and to ensure that we mentor young people to become big supply chain professionals. We have structures for job sharing; and at the moment, we have counted 30-something people for whom we have secured first or second jobs in procurement and supply chain for mid-level companies and even multinationals.
Your association also takes up the responsibility of supplying companies with professionals?
Yes, we have a few recruiters and HR people or procurement managers who reach out to us that they are looking for somebody with whatever skills or years of experience; so we recommend candidates for hire. So as we speak, at least 30+ people have come back to say they got jobs on our recommendation.
So you you’re building a community of young procurement professionals?
Right. Young Supply Chain Professionals was founded in 2020, and we are the fastest growing young professional community in Africa. Maybe we need to update and check if any other organisation has bettered us. Sometime at the beginning of the year, we had over 800 members; now we have over 900 members. Of course that is the biggest young professional supply chain community in Africa. We also have senior professionals in the supply chain network, who help mentor young supply chain professionals.
You look quite young for the assignment you have undertaken; what makes you think you can redirect things in that sector?
Well, I’m 33; but I’m only hoping that I’m crazy enough to make a mark; and that’s because it’s an emerging discipline. You know there is a difference between going for holidays in England and living there. I went to school in England and I stayed a few months there after uni before I came back to Nigeria; and what I will say is that the British system works very well because the supply chain of things work. I know that the Nigerian economy can be better; maybe the dollar will never come down to 50 naira or one hundred naira, but Nigeria can be better if the supply chain operates well. And what’s the first thing that will make the supply chain operate well? It is sensitisation. It is for everybody to take the supply chain aspect of their business seriously. Even the danfo bus drivers can make use of it in planning their operations. A transporter for instance, should be aware of the time of the day when the passenger demand is high and he needs to deploy more resources as against when the passenger demand is low.
Do you think using Supply chain or procurement professionals can curb the corruption in our public system?
Yes it can, absolutely. Because that’s where we can move into the conversation of supply chain risk management, and in that risk management framework, we have visibility and transparency. So when there are visible and transparent supply chains, I can track spend and do cost analysis. In public procurement, there is the Bureau of Public Procurement and if every year, there is a report, and independent auditors are invited to look at it, you would see that some people, even if they want to steal, would not be brazen. That’s where we ought to be; I know it’s going to take some time, but we can start. But for now, we can just continue with the sensitisation and hope that everyone keys into it. In England, 70 per cent of their population are somehow into supply chain and that is really enhancing their growth and development. Right now, they say they are in recession but because of that you would see that in no time, they would be out of it.
