An analogy, which seems simplistic, is to say that the day-to-day sensations of a venture are similar to those of a roller coaster. However, nothing is more true than one day feeling like the king of sales and the next being certain that the power of convincing to sell is zero. It is normal to think that you have the best team and product possible, but the conclusion can change with a different project or problem, until you crudely conclude that the product is unstable and that the team has not yet managed to mesh together enough to understand and adapt it.

In our daily lives, as buyers or treasury professionals, we normally have too much operational burden, which leads us to immerse ourselves in transactionality and move us away from the goal of being truly strategic areas for our organizations. A disruptive and efficient path is to forge ourselves as entrepreneurs within our companies.  Under the intrapreneurship model we can break paradigms, generate visibility and obtain extraordinary results .

How to achieve it successfully?

1. See the positive side of things

Complaining, drowning in daily problems or accepting as true the assumptions that say that “buying is easy”, “purchases and treasury are slow” or “as a technical user I would do better”, will not have any favorable results.

Attitude, customer service and educating our users and organizations in general is the way to take advantage of these preconceptions and with effort change this perception.  In these moments when everything seems against the current we have an exceptional opportunity to redefine processes,  address new ways of working and think about solutions and opportunities to execute, being optimistic, persevering and taking the responsibility that is required.

2. Value being surrounded by a great team

Having a team in which to trust, and having someone to quickly make relevant decisions at a strategic and operational level, is essential to feel accompanied and motivated to know that the purpose is greater than any difficulty.

Caring about training ourselves and our team is essential; we must surround ourselves with reliable and trained people to face the challenge of transforming our areas. Professionalizing supply chain management and surrounding ourselves with the best team is not optional. Likewise,  it is essential to work on our  networking  and personal brand,  interact with professionals in our field, from different companies and industries, and sow relationships of trust with the different actors in the supply chain from different areas in our own company.

3. Bring out our commercial side

 Selling is essential and although it may seem contradictory because we are dedicated to negotiating, buying and paying suppliers, it is key to forge a commercial profile.  It is necessary to “sell” our work, make it noticed and generate the support  and respect required at the corporate level. We must learn to sell internal projects, do ROI exercises and in general, the entire commercial process that is used when selling a product or service, in this case extrapolated to ideas or change strategies, with a clear focus on results.

4.Think outside the box

Without a doubt, innovating is required to undertake and sell our work. It is essential to leverage technology and understand that by doing things the same way we will not obtain different results.

We cannot face 21st century challenges with 20th century tools.  Intuition and ingenuity are necessary to materialize business processes that translate into a data architecture leveraged on cutting-edge technologies, in order to put the systems to work for us and not the other way around (us working for the systems), which It’s how it normally happens to us.

The most complex moments on a personal and professional level are where the best learning is obtained and ideas, sensations and experiences are forged that will later show us the meaning and purpose of why we do our work.  Throwing in the towel will never be an option, it is up to us to make our work visible and make it valuable to our  stakeholders.  Intrapreneurship, summarized in proposing changes and projects in order to do things differently, is a strategic and very effective path to make visible and demonstrate the relevance of our roles and their organizational impact.

We have two paths: be passive and not take risks, which will surely lead to already known results; or failing that, be proactive, challenge ourselves and take risks. Although this option implies the risk of making mistakes and overcoming adversity, without a doubt, by leaving our comfort zone we maximize the probability of obtaining the extraordinary results that our businesses and, at the same time, need, as exceptional professionals.