An analogy, which seems simplistic, is to say that the day-to-day sensations of a business are similar to those of a roller coaster. However, there is nothing truer than one day feeling like the king midas of sales and the next day being certain that you have no convincing power to sell. It is normal to think that you have the best team and product possible, but the conclusion may change with a different project or problem, to the point of concluding that the product is unstable and that the team has not yet managed to mesh enough to understand and adapt it.
In our day-to-day work, as buyers or treasury professionals, we usually have too much of an operational burden, which leads us to become immersed in transactionality and move away from the goal of being truly strategic areas for our organizations. A disruptive and efficient way forward 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 do it successfully?
1.See the positive side of things
Complaining, drowning in everyday problems or accepting as true the assumptions that "buying is easy", "purchasing and treasury are slow" or "I as a technical user would do better", will not have any favorable outcome.
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. At a time when everything seems to be going against the tide, we have an exceptional opportunity to redefine processes, to address new ways of working and thinking about solutions and opportunities to execute, being optimistic, persevering and taking the responsibility that is required.
Appreciate being surrounded by a great team.
Having a team to rely on, and having someone with whom to make agile and relevant decisions at the strategic and operational level, is essential to feel supported and motivated to know that the purpose is greater than any difficulty.
We must surround ourselves with reliable and qualified 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 networing and personal branding, interact with professionals in our field, from different companies and industries, and build relationships of trust with the different actors of the supply chain from different areas in our own company.
3. Bringing out our commercial side
Selling is fundamental and although it may seem contradictory because we are dedicated to negotiate, buy and pay suppliers, it is key to forge a commercial profile. It is necessary to "sell" our work, to make it known and generate that support and respect required at the corporate level. We must learn to sell internal projects, do ROI exercises and in general, the whole commercial process used when selling a product or service, in this case extrapolated to ideas or strategies for change, with a clear focus on results.
Thinking outside the box
Undoubtedly, to undertake and sell our work we need to innovate. It is essential to leverage technology and understand that doing things the same way will not get 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 state-of-the-art technologies, in order to put the systems to work for us and not the other way around (us working for the systems), which is how it usually happens to us.
It is from the most complex personal and professional moments that we learn the most and forge the ideas, sensations and experiences 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 valuable to our clients. stakeholders. Intrapreneurship, summarized in proposing changes and projects in order to do things differently, is a strategic and very effective way to make visible and demonstrate the relevance of our roles and their organizational impact.
We have two paths: to be passive and not to take risks, which will surely lead to already known results; or else, to be proactive, to challenge ourselves and take risks. Although this option implies the risk of making mistakes and avoiding adversities, there is no doubt that by stepping out of our comfort zone we maximize the probability of obtaining the extraordinary results that our businesses need and, at the same time, we as exceptional professionals need.
