SynerTrade Blog Success Story | Salini Impregilo

I’m Claudio Notarantonio, Global Supply Chain Manager for Salini Impregilo Supply Chain manager means that I manage the procurement, logistics, warehouse as well as plants equipments and machines we need to perform our projects. Salini Impregilo is a company of the infrastructure market, civil works and big projects. We are one of the 3 companies that built the Panama canal. We are leader in dams and tunneling in the world, as well as in railways, highway and roads, and in specific projects like bridges for instance. We are one of the biggest company in the world, we are present in more than 80 countries, in all continents, with more than 30.000 people across the world and more than 50 different nationalities What does Innovation in Procurement mean to you? Being innovative in procurement for me means mainly to change the approach in terms of mindset. Usually Procurement people have the attitude to negotiate, that need to change right now. Procurement is no more an operative function, it’s more and more strategic, so be innovative means bring innovative solutions, partnership with our suppliers, to bring also innovation in the supplier base and be more strategic to support the target achievements of the company This means also to change the procedures, to change the organizations and people and for sure also tools and everything that can support all other departments to increase the results you need to achieve. What led Salini Impregilo to implement an eProcurement solution and what were the technology challenges that needed to be solved in your company? This was very easy: the change was led by our CEO Pietro Salini. Until 2015, when I joined the company, the business model in Salini Impregilo had a Procurement department not centralized, but localized in all sites. Our CEO decided and understood that centralization would bring high benefits in terms of sinergy, increasing productivity and effectiveness. It was easy because the main sponsor was the CEO. It was easy for me to invest and change the way to do procurement in Salini Impregilo. In terms of challenges for technology there was nothing in the procurement department when I arrived: there was SAP as ERP, but no specific module for procurement management. It was not easy to find data, but I started from a green field and could build and set up what we need. Why did you choose SynerTrade? Digitalization project in Salini was launched in 2016. Since we had no structure as I said, I took the decision to launch an internal digital development project supported by my colleagues in IT. After 18 months we succeed in having our first digital procurement platform suite for vendor management, tracking performance, source to contract and our first APP to manage all. But in 2018 I understood that we had to select a leader company in order to develop digitalization and integrate all modules, supporting us with the best practice of the market. I launched a tender, inviting the main suppliers of e-procurement solutions. The 2 drivers that convinced me to choose Synertrade were: Professionality of the people I met. As a procurement guy you immediately feel if your counterpart is a sales manager, who can sell anything to you or if you deal with a skilled and professional person. I trusted in them Flexibility of the platform. The suite of Synertrade allowed me to start with these modules but also to improve, following what we will do in Salini Impregilo. We are only at the first step of digitalization of our company, but we will grow up on this way.   How do you see the future of your Procurement department? In terms of tools, as I said, we want to continue the digitalization journey. My project is to digitalize all the activities, not only procurement, but all activities that are linked to procurement: source to pay, administration and bidding. Everything will be digitalized and integrated into the platform. In terms of mission of my function as procurement I see a total change from a transactional and operative function to a strategical one, supporting the company. Procurement represents the mirror and the window of the market trends.  We work with the supplier base and supplier base can bring us innovation, solutions and competitiveness. We need to work with them and in this sense Procurement is the link among internal company, suppliers and clients.