Millions of tons of potatoes

Potatoes don't sound that interesting do they? That's what I thought until my client told me they were buying millions of tons annually and the market price varied from EUR 50/T to EUR 600/T over a 3-4 year cycle! Add to this that they used over 30 varieties that take years to develop,and given Mother Nature can have a big impact on potatoes, I realised this would be a fascinating project.

We needed to stabilise supply, cost and quality in this highly dynamic market. Given the insane complexity of the situation and vast amount of data, we had to be laser focused in our approach. With one one my trusted advisors, we balanced holistic thinking with advanced analytics to devise a suitable sourcing strategy.

My insight on this sort of project is how valuable it is to buddy up on projects that are massive/complex/time sensitive. I have a close network of World leading experts for such eventualities. The associate who I buddied up for this assignment was platinum and we managed to leverage her '1' + my '1' to get a compound result of '11X'.

The Result?

Working against the clock we cracked it. Lucas Urbano, VP Procurement wrote: "Simon and his associate consistently demonstrated professionalism, commercial acumen and a genuine commitment to helping us succeed. We would have no hesitation in recommending them to any organisation looking to strengthen its procurement capability and deliver meaningful commercial improvements".