Buying

In over 10 years working for market-leading companies in the German food retail sector, I have always worked close to the purchasing department and have been responsible for category sales of over € 500 million in the areas of purchasing and category management for fast-moving consumer goods.

Product development and marketing, detailed analyses and conceptual assortment work in a highly competitive and recently inflationary market environment have never been short of sporting ambition. The best solutions were achieved by analyzing the situation holistically, taking dependencies into account: from the producer to the customer perspective.

Project Management

In the course of my activities, I have carried out both national and international project and stakeholder management, from working to board level in German, English or newly learned French.

The most notable success of those efforts was the establishment of two international purchasing alliances, both of which bundle purchasing volumes amounting to several billion euros. In the process, cross-border cooperation lead to the successful questioning and overcoming of existing paradigms.

The most exciting challenge herewith: Complex systems. How do you design the best possible steering and coordination when you have self-determined actors? How can the dynamic requirements continue to be met?

Negotiation

As Watzlawick would have said: „You cannot not negotiate.“

Even for commercial and legal negotiations concerning contracts with volumes of up to several hundred millions of euros, an understanding of complex systems is crucial - both for the navigating within my own organization, as well as for interacting with partners and other companies.

Thorough preparations, debriefs, ongoing evaluations and reflections on both the results and the processes, and the ongoing internal sparring lead to the successes that were achieved.