Dr. Christoph Hantel, head of the Volkshochschule Ulm, about the purchasing project with Kloepfel
What were the goals of the project?
As Volkshochschule Ulm, a center for adult education, we want to offer our course participants as well as our permanent and freelance employees the best service with our budgets. Therefore, it was obvious for me to investigate the purchase of goods and services. This is expressly not about the fees of our first-class course instructors, but about purchasing topics. For example, we look at the purchase of teaching materials, office supplies, marketing printed matter, cleaning services, craft services, electricity, insurance and IT. I was surprised of the savings potential in all these areas.
Why did you choose external support for the project?
We needed manpower and expertise to support the project. That is why we brought the purchasing consultancy Kloepfel Consulting on board. On the one hand, we benefit from their more than ten years of experience from around 1,000 purchasing projects. On the other hand, the consulting firm has a huge know-how in medium-sized businesses and understands our challenges and needs. This is also evident on the interpersonal level. The project manager, Mr. von Buch, is now firmly integrated into our team. Another selection criterion was that Kloepfel is paid by performance and not by daily rates.
How were you able to win your employees over to the project?
A project like this only works if all colleagues contribute their experience and know-how and pull together. That is why we talk to the various departments on a daily basis and clarify open questions. In this way, everyone can understand the individual project steps, but also helps to shape them.
Our most important message to colleagues and suppliers is that the motto is not “stinginess is cool”. Rather, everyone should benefit from the project, for example through better product and service quality.
How do the suppliers react to the purchasing optimization?
Regarding to the quality of the products and services to be procured, it is important to us that prices are not simply pushed down. Rather, we conduct diplomatic supplier talks by empathizing with the suppliers’ arguments and explaining our position. Mr. von Buch helped us to make the price structures of the suppliers transparent, to be able to compare their price performance ratio neutrally with the usual market prices.
We are glad that we take a closer look at the relationships with our suppliers and that we take time for them.
This gets things moving
Right. For example, suppliers proactively approach us with new ideas on how to do something better or differently. For this reason, we are also thinking more about how we can approach the interfaces between our employees and the suppliers in a new way.
How do you ensure the success of projects in the long term?
On the one hand, learning by doing helps us, for example by having colleagues accompany Mr. von Buch during supplier meetings. To secure the results achieved by our own efforts, we also need the appropriate capacities. We create this capacity by streamlining and simplifying purchasing processes. This saves time, stress and money. To make it strike: Like a diet, you can only secure the results achieved in the long term if you make a fundamental change. Otherwise the notorious yo-yo effect will occur. Therefore, it is important to optimize our work processes, but also the data basis of our purchasing.
This will make it transparent, for example, where we can order goods and services in bundles to achieve savings through the corresponding volume effects. After only a short time, we were able to save money on procurement, even if the project will continue for two to three years.
How does your purchasing department make use of the opportunities for digitization?
Digitization is only successful if the purchasing data is structured accordingly. Otherwise the best digital tools will not work. By cleaning up and restructuring the suppliers’ data – for example regarding products, contact persons and payment terms – we create the database required for the digital transformation.
What impact did the lockdown at the beginning of 2020 have on the project?
Mr. von Buch joined us in the lockdown at the beginning of the year. That was a very stressful situation for all of us, but he made good use of this inevitably calmer time to get to know us better via video chats and telephone calls. This enabled us to define and implement the right project steps with him. Of course, at that time we did not achieve all the goals we had originally planned. But Mr. von Buch adjusted the rhythm of the project and so we were able to implement many tasks during the lockdown.
Press contact
Christian Fischer
Kloepfel Group
Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
M: +49 152 / 227 227 50
c.fischer@kloepfel-services.com
www.kloepfel-group.com