Change is a burden for some.
Fear of the unknown, a preference for routine and the concern of loss of control are all reasons why many people can choose to avoid it both in their personal and professional environments.
However, Eddie Lim, Chief Procurement Officer at APP Group, likes to embrace the chaos, and he’s not doing it alone.
The organisation serves as the holding company for a number of Indonesian pulp and paper manufacturing and forestry businesses. It caters to the increasing global need for high-quality tissue, packaging and paper, with its products reaching over 150 countries across six continents. As part of Lim’s role, he manages approximately $4 billion in annual spend across both direct and indirect materials and services, and is armed with a team of around 300 employees. Upon joining the organisation in August 2024, Lim was given a clear mission, backed from the outset by strong sponsorship from APP’s leadership.
The journey within APP
“Our first 90 days were focused on assessing the readiness of the procurement function,” explains Lim. “There’s broad awareness of AI today, and most people have had some exposure through tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot but adoption for core procurement work is still maturing. Looking at this from an organisational perspective, digitisation is an area the company continues to invest in and strengthen, and that commitment from leadership has been critical to how far we’ve been able to take it.
“We operate on SAP ERP, and as with any large, multi-site organisation, the level of system utilisation varies across locations. From a technology standpoint, the priority isn’t the availability of tools, it’s ensuring the readiness, quality and consistency of the underlying data that powers them.”
Lim notes that digital maturity naturally varies across a business of APP’s scale and complexity and some sites have more established digital environments, while others are earlier in that journey.
“That variation is a normal part of scaling digital initiatives across a large organisation,” he explains.
“Alongside data, process consistency is equally important, making sure everyone is working from a common, standardised approach. As a company, the technology foundation is largely in place, and our focus now is building greater consistency in data, process and capability so that digital solutions can scale effectively across the business.”
Since joining APP two years ago, Lim and his team have been working systematically through a multi-site data clean-up programme, one that has grown into a broader organisational effort.
“Relying solely on internal resources takes time, so bringing external expertise helps us move faster as a business,” he reveals. “We’ve mobilised the wider organisation with IT, automation and the SAP teams to work together on this. With strong backing and sponsorship from leadership, we’re aligning efforts across the company to progress more quickly. That level of support from the top has made this a genuinely company wide priority, not just a procurement initiative.”
Lim describes the roadmap as a multi-year programme, reflecting the scale of work involved in building a fully integrated digital foundation across the business. The next step is deciding on the right AI approach. Given the pace of innovation in agentic AI and machine learning within procuretech, procurement functions have the tools at their disposal to move faster than ever before. But Lim is clear that data readiness comes first.
“Given the complexity of a business our size, we want to make sure that the data foundation is solid before scaling machine learning across procurement,” explains Lim. “That’s why we’re centralising, cleaning and standardising our data, and building a data lake as part of the company’s wider digital strategy. The goal is to apply a consistent AI model across that centralised foundation, which will help us accelerate more effectively over time.”
By improving data quality and process consistency, procurement is better positioned to support supply-chain integrity, responsible decision-making and APP’s broader commitment to innovation, responsible and sustainable business practices.