Alexander Pilsl, Director of Procurement at TeamViewer, talks AI, agility, and driving procurement transformation with a unique approach to leveraging the partner ecosystem…
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The world is changing. New challenges, from geopolitical instability to rising fuel costs to the worsening climate crisis, are conspiring to create what a recent procurement industry report referred to as “an environment of permanent crisis”. Old value chains are no longer stable or profitable in the ways they used to be, and organisations are fighting to find new methods of tackling this new era defined by disruption.
In the face of this new reality, savvy companies are looking for new ways to position procurement within their organisational structures, and not only avoid the challenges posed by the modern procurement landscape, but leverage new strategies and technology to unlock value for the business. In turn, a new breed of more agile, more collaborative procurement functions is emerging, focused on leveraging technology and their partner ecosystems in equal measure.
“I think TeamViewer was exceptionally smart to recognise that the world, and therefore the expectations placed on procurement as a function, has changed,” says Alexander Pilsl, Director of Procurement at TeamViewer.
Pilsl joined TeamViewer in November of 2023 with a mandate to create a modern, value-driven procurement function delivering on both the traditional goal of cost containment, but also in the ESG and risk management spaces, all the while maintaining the function’s exemplary record on compliance. “When I arrived at TeamViewer, I found a solid procurement process built around a theme of compliance,” Pilsl recalls. TeamViewer went public in 2019, and put a lot of strategic emphasis on meeting the regulatory and compliance requirements that accompany that transition. “I arrived and found a PO compliance rate north of 95%,” says Pilsl. “That’s just incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that. The mandate, then, was to modernise to meet the new challenges posed by the procurement sector, and deliver new value without losing that level of compliance.”
I sat down with Pilsl to explore how TeamViewer is engaging with both business stakeholders and its supplier ecosystem in new, creative ways to tackle new challenges and unlock a new era of procurement for the business.
“The mandate… was to modernise … and deliver new value without losing that level of compliance.” – Alexander Pilsl, Director of Procurement at TeamViewer
Elevating procurement at TeamViewer (without the usual suspects)
“I believe in networks and ecosystems,” enthuses Pilsl. “Procurement is an ecosy-stem function. We bring the company together. All the various departments, all the stakeholders — we connect them to the outside world, to the supply network; we build bridges, and we share knowledge.”
When approaching procurement transfor-mation at TeamViewer, Pilsl knew that he wanted to leverage the company’s networks and ecosystem, internally and externally, to support its journey. He and his team started by looking at each part of the function and defining what they needed it to do, looking at discrete elements like category management, risk management, contract admin, P2P, sustainability and Scope 3 reduction. “We entered them into a process map, and worked to answer key questions: What is this function? What does it do? What does it need to deliver?” he explains. “Then, we took the answers to those questions, put them in an ‘Invitation to Collaborate’, and sent it out to a selected list of providers that we knew had innovative takes on procurement.”
Click here to read the full story in the latest issue of CPO Strategy.
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