THE PROCUREMENT INTERVIEW
Finding early success One challenge for Zakaria El Rhezaoui was moving from a multinational to a startup environment .
“ In multinationals , everything is preset , everything has been there for many years , so it is more of maintaining this process ,” he says .” Moving to a startup gave me new perspectives because I had to build everything from scratch , and it ’ s added to my experience , especially the parts related to change management .”
The technical and automation aspects of the role came easiest to El Rhezaoui , but he admits the greatest challenge was delivering the change management needed to underpin the short-and longterm success the company needed .
“ The part that you can never control is the change management and people ,” he explains . How can you build a good relationship with people ? How can you convince them of your ideas while they have their own targets and their own pressure , in terms of either product development or in terms of sales and business development ?”
Knowing and empowering your customers Asked to cite the guiding principle of creating a procurement function in a start-up , El Rhezaoui says :“ Forget everything you knew from before . Get to know your customers , and what they need , because that is the starting point .”
El Rhezaoui adds that rapid growth brings its own challenges , and that being ill-prepared for this leads to wasted opportunities . This is especially true
“ I wanted to bring all the experience I had in big multinationals to a fast-growing startup ”
ZAKARIA EL RHEZAOUI SENIOR DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT , UNIFONIC
22 November 2023