In the early 2000s, the great organizational mantra was ‘’Think Global and Act Local’’ due to the major opportunities arising from the greater trade liberalization experienced in developing countries.
During this period, many large multinational companies managed to implement their best organizational practices and universalize their product mix, adapting to local cultures and consumer habits that offered a prosperous path to diversification and higher shareholder returns.
Regarding supply chains, this period was highly fertile because procurement departments began to intensively develop international suppliers and establish global agreements through greater volume consolidation, consequently achieving cost reductions in the acquisition of materials and services for their operations or investment projects.
On the technology front, driven by the need for procurement departments to operate more strategically and less operationally, there was an accelerated implementation of technologies for automating the procurement process through traditional systems. The greatest challenge faced by organizations was the inflexibility of legacy systems and high development costs, as procurement was not their core business.
It was against this backdrop that Agrega Inteligência em Compras emerged in Brazil—a company established by corporate giants Souza Cruz and AmBev to negotiate with suppliers for the acquisition of materials and services not directly used in their core activities.
Since then, the challenges faced by procurement professionals have grown even more complex due to an extremely volatile economic environment both inside and outside Brazil. Nonetheless, many multinational companies still remain dependent on inflexible systems with high licensing costs, failing to provide procurement professionals with all the resources needed to deliver the full value expected by organizations.
It is within this context that SOMA was born—our B2B Marketplace developed from the ground up on Fair-Trade principles, aimed at maximizing value chain efficiency through our Global Sourcing structure to deliver to our clients pre-qualified products and services backed by a rigorous Quality Assurance process across our supplier base, whether inside or outside Brazil.
It is time to invert the traditional logic of “Think Global and Act Local” to Think Local and Act Global. Undoubtedly, fueled by our drive to serve and generate value for our clients across all their demands—whether of low or high complexity—we can leverage the use of disruptive technologies to achieve new technical and commercial standards that will ensure the success of procurement professionals, regardless of their operational environment.
By Gabriel Aleixo
