Strategic Procurement Alliances: The Competitive Edge Your Business Needs, with Rodrigo Altaf

Today I am delighted to introduce you to Rodrigo Altaf. Rodrigo is based in Toronto and is the Senior Procurement Manager at Dragados Canada Inc which specializes in studying, designing and executing every kind of civil infrastructure or construction.

In today's episode, Rodrigo and I delve deep into the world of forming strategic alliances with suppliers. Rodrigo is a highly experienced Purchasing and Supply Chain expert that shares invaluable insights and real-world success stories, showcasing how these strategic alliances are reshaping industries. We explore key aspects, from building trust and selecting the right partners to protecting intellectual property, managing evolving dynamics, and maximizing value. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting in the field, this episode is your gateway to enhancing your strategies and driving growth. 

ABOUT THE GUEST

Previous to his current position Rodrigo has held a number of senior procurement roles including Regional Procurement Manager at GFL Environmental, Strategic Sourcing Manager at Holt Renfrew, and as Procurement Analyst and Category Manager at Vale.
These, and other roles, have given Rodrigo international experience from Canada to Brazil and Australia to Norway. 

From a more personal perspective, Rodrigo is also a heavy metal fan; following such bands as Iron Maiden, Van Halen and AC/DC.

To connect with Rodrigo find him on:-

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrigoaltaf/

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS

@The Real Life Buyer
Email: david@thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Website: https://linktr.ee/thereallifebuyer

For Purchasing Consultancy services:
https://rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk/
Email: contact@rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk

Find and Follow me @reallifebuyer on Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads and TikTok.

Click here for some Guest Courses - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-courses/

Click here for some Guest Publications - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-publications

Transcript

Rodrigo Altaf  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development accelerate your career and broaden your business know how now introducing your host Dave Barr interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. In this episode, I am delighted to introduce you to Rodrigo Altaf. Rodrigo is based in Toronto and is the Senior Procurement Manager at Dragados Canada Inc, which specializes in studying designing and executing every kind of civil infrastructure or construction. Prior to this position. Rodrigo has held various procurement roles including Regional Procurement Manager at GFL Environmental, Strategic Sourcing Manager at Holt Renfrew, and as a Procurement Analyst and Category Manager at Vale. These and other roles have given him international experience from Canada to Brazil, from Australia to Norway. For a more personal perspective on Rodrigo, he's also a heavy metal fan following such bands as Iron Maiden, Van Halen, and AC DC. but don't hold that against him. Today, Rodrigo and I are going to discuss strategic supplier alliances. So without further ado, I welcome Rodrigo onto the podcast. Hi, Rodrigo.

Rodrigo Altaf  01:30

Hey, David, thank you so much. Happy to be here. That was quite an introduction. How do I follow that?

Dave Barr  01:35

Well, as long as you don't start singing I think we'll be okay. 

Rodrigo Altaf  01:39

Awesome. We're free from that. 

Dave Barr  01:41

Yeah. Okay. Cool. A little bit of air guitar if you fancy it, though. Okay, so let's get to know you a little bit more. We obviously know your music preferences. Yeah. But the highlights of your backstory, what sort of motivations drove you to choose procurement as your career choice.

Rodrigo Altaf  02:00

Okay. So I graduated in civil engineering, actually, and I did have civil engineer roles. And what I usually say is that I didn't choose procurement, procurement chose me, I was coming home from Australia from living and working in Australia. And going back to Brazil, a friend of mine was he held a high position in a project that was starting in Rio, he needed someone to just drive to just write the specs for the piling and earthworks for a project. That's why that's how I got in into that role. And I wrote the specs, we send that out to market and, you know, we're many of the projects still, and he said, you know, now that you wrote it, and we got the bids, we might as well analyze it together. And, you know, choose a vendor. And, you know, lo and behold, more packages started to come in, we needed to build that thing. And I sort of drove, you know, was driven into the sourcing and contract management of of the packages for that plants that we were building. And so more roles followed. After that. I went back to Australia, eventually to work in the mining industry, then 2017, we decided to migrate to Canada. And like you said, in the intro, I've had several roles in here I, you know, I worked in mining here again, I worked in procurement for retail. And recently I was in waste management and now construction back against so it's like a full circle.

Dave Barr  03:20

Its common shall we say event where people say they've, they've almost fallen into the roles of procurement. I say I did the same. I start today in quality management in manufacturing. And then for one reason or other, suddenly I find myself in in procurement type engagements, I kind of enjoyed talking to all these people and visiting their sites and learning about how they worked and started the kind of discussions and just things went from there. It's rather bizarre, isn't it, but there's very few people who say, from leaving college or university, or I want to be a procurement professional. But anyways, not perhaps not quite as sexy as an astronaut shall we say, but there we go.

Rodrigo Altaf  04:02

Yeah, I think it's changing now where we have like graduation in supply chain and procurement people choose that path a little bit more so than in a few years back like 10, 15 years ago, but yeah.

Dave Barr  04:13

Yeah. It's, you're rightly saying it's got more visibility than perhaps in the past. And I always say to people, particularly young people joining the profession, and I think a young guy, how many roles can you say other than perhaps sales, can you have the ability to go and visit other people, other places, locations, getting involved in negotiations interact with lots of people across the business across the globe? And so, you know, for a young guy, he's gonna be perhaps to travel from one country to the next is quite an adventure. So, you know, it's a lot of things to be said for it. 100% Yeah. So, at the moment, we've got a pretty evolving business landscape. There's an awful lot of disruption we've gone through fair bit, just eruption in the last few years, it's still going on now for various unfortunate reasons, shall we say, however, forming strategic alliances with suppliers can bring a competitive advantage at times. Now, in your experience, I'm sure you've had some challenges, but also some success stories. Yeah, an alliance has been created that's added value for both parties, one if he could share with us a story perhaps of one of those examples.

Rodrigo Altaf  05:28

Sure. So I can mention one, one thing from GFL, which was my previous role, because I'm fairly new to the Dragados. It's been only two and a half months. But at GFL is a massive organization in North America, they deal with waste management, and they have about 700 business units across the US and Canada. And they're some somewhat independently they have their own p&l, they have their own independency to pick and choose their vendors. However, we do see a pattern and consumption for several different scopes, like fuel, tires, machinery, industrial hoses, for example. And in my area of actuation, the areas where I provided support for we did see a need for standardization in industrial hoses, we didn't have that each location, but their own holes, their own diameter, their own material. So we partner with a company called Eric's a distributor, they are distributed, not a manufacturer, however, they were able to map the consumption and to see a pattern and consumption of every location and come up with like a list of equipment list that would you know, be a good fit for 90% of the locations as opposed to each of them buying independently and choosing whatever whatever hose diameter they would see fit, right. And then out of building that knowledge that we needed the vendor to build, because each location was independent, we didn't have someone over looking at overseeing this with a helicopter view. So we relied on the vendor. And there's pros and cons to this right. First of all, we needed a vendor with as as broad a presence as possible. They are, you know, they're spread across North America with a presence that almost matched the locations of their business units. And the other thing too, it might not necessarily be the lowest costing option. But they had the ability to map that consumption. They were only the only vendor that was robust enough to put that in place and help us through that journey. Right. And I guess the saving would not come from the unit price, but it will come from standardization. That was the point. Okay, yeah,

Dave Barr  07:33

I certainly know, Eriks is a huge company in its own right, as you say they have their own expertise. And because of this area that you just mentioned, so you're pulling on the expertise, you're there helping helping us You said by going in exploring what's being done talking to the local people, and getting all the facts or specifications, and they're delivering that package to you that package of knowledge as well, as you know that the suite of houses and in this case that you will be looking to purchase, did you struggle with any pushback from some of those locations when that was ongoing?

Rodrigo Altaf  08:09

100%, yeah, because there's a lot of remote locations where people were used to buying from the mom and pop store around the corner, which was, you know, the easy fix. And also, there's locations where, you know, these business units would also service their vendors, right. So in that case, it wouldn't really make sense to replace them for Eriks or for any other vendor that we would introduce. And there's other cases like that, like fuel, for example, we drove the use of Petro Canada, but there are certain locations where the vendor a few is also one of our biggest customers. So it tended to kind of back off and you know, okay, for that location, this agreement does not apply. However, please consider that in the future. And, you know, always plant that seed for the future. And once they see the benefit elsewhere, they might or might not adhere to the contract. We don't, right. Yeah.

Dave Barr  09:04

Yeah. Understood. Yeah. Now, what this creates, you've got an alliance here strategic alliances. I think that's the key thing is the element of strategy here. But that requires a certain amount of trust, and definitely collaboration. Yeah. So what steps do you recommend for building strong relationships with suppliers, you didn't suddenly engage no day with Eric's and say, Hey, do you want to do all this work? For me? I actually think there have been a fair bit of history between the parties. How can organizations ensure the alignment of goals and objectives as well so you've got the trust element, you need the relationship, they got to collaborate? You've got to have similar goals and objectives. What are your thoughts on this? And how to deal with that? For some ways? Complicated mixture?

Rodrigo Altaf  09:51

Yeah, so in that case, Eriks was already a vendor for several locations. However, if you're starting from scratch, I'm a firm believer in M.E.M.O, which is Me Early Me Often, the more you meet, the more you set the expectations, the more you mitigate the risk, right? I guess you need to ensure that there's a common understanding and an alliance alignment of values, right? Like you wouldn't pair Philip Morris with a wellness company. Right? So there has to be a minimum alignment, alignment, alignment of values. That's the first thing, common goals to be reached, right through your objective from both sides. Like I wantot mitigate this issue. And I believe that this vendor has expertise. They have the, you know, the material, they have the human factor to mitigate what I'm trying to mitigate, etc. And it's almost like you're doing not just integrity, due diligence. It's more like an extended version of that, you know, you have to have a not just human rights violation or corruption cases mitigated, but also an alignment in terms of the future goals and the values of all partners, right. So that's one thing. Another thing I would say, depending on what you're aligning for, or reaching an agreement for there might be a lot of research and development involved, like for example, Rio Tinto, they partner with Komatsu to come up with mining of the future where they develop these automated haulage trucks, it's a lot of research development, new technologies being introduced. So it's important to have all the relevant NDAs in place, you need to find out from the get go, who's gonna get the intellectual property wants to partnership moves in different directions, right, and from a customer perspective, have a fallback strategy. Like if something fails, or go south, or suppose there's a natural disaster, and they cannot deliver, we have a different vendor that might be of the same stature or not, but that can mitigate somehow the issues that you face along the way, right. And also, KPIs are important to like, you need to meet every quarter or every month, if necessary, to look at how things are going, are both sides getting the best of the relationship or not, right? Yeah.

Dave Barr  12:08

No, sometimes I'll say always, but sometimes, you need to partner or have an alliance with a supplier, who can also be in some way shape or form a competitor. Have you had any experience of that? And what did you find were the difficulties and the benefits of that kind of relationship? Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But it's a it can be very beneficial for both parties. That's the key is that it's got to be a mutual benefit at the end of the day. And it at times, she could have really, as we say, get rid of some of the politics involved. These things have each say the correct things in place, but the respect on both sides to recognize where the line should be drawn, and how to manage those difficult, fine lines that sometimes crop up. That's all about discussion, about partnership about collaboration and having the right mindset between the parties, isn't it? Absolutely.

Rodrigo Altaf  12:27

So I myself have not established that kind of relationship. However, Adra Gantos, for example, our customers are public, public entities, like Metro links here, which deals with infrastructure. So we partner with other construction companies all the time, right? Each contract that we get into is with a different partner. The players here it's a small market, so the players are essentially the same. I guess the biggest issues that are always discussed are NDAs, again, intellectual property, who's gonna have a say, in the vendor selection, and also have a fallback strategy as well, if things go south, how to mitigate that, right. Risk Insurance, all these things that you deal with the smallest vendor take a lot of prevalence when you're dealing with us, you know, a competitor, right? The stakes are way higher at that level. So So yeah, but I would say all as well, the more equal your your partner is in this at this stage, the more senior the executives need to be, or the you would involve like a C suite. In cases like this. Yeah. And there's curious cases in here where we do partnerships with certain companies that in other contracts, there are vendors. So meeting early meeting often and spreading the news about what's going on. Getting multiple disciplines involved, like health and safety, risk management, legal procurement, and the technical expertise as well. Technical area is key for the success, right?

Dave Barr  14:41

Yeah, yep. Cool. So when we form a strategic alliance, what's critical and we mentioned the example Iran was that we find the right partner, okay, there can be large entities that are out there that can give the competence and experience you need, but there may not be a good cultural fit perhaps? I'm thinking now what kind of criteria or factors? Should organizations consider when selecting partners, some alliances? How can they assess the capability of, you know, each party's strategic vision, for example, particularly when they're based in different regions of the world?

Rodrigo Altaf  15:22

Yeah. And like I said, at some point, it's it's like an extended integrity, due diligence, where you evaluate their financials, what are your goals? What's your vision? What's your five year 10? Year Plan? If possible, right? How did you mitigate issue X, Y, Zed? How would you mitigate? Like, how do we see the risks and opportunities in the future? How do you plan to tackle that, right? When you're dealing with companies that are in different countries, a lot of things need to be taken into account cultural differences, different time zones, like disruption in terms of words and sanctions, right? Natural disasters. So I guess a robust risk matrix for this is key, right? Also intellectual property as well, and NDAs, they need to be put in place as early as possible. And meeting and talking right? If need be just travel there, just go there physically meet them face to face, it does make a great different difference. When you meet people face to face. I've experienced that, but GFL and also dragados, like when you show your face, the level of dress just escalates dramatically, right? So yeah, I would say, meet early meet often meet in person, if possible, try to look for common ground, which is something that every team can benefit from, have have KPIs in place that will evaluate the partnership from time to time and see, does it make sense? Does it not make sense, right? And have time bound agreements and goals as well? Like, if it gets to a point where x y Zed objectives have not been reached? Just you know, consider a different source a different vendor, right? Yeah, yeah,

Dave Barr  17:07

I quite agree that meeting in person is essential, we have perhaps come extremely reliant on video calls like this is zooms in teams and everything else or these other technologies. But there is no way that you can really build a person to person relationship by having a visual chat. You know, sometimes it's, it's been involved, as you say, in the same company, if you're both gonna go into particularly area, you experience meals together, you'll have a few beers together, you start talking about each other as individuals, not necessarily just in the role, surprising how you can start to form a different impression of people, when you're face to face, say there was positive because sometimes you need to know when there's going to be conflicts where people don't have the same viewpoint, they don't have the same, shall we say, thought on how to go about the task. And the only way to really get that level isn't through a video call is through person to person contact. And you can get a much better feeling for their thoughts, their beliefs, the way they behave, how they engage with their colleagues, how they engage with you and your colleagues. They say it's all about people to people interaction. And of course, if you're bringing two sides together, those teams need to gel they need to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, understand the way of working understand the language, sometimes the technicalities of language can be difficult, particularly if you're from different regions of the world, different ways of explaining things can be quite tough, can't it?

Rodrigo Altaf  18:46

Yeah, and where I traveled to a different country to do business, like a country that does not speak English, for example, or like I traveled to Norway, for business, it's a completely different setting, building that trust was key for the success that I achieved when when working for that company. So I would strongly recommend, particularly if the language is different, right? Showing your face building that trust shaking hands goes a long way.

Dave Barr  19:10

Yeah, yeah, I often find that having an event in the evening, if it's just, you know, go to a place where you can do a little bit of sport together, be a little bit of football or, you know, in a cold country do something on an ice rink, that kind of, you know, excuse the pun, but it does break the ice and what you know, you start to have a bit of fun sometimes, as well, that counts for a lot. When you're building at relationship. You can come back the next day or day and have a bit of a laugh about how things were. I've been on events where in the evening, the guys played 10 pin bowling or something. So it's a little bit of competition, but it was a good laugh as well at the same time. So I think that that does help we need to get out of the work environment. So you can get back into the work environment sometimes because the dynamic can change quite significantly the next day. Oh, yeah. You mentioned a couple of very good points earlier about intellectual property, maintaining confidentiality as well, people are going to be perhaps in the environment, they'll see more than they would normally do. There's only so much you can do to hide things away, should we say you want to call it that they don't want to share? Yeah, but you've still got to have a collaborative environment. And you still want to be innovative with these people. And sometimes the legalese, sorry, say, the NDAs, and the IP rights, etc, can be a hindrance, if you find any particular ways of trying to bridging that kind of gap, where you've got to share so much sensitive information, but not to a degree that is uncomfortable. If you had that problem to deal with,

Rodrigo Altaf  20:49

I have, I don't have a recipe for that. Just try and be transparent and be honest about it. Like there's things that we disclose to the vendors and say, I feel that there's something in the pipeline in terms of acquisition, or divestment, or something like that. This is what I can see and what I can share in terms of the future for this company. Take that as you want and plan to work with us, you know, how you want it. But, yeah, I think you have to be transparent and know and share what you know. And when you don't know that's on the only way I can describe it be transparent and avoid hiccups, right. So if a vendor hits me with a price increase out of the blue, that trust is lost. Right? So to regain that trust, it's a process, right? And yeah, I would say be as transparent as you can from both sides. Knowing that at any given at any point, you can be sidelined by a business decision that you had no, no interference or no interference in, right. Yeah, transparency,

Dave Barr  21:53

You have a particular word there, which is always going to be challenges price. Now, both parties have their own feelings on how the costs have got to, you know, the calculation has been performed. Sometimes you need to get those numbers out on the on the table, understand each other's viewpoints, where they're getting their data from. And obviously, the word margin can also be to say, a difficult one to overcome, you know, don't attack the margin attack the costs is what I say, you know, everybody needs to make money. That's what we're here to do. We got to pay his wages and such. But if you can find ways of doing things more efficiently together, or perhaps there's some intelligence that is out there that you are able to share, did you know about this, etc, that isn't going to compromise yourself, then that, you know, let's help each other in this respect. They can sure as hell share something with you as well, they might have a particular competency or an area where you're perhaps a little bit weaker on. Yeah. Skills. Yeah, yeah,

Rodrigo Altaf  22:55

I think for Canada, a lot of the companies here don't know what they purchase, there is no, the ERP systems sometimes are not robust enough, or they are robust, but they're not used to full capacity. So knowing your consumption details, when you buy in, in the long run can be challenging. So a lot of times, we rely on the vendors to tell us, hey, you consumed X, Y Zed, or this amount of hours of rental equipment within a year in this or that location. So that level of trust, you have to be able to trust the vendors to tell you what you consumed. That for me was a mountain to overcome, to be honest with you, because I'm used to knowing and telling them, Hey, I bought this from you. But no, it's reversed in here. By and large, it's reverse, right? So that level of trust is you either trust it, or you don't even do business with that vendor. So.

Dave Barr  23:48

Yeah, a lot of the times it's all in the data, isn't it? You know, the people who have the greatest detail, creates information, the the newest information can sometimes have an advantage, shall we say? Yeah, as a buyer, you want to have the cleanest data possible. That gives you the the overview, you know, the spread that you need to discuss things and when the vendor has to bring that to the table. So did you realize...

Rodrigo Altaf  24:15

how do you know about my business more than I know.

Dave Barr  24:19

But that, as you say, sometimes that is their business, shall we say? And so their expertise is that well, you mentioned earlier on some ways, they can share stuff that can be very useful to you. Did you know that you can use an alternative shape, size, material X, Y, and Zed that will give you the same benefits but a lower cost? Quite often that can be the case because their individual expertise in that area is the kind of thing that you're lacking. You can't be an expert in everything. So there has to be some give and take with that information. Exactly. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Now obviously, alliances when they're set up, hopefully everything goes very well. And over time, though, things can change event change in the world, different factors change. So what do you think are some good ways of organizations proactively managing and maintaining those alliances? You know, keeping those relationships healthy. You mentioned a few things earlier on, you say dramatic things are happening in the world court right now political, shall we say, very uncomfortable things. And so, you know, people's beliefs can be affected, the markets change quickly, we've seen some major ups and downs in in particular materials, for example, in the pricing, the business needs change, what kinds of things have have you done to make sure that the relationship tries to stay on track, despite all these other things happening,

Rodrigo Altaf  25:42

Right. So I can give an example of oil and gas where I worked in oil and gas. In Brazil, in particular, there's not too many players, not too many vendors for oil and gas for specific scope, like drilling and completion, there's three or four players, right, we had contracts with all of them. And we would meet every three months to discuss their performance. And they would score our performance as well as customers right in front of everyone. So we would have three or four vendors give their opinion on us. And we'll give their our opinion on them in front of their competitors, right? That can be embarrassing the first instances, but over time, that builds trust, and also being transparent about what you know, what you don't know about the future. So we have this uncertainty. And this is how we're preparing for it. Does your supply chain align with, you know, how we see this uncertainty? What contingencies? Do you have down the line for Scenario A, B, or C, and having them be part of your strategic objectives, and maybe providing info and input to your strategic goals in the future and the two or three years that you can see in the horizon? Nowadays, it's even shorter than six months when you're right, but having them do that input to you and feeding back to them? Hey, I think it's going to look like this in the upcoming year. What are your thoughts, right? involving them in each and every step of the way, wherever possible, builds that trust and shares the risk as well. Sometimes you need to place a Pio for raw material that will cover you for six months or a year, but you're like, maybe not all of this will be consumed. So where do I store this? If if the demand changes, right? Nowadays, we're dealing with dramatic demand changes, because, you know, we're still living the hiccups of COVID. Like, how do you plan for the uncertainties in the future? There's war everywhere, and economic crisis looming around the corner. How do you plan for that? It's it's unpredictable. Really, right. So sharing risk, sharing your vision of the future with a vendor goes a long way, because he can then plan for that uncertainty as well. Right?

Dave Barr  27:50

Yeah, that's right, you will have so much history, but history necessarily doesn't repeat itself and the right time, sometime, but it won't be at the right time. Exactly. And as you say, they may have some a better understanding of certain markets than you. And so they could bring suggestions and say, hey, you know, our forecast for these materials based on what we know, suggests that we need to approach this in a different way going forwards, may we suggest X, Y and Zed I think that's can be very helpful to a buyer to see that perspective. And equally, you as a buyer will have hopefully some visibility from your sales organization on how they see things going in the future. It's that mutual sharing of information and trying to get the best for each party that can be quite critical. Absolutely. Yeah, I find it really interesting. And I was quite pleased to hear you mentioned the fact that not only do you evaluate the supplier, but you welcome the supplier to evaluate you. Yeah, that is easy to say it's uncomfortable sometimes. Yeah, but necessary. There are too many, in my opinion, too many buyers, who will quite happily berate or show up suppliers for not performing in all areas, but quite often or do not welcome or uncomfortable with the same critique was saying, Well, you as the customer, if you had helped us or told us about X, Y, and Zed, this could be a different outcome. Yeah. So when you're in that kind of situation, how did you help those people around you, from your side cope with the fact that they're going to be critiqued? What was the way of aligning everybody so that they weren't reacting in a negative way when perhaps some uncomfortable truths came out?

Rodrigo Altaf  29:38

Right, good question. Good question. It was a learning curve for us. This was unique for for that company in Brazil and I it wasn't a region company, and I do not think this was employed elsewhere. But in Brazil, it was an idea that came from one of the directors and it was implemented. Like I think that over time people learn to live with that with that critisism and, took that seriously and did take that criticism to try and improve in the next quarter. But initially, there was that shock, like, how dare you criticize me, I'm the customer, I'm paying your bills. I'm like, I'm paying your salaries, right. But you learn to appreciate your limitations, and you learn to try and mitigate them. So that the next time because this, this involves, like senior senior leadership, all the way down to, you know, the most regular person in the company, right? The engineers, right? It was a bit of a learning curve. Some of the feedback was really harsh in the beginning, but people learn to live with that and learn to act on it and improve on it. Right, particularly in health and safety, where there was a little bit of a competition between the vendors to see who performed better. So that drove results, right, we lower every statistic in terms of health and safety. So over time, you prove to be successful?

Dave Barr  30:58

Yeah, yeah, I think it's all I equate it to, sometimes you see these shows on TV, when the owner of the business goes in disguise, or goes to part of their organization and see it from the ground up. Now, when we're working in our specific offices, locations, we see to a certain degree, what's happening, but you're not the customer, you're not the supplier, you're not feeling the changes, or the difficulties that your business is actually revealing to them. Now, it's great when those CEOs go to the shop floor and find out, actually what I perceive to be happening is very different to reality. And that's the only way for you to learn how to improve, sometimes be aware of those things. Even though it's uncomfortable, you shouldn't always expect your customer to be the one to tell you this isn't right and change this, it should go both ways. In my opinion. 100%

Rodrigo Altaf  31:56

There was a case where, you know, the door of a drilling unit in the rake actually fell down to the to the drilling floor. It didn't hit anyone, but it could have been catastrophic, right. So the country president of the company was working for it was the customer at the time. They call the vendors country president on the meeting to explain what happened and to, you know, not to berate him, but to explain to ask for an explanation of what happened, how you going to mitigate that moving forward? What are the steps that we need to take for that not to happen? And how do we change our culture, our behavior in terms of health and safety, to avoid that from happening and from having catastrophic consequences? Right. So.

Dave Barr  32:39

Yeah, you never want to be in a situation you rightly say when there's a health and safety incident. And actually that's a classic example. We're bringing together expertise from both sides. It's all about making an environment safe for everybody who are working in that process. It isn't about scoring points. It's about keeping people safe. So I think that's a it is a very good example of where collaboration clearly is the for the benefit of everybody. So yeah, I do like that example. Before we jump on to the last question seeing time is absolutely flying by what's the best way for people to find out more about you and what you do?

Rodrigo Altaf  33:18

I'm on LinkedIn, you can add me, Rodrigo Altaf, just, I'm very approachable on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook as well. I do interviews with rock musicians as well. There's a website called Sonic Perspectives, you will find me there on the Sonic Perspective YouTube channel. Also, you can reach reach me on rodrigo.altaf@gmail.com. Yeah, I'm very approachable on social media, don't hesitate to reach out to me. It'd be great to connect with other professionals around the world. Yeah, happy to connect, discuss whatever improvements in whatever situations you're facing. I do help newcomers to Canada, particularly in the Brazilian community to help find to find jobs. I do a little bit of mentoring and coaching here. I look at resumes and try to match them with positions that I know are vacant. So yeah, reach out, I'll be happy to connect.

Dave Barr  34:13

Brilliant. Thank you for that. So just looking at now from a perspective of a young person in buying, somebody who's perhaps got a few years under their belt, they're getting involved in bigger projects. And now the faced with the potential for an alliance. What kind of things would you recommend to those people who were perhaps fairly early in their careers, what sort of desktop things perhaps what sort of activities do you think they could do to identify the potential risks and benefits? Are they map out how they should go about incorporating a supplier into their business in such a way as that you'll get the best out for both parties that alliance can really prop gait, and and help both parties to develop and grow together. So

Rodrigo Altaf  35:05

I will say look at history first and foremost of the history of the vendor, the history of your company, what it's done so far, and what are the objectives moving forward? What is the strategic planning for that company? Does it match the vendor, the strategic goals of the vendors you're selecting? Right? That's one thing involve multiple disciplines, right? When you're evaluating a vendor, bring the health and safety guy bring the technical guy with you to evaluate the expertise, the focus on research and development? What is the attention to new trends? How do you adapt to the current uncertainties? Right? Things like that? How do you mitigate risk? Right? Risk is something that is like it's kind of I don't want to say it's brand new, but it's an it's an infant discussion that we have in terms of risk mitigating risks, right? Particularly now after in the aftermath of COVID, where we had so many disruptions that people weren't used to, to live in with, but yeah, look at not just price, not just technical ability, look at multiple factors of that vendor that will enable you to you know, put their name forward as, as a particular good partner, right? As a strong partnership, right? Evaluate multiple layers, multiple levels, multiple disciplines, right?

Dave Barr  36:26

Yeah, no, I really like that. I was all I'm always the advocate for bringing people together. And I'm glad you mentioned about other parties, because people think procurement, those guys should kind of know everything. Absolutely not. What I love to do is engage my colleagues, she say, from perhaps production, health and safety, from quality, you know, from machining, to assembly, all those skill sets, those people have an expertise in their own area, and to match those people with the suppliers equivalents. And in a in a formal way, where you have an open discussions, there's so many different things that come out of those meetings, it can be quite incredible things that I never thought of suddenly come out where an expertise in one area strikes a chord, the expertise in your area, and vice versa. And out of that, should we say meeting of minds where they visit you, you visit them, suddenly, you start to form quite a healthy list of things that you can both work on together, it drives innovation. You know, people, as you mentioned earlier on, stop putting their arms around a problem to hide things, they open things up. And so both parties can get benefits from that. And as you say, the relationships build. And before you know it, the r&d guys we mentioned earlier on, suddenly are opened up to new opportunities, perhaps new methods of manufacture new materials, they hadn't considered those things seriously, that can impact a business in a very positive way, both financially and operationally, if you if you've seen the same thing?

Rodrigo Altaf  38:06

I have, yeah. And the thing I could add to that is the answer might not be so clear cut, in most cases, that I feel that that can be frustrating for the newer generation, we're not used to push backs and frustrations. Maybe you select a vendor that is good at expertise, A, B or C, but D E and F would be would fall under a different vendor by just selecting this one now because it makes sense in your view, right? You prepare for push backs, right? You might get adherence from 80% of your business units, but not 100%. In that sense, how much uncertainty can you live with? Right? Does it make does it have to make sense for all locations? Maybe maybe not. Right? Be prepared for that. There will be pushback, and you need to live with that frustration? Sometimes you have the answer for the pushback, sometimes you won't, right?

Dave Barr  38:58

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it's good that if you find that they're not the right partner for you, they may be at a different place in their journey where there isn't going to be the synergies that are needed to make the change to make the move forward. And that's a good thing to know. But no point wasting each other's time, if actually, they're not the best fit for you at your point of your journey. So yeah, I think we've had some pretty good discussions there some interesting stuff come out, and hopefully everybody will find that of great use to turn themselves in their careers.

Rodrigo Altaf  39:32

I hope so. I hope so happy to contribute. Yeah, feel free to reach out and always happy to have a discussion but all things procurement and supply chain.

Dave Barr  39:40

Brilliant. Thanks very much for your time. Today. We do go it's been brilliant talking to you.

Rodrigo Altaf  39:44

Thank you have a good one. Right.

Dave Barr  39:46

So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it, and it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. I would add a five star review would be most appreciated if you would like to discover more about me more so do take a look at www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk. Bye.