Process Starts with People: Building Better Systems Through Curiosity with Alex von Schledorn

Description:

In this episode, Liam O'Neill speaks with Alex von Schledorn, Head of Procurement Excellence at ETEX, whose career has taken him from manufacturing and flower exports in Ecuador to logistics, planning, procurement and operational excellence across Europe.

Alex's route into process is anything but conventional. After working in his father's business from a young age, he built experience across multiple industries before having to rebuild his life from scratch after moving to Europe. Those experiences shaped the way he approaches operational excellence today, combining a deep respect for people with a relentless focus on improving the systems they work within.

This is a practical and refreshingly human conversation about why process improvement is never really about technology. It is about understanding how organisations work, helping people solve problems and creating systems that make work easier rather than more complicated.

They discuss:

• Why working across every function of his father's business taught him that you cannot improve what you do not truly understand
• How experience across manufacturing, logistics, sales and planning helped him develop a systems mindset that transfers between industries
• What rebuilding his career from scratch in Europe taught him about resilience, humility and leadership
• Why the best operational decisions come from trusted data rather than assumptions or instinct
• How organisations can unlock significant value by using the capabilities they already have before investing in new technology
• The importance of helping people understand why systems like SAP work the way they do, rather than simply expecting adoption
• How a simple robotic process automation solution transformed document management, reduced manual effort and improved audit readiness across the business
• Why AI should enhance human decision making rather than replace accountability, and why organisations need the right foundations before introducing it
• How building relationships, understanding different cultures and picking up the phone remain some of the most powerful tools for driving process ownership
• Why attitude is ultimately the biggest differentiator for anyone building a career in operational excellence

Whether discussing procurement, process management or digital transformation, Alex consistently returns to the same principle: technology matters, but people, curiosity and a willingness to solve problems are what create lasting improvement.

Host: Liam O'Neill, Managing Director at bpmd

Guest: Alex von Schledorn, Head of Procurement Excellence at ETEX

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Work in Process. We are Lim O'Neill and Sam Lewis, the COVID leaders who are responsible for improving how their organization actually works. If you lead protest, transformation, IT, enterprise architecture, data or operations, and you are accountable for turning strategy into execution. This podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Across the organizations we work with, we see a lot of investment in teams and tools and programs, the different software, you get dashboards built, processes modeled, programs launched. But that doesn't always translate into real bits of tokens, into bottom line results, into something you can point your finger at and say, yeah, that's worked. If you are serious about building a structured, data-led and outcome-focused approach to change, we're glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

This is Work in Process. If you get any value from this episode, please subscribe. You'll get a brand new episode before anyone else. The views and opinions of our guests are their own and do not represent those of the company.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Hello and welcome to another episode of Work in Process. Today I'm very lucky to be joined by Alex von Sheldon, the new head of procurement excellence at ETEX. Alex's work sits at the intersection of procurement, process ownership, supply quality, risk, training, innovation, and a whole host of other really interesting spaces. Now, what makes Alex especially interesting is how we got into process is a little bit unusual from some very interesting industries in Ecuador, big European reset, and a whole host of other hands-on logistics and planning roles. So I'd like to start with where that came from. How you uh very much started your career working with your father and what you were doing at that early junction.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I started indeed very young with my father's business, and this taught me the importance of understanding every level of the company. I work across different areas from the mechanics, deliveries, the sales and finance. And this gave me a strong respect of every role and the people behind it. It's also showing me how critical it is to truly understand the processes. Otherwise, you risk making decisions based on assumptions instead of facts. At the end of the day, companies are built of by people. So empathy, respect, and real understanding are the key. So that was the biggest part. Understand and connect with the people.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Fantastic. And you know, I haven't been in those different spaces, you know, in camera manufacturing, and then in some of those other roles you moved into in things like export sales. What did that teach you about different industries and the complexities that go with them?

SPEAKER_02 2:28

So I started my career after my father's saying moved to a flower export or roses. So Ecuador is one of the biggest exporters of fresh cutting flowers, especially in roses. I started in the export uh sales, and this exposed me to the different markets, cultures, and customers' needs. So from the US to Europe or Russia. So it really opened my mindset to dealing with complexity. Each market has a different requirement, but the goal was always the same. So that helped me to connect the dots or start to learn how to connect the dots and develop a helicopter view. So when you see a bigger picture, you can identify patterns and reuse solutions from one context to solve challenge to another one. And this is something I managed to recognize later on, not while I was doing that.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

So maybe here was a couple of examples of those kind of reusable nuggets of info that you got. It sounds very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

So for uh the flowers, some situations we were having some issues when we were delivering the flowers and having not the correct temperature. And in Europe, they discovered one special packaging or gel that you can put inside. And with the same situation happened in the US, and where you we start to mix these solutions, we applied the same solution that we have in Europe to the US market, and everything started to get fixed also.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

And obviously, you know, going from if I was business to sell and flowers in Ecuador, you know, in a very different space in a very different continent. So uh why don't you tell us about that move to Europe?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

So that was a challenging situation. So that was early 2000s. So when you arrived to Europe in 2006, so it was the Forex boom, and uh my family and I got involved in what seemed uh like a very promising opportunity in Forex investments. Unfortunately, we partnered with the wrong people. We were scammed, we lost everything, so not only uh financially, but also our credibility, as my father had uh personal engaged investors. So that experience completely changed my perspective on risk and resilience. So it taught me that uh life can change in a blink and nothing is granted. So the only thing you can trust and rely is on your ability to work hard, keep moving and rebuild yourself. So you can't wait for things to happen. You have to take an action and move forward no matter the situation.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

It's a hard lesson to learn about awareness of risk. From when you arrived then in in Europe, I believe it was in Italy. What was it that you did to restart and get back on kind of a business horse, as it were?

SPEAKER_02 4:45

So everything started yes, in Italy. I had to start from zero. So I came with my wife and a five-month-old daughter, thinking that with my background, so I had a degree in business, three languages, an international sales experience. I was managing a sales manager of a flower of these companies. So I thought that it would be really easy to find a good opportunity in Italy, but the reality was very different. I arrived with only just uh 100 euros in my pocket. So luckily, my sister was already living in Rome and helped us during the first few months. To move forward, I looked the first job I could find. So that was in an Italian bar, so serving coffees and uh aperities. So I started, but I started from the very bottom. I started cleaning floors, washing dishes, doing whatever was needed. Then step by step I progressed to preparing copies, cappuccinos, serving customers, and at the end I became the main waiter. That was a very humbling year. So that was very humbling, but also very important. You remind me that not job is small, and that dignity comes from effort, not from titles. It also punched me to learn the language, the Italian language, very quickly and adapt completely to the environment. So after one year, once I improved my Italian and I rebuilt some confidence, I managed to get back into an office role. That was a Mondo Convenience, and from there I continued growing step by step until reaching where I'm today in Luxembourg. So what really helped me was having the correct people around me. So my sister was the key beginning, uh, giving acceptability for those critical first months, but then my biggest support was my wife, has been always my wife. In the thoughtest moment, she reminds me who I am, what I'm capable of, and why we started this journey. She also kept me focused on the biggest picture, our future and our children's. So for me, this is very, very important. So that period uh taught me the resilience, humility, and perseverance. It showed me that progress doesn't come overnight. You need to build it day and day. And most importantly, it reinforced a simple mindset. No matter how hard things get, you have to keep moving forward, as I said before. So it's only up to you. Everything is up to you.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Brilliant. I think it shows fantastic resilience. It's a very brief thing to do, more so when you've got a five-month-old and then when mine with that age, I was more focused on desperately trying to clog a couple of hours of sleep out of a dead of night. So really fantastic that you managed to turn mine to such a success. But obviously, it does represent a big shift in kind of industry of sort of uh working in a cafe and that builds that that fantastic kind of understanding of the Italian culture and that area of kind of hospitality industry. But then I believe you went into kind of logistics and planning and obviously ultimately into procurement. It's very different to sales. So, what did that experience bring for you?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

So, that indeed, as you said, it's another world of that logistics. It's something very different. Sales, you need to be more flexible, you need to be more relationship-driven, while logistics requires more structured discipline and strong process oriented. So this change showed me the importance of planning ahead, thinking in systems, making decisions based on data, not in facts, and added the level of rigor of my way of working and helped me to balance intuition with the structure. So it was very a complementary experience. So I had one of the freelance sales environments when you need to connect with the people, but from the other side, more cold head, structured, and more process-oriented.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And it's interesting, you've spent a lot of time in industries where it's kind of very VV production, but product is very blue-collar. It's making things, it's manufacturing things, it's selling. It's not much time in kind of you know tech or services or any of those kind of more white-collar industries where there's not so much actual kind of hands-on environments. So, how does that play into the way you look at process and excellence?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Yes, uh, as you said, I've been going through flowers, Canada food, uh, photox, then the bar, the furniture, shoe retailers, the similarity. So working on the very personal environment told me that you cannot improve what you don't understand. So you need to understand what you want to change, and you can't manage what you don't measure. So you need to be sure that you can measure the things that you want to change. So you need to know the process end to end, and you need to have the correct data and know the data. So it's key. So when you combine process knowledge with accurate data, you can get a complete picture, and this allows you to make better or less mistakes, and you can take more informed decisions. This gives you more strong position to take some decisions.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Definitely. We got maybe a few examples of where the data is not in the support making some of those key decisions.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

So luckily, I'm not the biggest to take the I was preparing the data for others to take decisions, but indeed, when you start to analyze, for example, when I came to edX and I started to build a data set for the reporting, and we were identifying this is what the system is telling me, this is what the report is giving me, data are not matching, and they were taking decisions on sometimes millions of differences. How is possible? Or when you want to go deep diving, diving deeper into analysis, it's addictive. I feel it as an addiction because you can go deeper and deeper and deeper and more detail-oriented, more professional, and then you identify look, this is the reason why we are not performing well, or this is the reason why we're performing well. And you can have, again, as we said, based on a fact. Look, here's the data, here's the fact, this is the situation. Not I guess this is the problem. So I think a lot of people go through these kind of situations.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

So it's something that you do hear a lot, especially where you've got some companies who just don't trust that master data that sits behind kind of those decisions being made. So you end up with fantastic automated workflows, automated ordering of materials, automated work orders that come in, automated work orders that go out. And then there's still someone at the end of the day checking every single one of those because you have no idea if you can trust the right numbers on the doors sitting behind those decisions. Exactly. So uh you mentioned uh SAP then, I think, briefly. So I think everyone's got a few war stories around SAP. Have you got any details around that you want to go into?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

That was my first experience in Italy. So we were coming from a homemade uh program building AS400, very tiger-made ad hoc situation with a lot of flexibility, doing what you expect, and then you need to move to this very fixed blocked solution, people of always get frustrated. A lot of people identify that a lot of steps were unnecessary because why I need to fill this, why do you need to put something in this field or why do you need to click here? But slowly, slowly, people identify that there is a reason. They are not so stupid to invest a lot of money in this kind of thing. So they start to like accept the tool more and more because behind this people realize that uh my actions have an impact in others, especially when you have a connected complete ERP. So when you understand that filling that small field can directly improve the performance in AP or in supply chain, your perspective changes. It becomes less about task and more about the bigger picture. So once people understand the why, adoption and quality proxies uh very, very quickly. So that's it's important to explain the why and how it works and what is the impact of my work with the others.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Fantastic. And I think that was a big shift, right? When SAP and ERPs really came into the scene, is forcing people to think cross-functional. And as much as that can be painful is massively required in any kind of modern complex business. Finance doesn't work in a box, production doesn't work in a box, nothing works in a box. We're all dependent on what comes in, and then he takes what goes out. So if you were gonna say there's been a theme of your career today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 12:13

I believe that I had the opportunity to change what I'm doing for the last 10, 20 years in another way. So to help people. So what let me explain the topic. So I began noticing recreate recurring challenges in in while I was working. So always the same problem, same problem, same problem. And my manager at the time, he encouraged me not only to highlight the problem, but find solutions. So that was very nice for my boss. For example, I arrived to ethics as planner, but things were not happening, were not working, the SA system was not correctly managed, and I say, point in but improving by Boston and no, Alex, okay, fix it. Then I started to fix that one, and one small improvement idea quickly became with something real, and people started to use it, and then opens on another improvement and another improvement, and people were starting to use and people were starting to improve. And this before and after, when you compare how the things were before and how the things are now, and how things become simpler and more efficient for the people was very rewarding for me. And this is when I realized that solving problems for others wasn't just part of the job, but it was a real driver in my career. I I like to help people to improve and the way they are working or the way they spend eight hours of the day working. So I think it's important to spend your time while working on a nice environment and doing something that you want.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, you invest so much of your life into kind of the hours you spend at work in the office block or on site, and so much of kind of the well-being that comes off that is whether you're in a good space, a head performance space, or whether you're just surviving. So having people who proactively go and solve problems, it's not just kind of the immediate little benefit, it creates a whole better environment for everyone. So, with that theme, with the idea of problem solving, when you first started at ETEX and you had your problem solver hat on, what were some of the things you noticed? What were some of the things you cracked on with fixing?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So, what was interesting because before I joined ethics, I was in another company also using SAP very matures. That struck me was the gap between the potential of the tool and how they were actually being used. So, my previous, as I said, experience, the SAP maturity was higher. So I already knew what was possible. So I saw a lot of manual work in ethics and the feeling that the people were working for the system, instead the system working for them. So that really opened my eyes to a big opportunity. I simply put the basics in place, better processes, better data usage, contract management in SAP, price management in SAP, automation in SAP, basic things. So you could already drive significant improvements without needing anything complex, but only starting to use what it's basics and available for everybody. And that was a big change. Thanks for that. We we managed to automate the complete process, avoid the paperwork, avoid the prices, mismatches. And then when you fix this problem with the procurement, and then you receive a call from accounts paper and say, guys, we're increasing the things. What are you doing? Because now we are posting the invoices automatically or almost automatically, our work is getting better. So you see that your work has an impact and it's working. So that's very, very satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

And then you talk about forward to was it was that any text where you kind of first got into that space of getting the upstream piece clean, the downstream piece flowing nice and quickly?

SPEAKER_02 15:19

My first project was the Dutchman Roberts. So first year I came, we had an internal audit, and of course, procurement, they came and they select some purchase orders, and then you need to justify the quotation, the bill of lighting, the information related to this order. And I saw people running to the office looking for papers, searching for folders, searching for this, for that. When you have in SAP the possibility to attach documents inside multiple transactions, I say, guys, why we don't attach the documents in SAP? And then you have stored the information there. So we start to attach it. And that was the first topic: the attachment, start to attach it. But the problem became later when it's too complex because you need to go to one folder here, click there, and then they say, Well, how make it easier? And I create this attachment robot that's it's an RPA where you send an email to a specific uh email address with all the attachments that you want to attach. And in the subject, you need to put the PO if it's related to a PO and the number of the PO, or SO if it's related to a sales order, or ship is related to the shipment. Everything started with the PO. And then you put the number of the PO, for example, and you send the email. This email goes to the wherever magic goes, the robot is taking it, goes attachments, and do replicates what you're doing manually. And 20 minutes later, you receive a confirmation that the attachment has been done. Thank you very much. So I started this with only PO for us. Then people started to discover it and I started to promote it. And people told me we wouldn't do it for Master Dad, for this, for that, for that. And now this solution became uh one of the biggest, uh, most active solutions that we have. We process more than 3,500 emails per week. This is also saving 12,000 pages that you don't need to be printed anymore because everything is stored in SAP. Internet audit loves the solution because you can have any time 24-7 the documentation available there, live, without getting lost anywhere. The people is not here anymore. So everything is there. So there's no excuse not to put the information in the system. So that was one of my biggest and nicest and the best activities I did.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

RPA has got a little bit of a mixed reputation these days, but there are some fantastic places where it was so so useful. So for those of our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with RPA, don't just give us a very quick intro as to what it is.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

So RPS replicate human behavior. So when you have a repetitive task, the human is clicking the same things, you can activate a process that the system will do the same things to you. In my case, in this robot, we connect the robot to SAP. So we teach how to connect, to take the attachment, save it, go to this leaf code, click here, click there, and attach. Next one and looping until it's finished. So it's a replication of human activities. And it's very useful to combine later on with OCR, with AI. So we're using it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Definitely a fantastic tool. You mentioned combine it with OCR and AI as well, but that sounds really interesting. Bringing kind of the OCR element, the AI element. Are you using IDP intelligent document processing in that mix as well?

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Not yet, but we're trying to develop something internally that will combine this. How is it the idea? So we want to put in place a middleware to receive emails and validate the information that some suppliers are sending us to identify, for example, quotations where you need to only put the OCR, recognize and understand what is in the text and transfer this information to SAP. More or less, this is the activities that we want to do. We are on the early stages there. Technology is growing very fast, so I think we will deploy something very quick.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

I remember a few years ago when we used to do process improvement programs, OCR tools were almost always a pain point for everyone you spoke to. Useful, but everyone hated them because they weren't perfect and they've uh often misread things. That's getting less and less of a prominent issue as you get cleverer, smarter, stronger.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Yes, you need to ditch well the agents to read the OCR correctly. So you need to keep training this to be sure that the data that this is extracting is exactly what you want because things change and then sometimes it's not the same. So let's put it this way: the fact that we have AI doesn't take me the responsibility from my shoulders. I'm still accountable. So I should not trust 100% on AI on this kind of solutions. Yes, it's a nice tool, it's a very supportive, but if it works, it's not it's not work. Don't forget that if it's not working, it's your responsibility. Sooner or later will be your responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Definitely. And 100% in a business context, also in a personal context. Um, this week, bit of a heat wave, and it's the Hawaiian share. And my parasol in my back garden broke. So I was buying a new one, went to have a website, and it was horrible. It's an old website, used it on my phone. So I just copied the URL, put it in ChatGPT, and said, just check, this definitely has a cross base. Q Wednesday, it gets delivered and break it out, try to set it up in the garden so my kids can go out without burning, and there's no base. So I'm trying to blame Chat GPT, but my wife's more annoyed with me than it for some reason. So uh accountability definitely ties in. In terms of that accountability, though, and building that into the business. So I know in your current role it's very much kind of a global remit. How do you get people in the business to take accountability for their areas? Take people on a journey of starting to take some degree of process ownership and be responsible for how work is done in their area, not just work being done.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

I wouldn't say that it's not hard, but you need to build the empathy. It's I think it's very important to have this empathy, understand the others, understand multiple cultures, understand the different needs of the people. And I'm lucky the fact that I'm starting to use my previous experiences when I work on the flowers, where I have a big broader community of worldwide in this company, and I have to do the same. So I have my internal clients are located in Indonesia or in Colombia or in uh Germany with multiple then different cultures, ways of thinking, needs, and you need to be flexible, you need to adapt yourself, you need to completely understand the process first to understand what they need and why they are doing it. So it's important that connect with the people. And something that I think is missing, don't hesitate to take the phone, and unless we don't have any more, or teams and call, avoid messages. So, yes, messages are always good, but for me it's very useful to take the phone or teens message, but stop long emails, don't do that. If you replay two times for the same email, that this is a ping-pong game, take the phone and call them. It will be faster. Connect at least by the camera, see them people at the face, and that connections will help you a lot. So it's important to have these connections with the people.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Definitely. So when it comes down to kind of the new emerging technology, then you mentioned kind of OCR and playing around with AI and the different kind of emergent pieces in that space. How do you make a call? Whether something's just a fad or something actually warrants you putting the time into it, putting the thoughts into it, bringing it into your way of working.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

It's hard to say. There are very nice and fancy things in the market, but I think that not all of them are good for us. So you need to understand that. Your maturity. So you should go slowly, or this technology should go on the same pace as your maturity. And you should not run before you walk. I think that a lot of heads when they go to dinners with other heads, they heard what their other colleagues are doing in AI or in technology, and they come and say, I want to have this. And they sometimes, as they don't know the complete process, because of course they are far away from the end users, they think that your reality is the same reality as your colleague, and they will manage to implement AI. I want to have it. But sometimes you are not ready for that. Sometimes you need to create the basics. And then once you create the basics, automatically you will find a tool or AI solution that will adapt to your need. And then you move forward. So it's important to always accept where you are, your maturity, too. Don't buy something that will not be used. You throw away money for something that is not used because people are already. So it's very important to be aligned.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

You can't go all bling no basics, as it were. So looking back then across your whole journey from Ecuador to Italy to Luxembourg, what would you say across that journey, some of the things that you're most proud of?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

If I'm in this podcast, it means that I did something correctly. So from all the people in LinkedIn, you notice me. So and I'm thankful for that. I think I'm very proud of my resilience. I think it's not easy to restart a new life at 30 years with no money and in a different country. So I need to admit I was very lucky, but I think I also contribute on that. So I think that's what I'm uh what I'm proud of. My resilience and my attitude. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

And I'm giving you journey. Is there any chance you're gonna be going to Germany anytime soon and bragging about the result from last night?

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Uh I have a problem here, Liam. My father is German, was German. So I'm German and Ecuadorian. So I have the three teams in the World Cup. So it would be interesting to see what would happen next.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Definitely interested. So for someone else who's just starting out their career, be it in procurement or operations or the whole excellent space, what advice would you give to them?

SPEAKER_02 23:58

I would say that the best advice, it's a concept. I don't know if you heard about Viktor Coopers. He did a very nice team talk that really, really changed my perspective. It's the one on how can you mathematically give a value of a person. And this is a nice formula that the value is equal to the knowledge plus skills multiplied by attitude. So this is a formula knowledge plus the skills and everything multiplied by the attitude. So this is very important because knowledge and skills are essential, indeed, because you need to learn, gain experience, and build your capabilities. But those things are only add value. What really makes a difference is the attitude, because that's what multiplies everything else. So you can be an expert or have a lot of experience, but if you don't have a good attitude, nobody will remind to you. So if you're not curious, proactive, or open to learn, your impact will be limited. So in procurement operations or process improvements, attitude is key. So people must be curious, understand the why, challenge the topics, and always look for better ways to work. So that's why I said before that I'm proud because I think I have a good attitude. Or that's what the people say about me.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Fantastic. Alex, thank you so much for coming on my show. It's been an absolute fascinating chat with you. And if anyone wants to reach out or ask any further questions, is there any good places where people can connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 25:13

I mean, link it in. You can they can reach me through you, so I'm happy to support anyone.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Superb. Well, thank you again for coming on my show. And thank you to all those of you listening over. I hope you enjoyed another episode of a work in process podcast.