Luca Poloni, Direttore Approvvigionamenti Mediaset Group

My name is Luca Poloni, I am the Group Procurement Director of Mediaset. I coordinate all purchasing areas for the group companies and subsidiaries. We work on four main purchasing areas. We have, of course, our core business: television productions with all the technical factors that enter into the production process and the realization of the programs we have. The systems and technologies range from transmission systems to computers and everything in the world of software and hardware supporting our television production activity. We have business services, which for us range from market research purchases to call center services for our TV, but also consulting activities and support for special projects. Finally, we have the last category, which is indirect procurement, which as you can imagine is essentially linked to general services, which are the purchasing areas supporting the effective functioning of our production sites and our offices.

I have been at Mediaset for about 18 months. I was called to support the process of modernization and transformation of the purchasing area, if we want to support exactly the transition from a traditional purchasing department to a procurement department. A transformation that started, as we said, in September 2015 and that, as always represented, had at its center as a fundamental enabling factor the ability to equip ourselves with an innovative management tool that could enable the threads of our change project within the company.

But the challenges we set our sights on 18 months ago when we started our journey were many. They were challenges that started from a company desire to strengthen behaviors and compliance within the world of purchasing and procurement. There was an organizational challenge that was both about centralizing various responsibilities and therefore the various spending streams within the group companies, but also organizational from the point of view of professionalizing the department, thus transforming it from a service area for internal customers to a more proactive reality in identifying and seeking efficiency opportunities in current areas. What I mean is, equipping ourselves with an innovative management tool like the one we selected allows us to fuel change. There is a need to redesign processes, there is a need to adopt new working methods, and on the other hand there is the possibility of gaining transparency on information capable of generating that virtuous circle that can stimulate improvement, it turns.

The main benefits we expect, as I said, are actually to support a different way of working, because precisely for the implementation of a system we were called to rethink how we were working and how we would have wanted. Certainly there is a theme of development and strengthening of productivity. Another benefit we expect is to have a greater understanding of our spending categories and therefore greater transparency on the underlying phenomena of our purchasing activity. Finally, I would also like to highlight the ability to measure behaviors and therefore essentially have the ability to track each individual phase of a purchasing process, but also the measurement of our performance and therefore be able to essentially objectify what is, so to speak, the value creation that brings its own moment within the company.

First of all, to put order, seize the opportunity to standardize processes, to design them in a modern and effective logic, thus cutting some of the bureaucracy that is systematically layered over time. This type of processes, this type of department.

Because if I think, I think yes, because the complexity of the business world grows and therefore the need to have tools that help in managing and understanding complexity becomes increasingly fundamental. Today I could not imagine being able to have deep understanding, transparency both in processes and in the economic factors of one's own volume without a tool capable of feeding data intelligence as we are able to do today.