Article Review: Nestle

Article Review: Nestle Pieces It Together

University of Phoenix

Article Review: Nestle Pieces It Together

Project management and procurement go hand and hand. This relationship is largely due to the core skills that project managers must have in relation to risk management. Procurement of the hard deliverables in a project is the greatest source of risk for two main reasons. One is because most of the cost of a project resides in the initial investment made up front to procure the assets or services needed to complete project deliverables. Secondly, providing the deliverables at the right level of quality, timing, and pricing is where most of the risks management comes into play.

Nestle was able to cut major costs within their business using the linkages between project management and procurement. The relationship from a global perspective was lost largely due to the gap in structure between being a global company and a multi-national company. The direction was strategic in nature. It was largely directed by the CEO and the system was called GLOBE. This was supposed to unify and standardize the company's efforts to improve the data streams in order to use an SAP system in the procurement process.

The project management perspective on this roll-out was that the initiation step was skipped outright and the buy in was never achieved with all of the regional managers. There was open anarchy at one point because the stakeholders viewed this as another layer of reporting. A project manager was brought in to facilitate the transition and get the ball rolling.

This article relates to the week one readings because it shows the flow of the project in relation to the overall procurement process. The steps to be followed Once all of this has taken place in the Nestle organization, the following benefits and systems should be very effective for managing processes and projects before any procurement should even be thought of. I would recommend the following as next steps:

Project plans are appropriately altered for change.

Change process followed and completed for all changes.

Project team has taken responsibility and is actively