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Purch-lympics Entry #2 - Round #3
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Annette Opondo
Procurement Officer, Kisumu, Kenya
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"I once worked for a mechanical engineering firm that used mild steel plates as its major raw material. As the Cost Accountant, I was in-charge of purchasing and stores and it was my duty to ensure we had enough stock. As this was a family-run business, there were no tenders sent out and procurement was more of a spur of the moment thing.
On this particular incident, I had sent out for quotations to a few of our overseas suppliers and, on comparing the prices, settled on one. However, this did not appear to go down well with one of the directors who seemed to have a vested interest in the purchase of steel. He was more interested in purchasing the steel from one of our local suppliers whose prices were a lot higher than the imported ones and the quality of their goods was questionable as we'd had problems with them in the past.
Being the cost-accountant, it was my duty to ensure that we never exceeded our normal production costs by anything above 5%. The way I saw it, this transaction was going to cost us a cool 10% over & above our basic costs. He insisted and purchased them locally.
Although we were a monopoly, our clients were not too happy about our prices and others were opting on importing and I had to figure a way to keep our prices down. All I could do was work out the costs of the two suppliers and table them at the next meeting of department heads. Needless to say, this particular director was shamed into silence and, even though he became very cold towards me, I never had that problem of interference from anyone again. This resulted in the team opening up tender boxes for major supplies like the raw materials and office supplies. I went on to get a Merit Award and a promotion from the company's Managing Director in appreciation of the work I was doing. Further, our production costs reduced drastically and we were able to maintain our client base.
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