Implementing the Strong Rail strategy
The Strong Rail strategy focuses on pursuing the Federal Government’s central transport and climate policy targets. Procurement that uses clearly defined product group strategies and consistent supplier management makes a significant contribution to achieving these objectives. To do this, we are working cooperatively to develop the strategic orientation of procurement so that together we can become more robust, more powerful and more modern. We are creating a robust procurement network and ensuring that our business units worldwide are supplied in a cost-effective, timely and high-quality manner.
For the purpose of continuous further development, we are committed to our mission of having a world-class procurement (WCP) organization in accordance with external benchmarking. Compared to the previous assessment, the external WCP audit conducted in the year under review demonstrates that we have significantly improved our professional status and have already achieved the world-class rating in some areas.
We have defined the central building blocks of the procurement strategy as: supplier and risk management, organizational and personnel management and further development of strategic product group work, both within the procurement network and within intra-Group cross-functional teams. We are also focusing on innovation management and the expansion of the digitalization roadmap, which details technical aspects, such as guided buying in the in-house procurement app DB Marketplace, our big data analyses and the new Supplier Management and Rating Tool (SMaRT). As part of this focus, we introduced an automated procure-to-pay process, for example. The increasing digitalization of our work processes boosts added value within the teams and enables us to have modern office concepts, thereby ensuring a more efficient service delivery. Modern, flexible ways of working have been introduced in the procurement organization throughout Germany. This contributed to a higher level of employee satisfaction in the year under review.
