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Robin B.

Procurement Director

  • Hourly rate: R1600 /hr
  • Experience: 30 Years

About Robin

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Executive Biography Driving business value through large-scale Transformation and Outsourcing projects, an Executive dedicated to ensuring the cost-effectiveness and long-term viability of the business. A recognised leader in the delivery of strategic value initiatives, Robin Buchan has proven his strategic vision and ability to deliver large-scale transformation projects adding significant value to the business. Robin is currently driving the transformation of both the Capital Projects and Procurement capabilities within Astron Energy, a recent downstream Oil and Gas acquisition, with the aim of improving governance, control and decision-making and unlocking significant future value. He was until recently responsible to Glencore for the implementation of a broad scope S4/HANA implementation in the acquisition prior to finalisation of the deal. Robin recently completed phase 1 of a global implementation of the Coupa Cloud Based Procurement platform across Glencore International based out of Montréal Canada. The Coupa platform will provide global visibility of spend and inventory across Glencore Plc. and facilitate an enterprise-wide strategic approach to the sourcing of goods and materials, and the management of maintenance and inventory. It will also provide a fully integrated procurement experience from user, through to supplier, significantly improving the efficiency of the procure-to-pay operation. As Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Glencore South Africa Robin has built a cost-focused IT department, strategically aligned to deliver maximum value to the business with substantial improvement in cost performance, service delivery and standardisation across business units, while delivering exceptional systems availability. One of Robin’s major achievements as CIO was to justify and manage the consolidation of the numerous legacy ERP platforms into a single integrated SAP platform, resulting from the Glencore takeover of Xstrata Coal South Africa. He also managed the alignment of ERP support and development strategies across the Coal and Alloys business units, facilitating the consolidation of outsourced ERP support agreements and realising significant savings for the business. While serving as Chief Procurement Officer for Xstrata Coal South Africa, Robin was responsible for the outsourcing of the contracting, strategic sourcing and the full procure-to-pay operation to Accenture in South Africa. Robin’s role in project managing this initiative made him directly responsible for the delivery of all aspects of the project including a large change management initiative as well as the implementation of the SAP Extended Procurement platform, SAP SRM, to support the success of the outsourcing initiative. The project subsequently won the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply annual ‘Best Procurement Consultancy Project of the Year’ award 2013. This project delivered significant audited savings to the business and Robin was subsequently responsible for outsourcing the Contracting and Strategic Sourcing components across the Glencore Coal South African business. Robin also managed the consolidation of the insourced Glencore procure-to-pay operations into the existing outsourced agreement with Accenture taking the entire procure-to-pay operation offshore and showing further significant savings to the business. Robin’s career includes global leadership roles in both large corporates and start-up businesses. He started out as a junior metallurgist at Impala Platinum in South Africa, rising through the ranks to Senior Metallurgical Engineer before leaving the country to complete an MBA at Cambridge University in the UK. Robin was recruited back into South Africa by Accenture, after working for a UK-based Internet start-up in the dual role of CPO and CIO, to help build their budding mining practice. Robin successfully built and led their global community of practise in mining during his tenure. Robin holds both a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in the USA and a Master of Business Administration degree from Cambridge University in the UK, and plays an active role in the CIO Mining Africa Summit and the African SAP User Group forums.

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