Global Challenge: Steak and procurement in Buenos Aires

Annie Miller, GlaxoSmithKline Procurement Internship (Buenos Aires)

Ian Wilson (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

My second day in Buenos Aires I started at GSK and was met by Cecilia Linskens. Cecilia is a procurement manager and is whom I will be supporting throughout my internship. Over the last two weeks I have had a great insight into the structure of GSK’s procurement department, learning about the local and global networks in place throughout the company. I have been supporting Cecilia on a particular project regarding the restructuring of GSK’s use of marketing agencies, with particular attention on Brazil. I have been working with Cecilia on putting together a presentation comparing two agencies. In this task I have worked on preparing quantitative and qualitative data to compare the different companies. This has enabled me to learn about how excel is used to collect and show data and how GSK presents this information.

GSK Argentina #4

Today was the last day of our internship and Alice and I delivered the final presentation before regional directors, category managers and procurement professionals across LATAM. In the room that we were presenting, we had all of the senior procurement staff from Argentina, and managers from across LATAM had streamed in via LiveMeeting to join us, via webcam and speakerphone. It was a big deal. Alice and I spoke for roughly 10 minutes and then we had a Q&A session.

GSK Argentina #3

We’re coming up close to the end of our internship and we are beginning to get slightly nervous. As one of us has to leave and go home early, only two of us will be creating the final report and presentation. We have been asked to present in front of senior regional directors and procurement managers. I’m a  bit nervous because usually, up until now, I’ve had lots of support and coaching and help when it has come to delivering such presentations from teachers at university and mentors at school. In this case however, it was all down to us what we presented, whether or not we were able to present a unique footprint that we had created, and deciding what was important and significant in our work that was worth presenting.