Béatrice Felder, BuyIn’s CEO, and Ramon Fernandez, Delegate CEO of Orange and Chairman of BuyIn’s Board of Directors, are featured in Challenges Magazine to highlight the strengths of the alliance and its international perspective.

To say that I am proud of being BuyIn’s new CEO is an understatement. BuyIn is the largest telco procurement alliance in the world with an ambitious mission: create value through procurement.

The BuyIn Board of Directors has named Béatrice Felder as Chief Executive Officer as of October 1, 2020. She will assume the CEO role from Volker Pyrtek after the conclusion of his contract on September 30, 2020.

The All Employee Meeting (AEM) is the highlight of the year for BuyIn’s employees. We were supposed to all meet in Berlin but with no possibility to travel, we made the best out of the situation with live streams from Paris and Bonn.

Over the course of two hours each on Tuesday, the 16th and Wednesday, the 17th of June, we celebrated BuyIn: its achievements, its team spirit and commitment, and deep-dived into its strategic priorities.

“The AEM is the unique opportunity for BuyIn to come together around its tangible projects and company culture”, says Volker Pyrtek, BuyIn’s CEO since its founding in 2011. “We’re happy to have been able to replicate our great team spirit in our online event, in particular with creative contributions from all over the company.” Several teams submitted videos about projects and hot topics to underline our current and upcoming priorities.

“As the largest procurement alliance in the telco industry, we want to leverage our scale and expertise to grow and to create sustainable value for our customers”, underlines Béatrice Felder, SVP IT. “After almost one year at BuyIn, this event, even online, demonstrated to me the strong BuyIn cohesion and unity around this vision of procurement excellence.”

The feedback from the employees is overwhelming: “I think this type of events is great because it brings people together and people are proud of being part of BuyIn”, “Interesting, inspiring and funny”, “The feeling of belonging together at BuyIn again”, “It was stunning to see the broad excellence of the whole team on a working level”, “A very well organized, passionate, creative, and full of energy event”.

We are still hoping to be able to meet in person and to party together in autumn! Also in its digital edition, the AEM was a full success, proving again that people are BuyIn’s biggest asset.

The current circumstances have disrupted everyone’s working mode and lifestyle. At BuyIn we’ve adapted in our own way. Here is the new daily life of my IT team in home office.

Flexible working is one of the key living principles of the BuyIn Workplace. Given that our stakeholders are operating worldwide and that we are split over several countries, we’re used to working remotely and according to multiple working modes. Some of us travel often for country visits, others connect regularly via web conferences and all BuyIn employees can work from their homes when needed.

Despite these established habits, staying at home full time and not being able to see your colleagues at the office as usual constitute for us all a big challenge. Still, in these difficult times, the resourcefulness of the human mind can prevail, so we’ve found creative ways to adapt and keep the BuyIn spirit alive. For BuyIn we’ve managed to successfully hold an event with all our DT customers via web conference and we’re “open as usual”, always adapting but staying close to our customers and suppliers.

My home office routine
I live next to Paris in Saint Cloud, together with my husband. I am trying to keep the same daily routine, even if I sleep in a bit longer as I am not commuting. One of the big risks when you work from home is to work non stop so I force myself to have regular breaks. I am lucky enough to have a terrasse with a lot of sun so I stock up on vitamin D there. I might come back with a tan 😉 In proper French fashion, I get out once a day to get my baguette and I end my day as usual when all the emails in my inbox are read.

The current situation has made me realize how fortunate I am to work in an industry with “essential” activities in such times, hence still thriving while being able to do our part for the overall economy and functioning of society. I would like here to thank the field operations team from our mother companies who sustain the foundations for us to operate.

The IT team routine

While distancing, we are still trying to stay social. My team has come up with different ways: I’ve noticed for example that we call each other more often rather than just chat on Skype. Lucas in my team had the idea for an IT France virtual coffee break twice a week. I send out regular messages to my team but I keep the rest “business as usual”. We’re lucky to have a very efficient Corona Task Force whom I belong to, informing the whole company about the status of the disease and its impact.

Turned towards the future
On top of leading the IT team, I will also be handling as an interim the HR tasks as our SVP, Friederike Mayer is leaving BuyIn. I would like to thank her for her great work and commitment to our unique company culture. This will keep me busy from home too.

Like everyone I try to stay away from the news but I still find myself scrolling regularly. It is important for all of us to stay focused and prepare for better days. Thanks again for all the people who are providing for the community (nurses, doctors, truck drivers, people working hard at our supermarkets and all the others).