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"You have to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you don't have to get there." Petr Dovolil (CBCSD) borrowed the words of Yogi Berri, a former American professional baseball player, for his introduction. This course module dedicated to sustainability and ESG in public procurement was the decoration of the semester course and opened up a topic that these days resonates with the professional and layman public, arouses general polemics and passions and will influence the lives of all of us in the future.

The traditional conference space of the Imperial Hotel will be complemented by the eBF festival town in Dr. E. Beneš park and the new pride of Ostrava, Boutique Business Incubator Ostravica. Especially the last place always brings a smile to our face, because after years of sadness looking at the crumbling iconic building, we the Ostrava people are cheering.

It is obvious that the strategic approach to public procurement will increasingly be influenced by the competitiveness of the Czech economy, not only on a European scale. The national strategy of public procurement in the Czech Republic for the years 2024 to 2028 can be a milestone that will move public procurement into its new stage. Assess the ambitious scope and goals of this strategy for yourself.

If you are a fan of automation and robotization, you must like Zdenek Pytlíček (GasNet CZ). In this module dedicated to the topic "Purchase to Pay and eCatalogs", together with Michal Lehar MCIPS took us into the world of the P2P process and its optimization, robotization, catalogs and got us excited about robots in procurement.

Different country, different culture, new personalities, first experience and yet managed to convey the uniqueness of the concept, create a friendly atmosphere and enjoy the enthusiasm of sharing and networking together. We from Ostrava did not hide our pride and enjoyed how our Polish colleagues managed it. Many congratulations to Piotr Matysik and Marketplanet and we look forward to joint success. For all of you who haven't been, we have great news. At the celebration of the 20th birthday of eBF in Ostrava, we are preparing a selection of topics at the Polish scene, where you can be inspired by trends and the best of Poland. See you in June in Ostrava.

Video to be played: HERE

Greetings, I hope you don't fall into pre-Christmas panic and rather enjoy your stockings :)

The end of the year encourages a little recapitulation so that we feel good that it was all worth it this year. Currently, for example, we are rejoicing with the astronauts from the International Space Station who, after eight long months, finally found the lost tomato. :) We can also boast of a new addition to the PROEBIZ family. A colleague gave birth to a son by himself right in the car when the lady didn't want to wait any longer. Not only are our children multiplying, but so is eBF, which has its premiere in Warsaw. Vienna is slowly approaching the final and Ostrava will celebrate 20 years next year, while the visions are grand. It was a really good year.

Information sharing, mutual inspiration, a community that together discusses new topics and innovations in procurement. This was also what December's Deloitte Procurement Round Table in Vienna was about. It was fascinating to observe how they perceive current topics in the field of procurement just a short distance beyond our borders in Austria. And if the idea of the eBF procurement festival in Austria takes hold, I believe it can take our entire procurement community in Central Europe one step further and enrich us all even more. Kristina

Video to play: HERE

A number of interesting debates accompanied the fourth module of the course entitled "Planning, purchasing strategy, supply chain management" and it was again rewarding to see how the purchasing craft is viewed in companies (Jan Hirsch, Blanco) and in the public sector (Ondrej Kuruc, MZSR). In the beginning, we focused on planning, creating a plan and how the plan should serve us - control, direction indicator, tool for setting goals, relationship with suppliers. Thanks to the very apt slides and announcements from the film The Brave Seven, we understood that this gem of film cinematography is actually a well of inspirational topics for every buyer, which contributed to the excellent mood in the hall.

The third module was devoted to category management and master data, and we were again guided through the module by the great couple Miloš Olejník and Zdeněk Pytlíček (GasNet CZ). Both supporting topics were intertwined during the module and it was clearly confirmed that without quality data it is difficult to carry out category management. We learned about the eight basic cycles of category management, how to analyze data using ABC analysis, the Kraljic matrix, the A.T.Kearney procurement board and more.

As Miloš Olejník aptly noted, "there is no strategic procurement without a procurement plan, category management cannot exist without planning". Together with Jan Hirsch (Blanco), at the beginning of the second module, they explained to us what the procurement plan is, its importance for the organization and the procurement department, and what its necessary content should be. The key element is that the plan is not just a "drawer" document, but is used at least to manage the relationship with suppliers, control, direct procurement and be a tool for setting goals.