Buying steel in the 2020s has become a much more complex process, but people-to-people relationships and communication skills remain at the center, participants at the MBI Stahltag conference in Frankfurt said on Tuesday.
"Once upon a time, it was enough for a customer to simply buy steel," said Martin Bruckner, Managing Director of MBI Infosource, in his welcoming speech. — Today, he needs to understand emissions trading, geopolitics, CBAM, artificial intelligence, and more. And in the end, he's going to have to find out the price anyway."
Bruckner added that Germany produces one of the “cleanest” steels in the world, but the number of customers willing to pay for it is decreasing. In this regard, he stressed that steel purchases still depend on people and require trust.
"Is the seller telling the truth about the high capacity utilization and long lead times, or is he just embellishing the situation?"
A similar assessment was given by Hans Booth from the DDVC consulting company. According to him, despite the development of technology, live communication in the industry is not disappearing.
"After all, a human is a being who needs communication," he said. "People need to talk to each other, and not just via FaceTime."
Booth also elaborated on artificial intelligence, which, in his opinion, is able to facilitate procurement processes, but is not yet widely used. "The technology is ready, we just need to learn how to use it," he said.
According to the expert, the same applies to digital procurement platforms. He urged companies not to delay the introduction of new tools.
"I see people thinking for a long time about whether it's worth trying, and then six months later they're still discussing it instead of starting," Booth said.
He also touched upon the topic of expanding the responsibilities of procurement units. In his opinion, in the future such specialists will be increasingly engaged in optimizing supply chains and will actually turn into supply chain managers.
Speaking about hiring Generation Z employees, Booth advised taking into account not only professional experience, but also soft skills—"another term that almost no one used 20 years ago."
