Stephen Mallaband

Counterpoint Courses is specialist consultancy and training business founded by myself and Ros Howard, an experienced communications coach. We focus on building excellence in procurement and commercial negotiaion within organisations by providing targeted consultancy, a range of training courses and individual coaching.

HEXAL is the German subisidiary of Sandoz, one of the world's largest producers of generic pharmaceuticals. Sandoz is in turn part of Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant. I worked as Strategic Purchasing Manager, responsible for Commercial Operations (Sales and Marketing) and specialised in buying a wide range of marketing goods and services. These included Media (TV and Print), PR, Market Research, promotional items, mailings and mailing services.

Many companies spend a significant proportion of their earnings on buying goods and services from suppliers and by doing this well they can save a lot of money. I work with companies as an Interim Manager or as a Consultant in order to help them to save this money by building excellence in Procurement. I take a straightforward common-sense approach and like to work closely with clients on projects with well-defined goals. I always make sure that skills are transferred as part of my work.

Based in their HQ at Garching, near Munich, I was in charge of all Procurement at ESO. ESO (European Southern Observatory) is an international organization, which builds and operates some of the world’s largest astronomical telescopes. The telescopes are designed and built in Europe but are operated at various locations in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. I managed a department of 20 staff, split between Garching, Germany and Santiago, Chile.

Created own Consultancy - Appsacom Solutions - to provide training, best-practice and hands-on purchasing to major companies. Assignments included lecturing, a best-practice panel and direct procurement support to Euroclear in Brussels. Euroclear is the world’s largest settlement “bank” for securities (stocks, shares, bonds etc.), and in this assignment I managed the procurement of all outsourced IS/IT services, creating a framework for how this should be done in the future

Reported to CPO at Board level as part of new global procurement management team, following merger of Interbrew with AmBev to form InBev – the world’s largest brewer, with a spend of around €7 billion per year. Managed a team of up to 20 people and responsible for policy and processes, performance management, transformation and change, training and education, systems and projects. Set up and managed a global savings and transformation project gaining savings of €35 million in its first 6 months.

Responsible primarily for IS/IT Procurement managing an annual spend of around €200 million. Also responsible for purchasing professional services and all purchasing within Interbrew’s Corporate Centre (€100 million spend). Key member of leadership team which built worldwide procurement capability at a time when Interbrew was expanding rapidly to become a true multinational. Managed UK Procurement (annual spend €1 billion, team of 15) during 6 month secondment.

During this time, I held a number of roles within Procurement at Bass Brewers, including management of the buying of packaging materials, vehicles, engineering equipment and information systems. I was a member of the Procurement Management team which set up central Procurement within Bass Brewers in 1993 and then oversaw its professional development. Following the takeover of Bass Brewers by Interbrew in 2001, I relocated to Belgium to become part of Interbrew's global Procurement management team.

During this time I pursued a career in engineering, specializing in factory automation, which led to a move into information systems. I worked full-tme for a number of companies in a variety of industries. Experience included 6 years for Glaxo (pharmaceuticals) where I was responsible for computer process control systems at the largest phamaceuticals plant in Europe, and 3 years for Bass Brewers where I was responsible for all brewery information systems.

I spent 2 years in Ghana, West Africa, teaching in a rural secondary school as part of the “Voluntary Service Overseas” programme - an international global-development charity.