Our Supply Chain department works in line with our commitment to sustainable integrate people and businesses by joining three major supply chain areas: supply planning, contract management and logistics.
In most cases, the main challenges here are related to ensuring competitiveness for procurement of products, goods and services while not risking disruption of critical supplies but ensuring alignment with the company’s Safety and Compliance guidelines. These are increasingly important points given our operations’ high growth rate.
Ten years ago, we were doing business in 100 cities and 6 states, in addition to the Federal District. Today, we serve 372 cities across 16 states and the Federal District, with a 115,000 km fiber network from the Northeast to the South of Brazil. This shows our accelerated growth in a decade marked by expansion of optical fiber networks and digital transformation driven by the pandemic.
To ensure the process` unity and agility, all our purchasing activities are concentrated in our Corporate Purchasing Center (CCC) and its approach that is more strategic than transactional, and which has to stand out for good practices and contributes to economic and financial performance.
We use Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology for our purchasing department’s negotiations, as a resource that establishes policies and procedures ensuring more transparent and regular processes, internal audits, compliance, contract management and verification of the department’s internal results.
Our suppliers undergo legal-fiscal, economic-financial and technical evaluations before and after contracts are signed. We also verify compliance with regulations, standards, human rights law, environmental regulations, food safety, operational health and safety and social responsibility. Our suppliers’ performance is analyzed using indicators in order to identify deviations that may compromise the quality of our services.
Through our procurement website, current and potential partners may access our Supplier Code of Conduct, policies applicable to relations with us, our New Supplier Registration Guide and this channel’s User Manual.
In 2021, we signed contracts with 3,562 suppliers. The greater part of the related financial volume was for trade in materials and telecommunications and IT services.
We reviewed the entire logistics operation at national level to then geographically reposition our warehouses depending on new material handling strategy and we are promoting digital transformation for internal controls. The biggest changes were in planning inventories and relations with suppliers due to the scenario of higher demand and lower supplies of inputs.
We continue to invest in the continuous learning of its employees, in the structuring and digital transformation of the supply area, in the logistics infrastructure and in management consulting aimed at the continuous improvement of processes.
