EQUANS: Redefining Strategic Procurement for the Future

When Iris van der Harst joined EQUANS as Chief Procurement Officer for the Netherlands in February 2024, she recognised that the procurement function needed to operate fundamentally differently. At this multi-tech solutions company – employing 90,000 people across 20 countries with more than US$21.9bn in revenue – procurement's role extends far beyond traditional cost management into strategic value creation.

Coming from bol, the largest online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium, Iris saw an opportunity to align procurement strategy directly with corporate objectives. At EQUANS, where helping customers navigate energy transition sits at the heart of the business model, procurement becomes a critical enabler of commercial success.

From tactical to strategic: evolving the procurement role

The most significant shift in procurement strategy involves moving from a primarily tactical function to a genuinely strategic one. Iris argues that this transformation requires developing entirely new capabilities within procurement teams.

"The role really changes from being maybe the negotiator or fixing, you get an invoice and you have to fix everything, but (now) have a real competence of being able to have those conversations with your suppliers and gain trust," she explained. 

This evolution demands that procurement professionals become skilled in identifying suppliers willing to take collaborative risks, co-creating innovative products and services and serving as the critical link between customer demands and supplier capabilities.

At EQUANS, this strategic repositioning means procurement actively shapes what solutions exist in the market, working with suppliers to develop offerings that did not previously exist and connecting those innovations directly to customer needs.

Building strategic supplier relationships

Modern procurement strategy depends on transforming supplier relationships from transactional interactions into genuine partnerships.

Rather than mandating requirements, Iris's team engages suppliers in structured collaborative meetings designed to address shared challenges.

"Just engage in the conversation first, try to explain the problem that we have. So we really want to offer this to our customers," she explained.

A key insight drives this strategy; helping suppliers improve their operations benefits the entire customer base. "If you look in the complete supply chain of our suppliers, maybe they can decarbonise one of their plants or factories and that won't only help us as a customer, but they will also help all their other customers.. help them together in creating better products and also try to do it on maybe at the same price or even lower," Iris noted.

This principle applies to quality improvements, digital transformation, risk reduction or any strategic procurement objective. By framing supplier development as mutual value creation, procurement builds partnerships capable of driving genuine innovation.

Aligning procurement with commercial objectives

The most critical element of procurement transformation involves tight alignment with commercial strategy. Iris has achieved this by directly connecting supplier capabilities with customer requirements, positioning procurement as an enabler of revenue growth.

Iris uses customer demand strategically to maintain focus. "I use our customers because the customers are asking for it and they really use me as procurement to put it on the agenda all the time. So I just take the customer card all the time," she said.

One of EQUANS' largest clients asks monthly about specific aspects of the company's supplier strategy – creating natural leverage for keeping procurement initiatives resourced and visible.

Driving innovation through procurement

Strategic procurement increasingly means stimulating market innovation rather than selecting from existing options.

When a customer sought recyclable solar panels for a car park project, EQUANS did not have an existing supplier which could deliver this solution.

"They wanted to have solar panels that could be recyclable because that's the problem with solar panels is that they are really hard to recycle," Iris explained. The procurement team sourced a new local Dutch supplier capable of providing this innovation.

The project was not cheap – "it was really six figures a month" – but the customer wanted to pay for it, while it enabled EQUANS to meet a specific customer requirement and differentiate its offering.

Similarly, when customers challenged EQUANS to reduce emissions during project execution, the company worked with a preferred supplier to develop a new type of electric crane capable of handling heavy loads electrically. This innovation now deploys across multiple projects, creating ongoing competitive advantage.

Building procurement capabilities for transformation

Executing strategic procurement transformation requires investing in team capabilities. "What really helps is to train them," Iris said. EQUANS has invested in courses, one-on-one training and coaching for procurement professionals, delivered in collaboration with colleagues from the corporate social responsibility department.

The company has also piloted new technologies. "We're piloting a tool right now to track the CO2 emissions in the whole supply chain of our suppliers where they source their material," Iris explained. Such tools enable more sophisticated, data-driven conversations with suppliers across multiple strategic priorities.

AI represents another dimension of capability development. When Iris organised her first procurement day for her roughly 100-person team last year, concerns emerged, with staff asking if AI was going to be the reason that staff members lost their jobs. 

By the second annual event, the tone had shifted. After bringing in a speaker to discuss AI's possibilities, Iris observed her team becoming "more excited now to see how they can work with it and what kind of pilots we can try".

Cross-functional collaboration and shared accountability

Modern procurement strategy depends on effective collaboration across the organisation. Iris emphasises building internal alliances beyond procurement, finding crucial partners in sustainability, commercial and operations teams.

Shared metrics reinforce this collaborative model. The entire procurement department at EQUANS works towards common targets. "They all have the same targets for this year that they also have to work together in getting it," Iris said of her team.

Perhaps the most innovative element of EQUANS' procurement strategy involves collaboration with competitors. Iris argues that the power dynamics with major suppliers necessitate industry-wide cooperation.

"We have our top hundred of suppliers, they're really big players. They don't do anything just because EQUANS is asking for it," she explained. Major suppliers will not transform their operations for a single customer. But coordinated pressure from multiple companies creates compelling incentive for change.

In the Netherlands, EQUANS participates in industry associations that enable such collaboration. "We have some branch corporations in Holland, but I think it's in every country that you can cooperate and approach the market together," Iris noted.

The data and measurement challenge

Implementing strategic procurement transformation requires robust data capabilities. Iris identifies data standardisation as one of the most significant challenges when looking to decarbonise.

"Uniformity. So everyone uses a different kind of accounting. So there's not one way of extracting the right data, so the data is not going to be there," she said.

This lack of standardisation complicates tracking performance, comparing supplier capabilities and demonstrating procurement's strategic value.

When stakeholders request commitments, the conversation returns to the fundamental question: "What exactly are you committing to if you're not speaking the same language?"

Yet Iris acknowledges that waiting for perfect data means missing commercial opportunities. The strategy involves working within constraints whilst pushing for improvements.

The future of strategic procurement

Iris's vision for the future centres on achieving data uniformity and measurement capabilities that will enable procurement to demonstrate and scale its strategic impact.

"My dream is that we have the clear uniformity of data and also that we can really measure and have the availability of the Rs within CSRD. So really focus on the recycling, refurbishing, reuse, that is so much clearer and that you can see it and that it's also for the same price or even lower," she said.

This aspiration reflects realism about the current state of procurement transformation. "I feel that this is kind of the slower area that you need to take it step by step and set the data right. Then you can fly afterwards and make it all very clear what you're doing and what you can offer your customers as well."

EQUANS' experience offers a roadmap for procurement functions seeking genuine strategic transformation. 

It requires patience, collaboration, innovation and a willingness to fundamentally rethink what procurement means. As Iris's journey demonstrates, the procurement function increasingly serves not merely to source solutions but to help create them – transforming from a support function into a genuine driver of competitive advantage and commercial success.