-: My name is Sonali Bhatnagar
and I work at Merck as a chemical engineer.
Currently what my role is, I'm a global sourcing manager,
working in the sourcing and procurement group.
What I do on a daily basis is for a shorter term,
I work with my internal stakeholders
to kind of get different products to,
that need to be outsourced for Merck,
and then on a longer basis, I work on different strategies
for the company to kind of choose the right suppliers
that need to be vetted based on different parameters,
that the business can use on a regular basis.
So for the longer term projects,
I would say we have a plan, we discuss with our
internal stakeholders what the business expectations are.
We kind of get together with them on a regular basis
to ensure that we're aligned with what their
expectations are.
Again we come back and see what needs to happen.
We typically go to the market for some of these suppliers,
so it's more about vetting, based on different parameters
that might be right for the company,
obviously evaluating it from a cost perspective,
from a quality perspective, and that they're able to meet
the stakeholders' expectations.
So it's like kind of tying in all those aspects together,
and making a timeline of how we are going to get
from the point we are now at the very initiation stage
to the very final stage,
and then working through that project,
and obviously this job also requires me
to do contract negotiations and bidding,
so it has that interesting aspect to it as well
towards the end.
Mostly based at the one office,
but my stakeholders are located at some of the other sites,
so when I have meetings with them,
I would definitely go visit them,
but then also from time to time if we need to go visit
supplier sites to ensure that they have
the right capabilities and meet our expectations,
that's when I'll make those other visits as well.