Straumann Group: Rebranding Procurement as Strategic Service

Straumann Group is a global leader in innovative and customer-centric oral care solutions. 

Founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 1954, the company has been manufacturing dental impacts and related technologies for 71 years, undergoing profound transformation. 

Today, another aspect of the organisation is transforming. And this transformation is being led by Sandra Acquaah, Head of Procurement, NAM at the Straumann Group.

“I'm responsible for procurement for the NAM Region - US and Canada,” she explains.

Which includes all indirect for NAM, direct and CAPEX procurement unless directly managed by our global counterparts. In those cases, we partner closely with them to ensure local support.

Sandra has been with Straumann group for a little over two years, calling it the “most exciting and interesting company and role” she’s ever worked for. 

This is high praise from someone who has worked in procurement for over a decade across a diversity of industries, ranging from telecommunications and aerospace to food distribution.

“The oral care industry was different and exciting,” she explains.

“I was looking for a challenge and something I had never done before. The medical field has always been of interest to me. At one point in my career, before I decided to go into business, I was considering medicine.

“When this opportunity came up, it allowed me be more familiar with the work of dentists, doctors and other professionals in the medical industry. So I was excited to take on the challenge and do something different.”

The nuances of the oral healthcare industry - which is notoriously competitive and regulated - is not the only challenge Sandra has embraced in her role. 

As Head of Procurement for Straumann’s NAM division, she has become an agent of profound change - driving a complete rebranding and reinvention of the company’s procurement function across its North America operations.

Rebranding procurement as a value-driven service to the organisation

Procurement in the past has been frequently overlooked by many companies - part of why it's often regarded as a ‘hidden gem’ profession, a rewarding arena that professionals fall into as opposed to actively seeking out. 

Historically seen as a back-office function routing purchasing requests, orders and payments, procurement’s capacity to provide value to organisations has gone from being questioned to being actively promoted.

This change in mindset amongst business leaders is thanks to pioneering procurement transformations like the one being pursued at the Straumann Group. 

“The transformation has primarily been about changing the perception of procurement—from a traditional back-office function to an integrated business partner,” Sandra explains.

“We’ve focused on becoming a trusted function within the company.

“To achieve this, we needed to understand the business beyond the world of procurement and to anticipate the needs of the business that procurement has previously not met, crafting solutions to elevate cross-engagement.

“Transformation isn’t just about refining processes; it’s about making them better, clearer, simpler and compliant while supporting the company’s goals.”

This understanding has informed Sandra’s alignment of procurement with wider business needs, shifting the organisation’s approach to purchasing.

“We’ve built procurement strategies and processes that align with business needs, ensuring full visibility into company spend. This allows us to optimise spending while strengthening supplier partnerships as well as internal stakeholder engagement,” she adds. 

“In addition to our tactical and day to day purchasing processes, we have layered on top of that strategic procurement which includes, but not limited to, category management and business partnership that helps departments proactively anticipate and rationalise their needs to optimise every dollar allocated to their budget.”

Sandra has also led pivotal changes to Straumann’s partnerships, redefining both how they choose and engage with prospective partners.

“We carefully choose partners that align with Straumann’s growth, values and innovation mindset,” she explains. 

“We need suppliers that can scale with us as we continue expanding and changing to continuously meet and exceed the needs of our dynamic market.”

Through these approaches Sandra has built procurement up as the face of supplier engagement at the group, acting as the supportive bridge between internal teams and external partners. 

Supporting this, Sandra has also been a champion of simplifying procurement processes at the group to ensure they provide maximum business value.

“Another major focus has been simplifying processes,” she explains. 

“Traditional procurement often came with bureaucracy and red tape, making it a barrier rather than an enabler. 

“Our goal has been to implement agile, efficient processes that are easy for the business to follow.”

All this decision making is underpinned by Sandra’s understanding that procurement is a holistic business function that is about so much more than just cost savings. 

“It’s about creating value, ensuring supply chain resiliency, driving quality, and managing risk. Our transformation reflects all these aspects,” she explains, highlighting that companies that only think of procurement from a tactical or purchasing-focused perspective risk both falling behind competitors and missing out on vital business optimisation opportunities.

“The function now plays a key role in company success. In order to be competitive and successful, a procurement leader in 2025 always needs to be a step ahead, and anticipate needs and craft winning solutions far into the future and in a way which easily resonates with business executives and key stakeholders. Procurement has the unique ability to see the business from so many different angles as we interact with all the business functions, and this also gives us the unique ability to be able to anticipate current and future challenges," says Sandra. 

“In my experience, a lot of companies pay a good amount of attention to direct procurement - the raw materials and or finished goods/services and components that generate revenue.

“However, indirect procurement—things like services, IT, office supplies—tend to be often neglected or not have as much focus or support, even though it’s a major operational cost.

"Not having the opportunity to impact every aspect of the spend limits procurement influence to a large extent. Throughout my career, I have strived to bring attention to businesses to focus on all the aspects of procurement to gain the maximum value, so it was a breath of fresh air walking into Straumann and realising this was the case. 

"Another example of the limits created by the traditional perspective of procurement involves the creation of business silos. 

"From digital technologies to the rise of globalism, we operate today in a business world defined by connectivity and strategic cooperation. Procurement can and must match this reality. 

“You cannot work in a silo and expect to build effective strategies that is directly aligned with the needs of the business and your stakeholders,” Sandra adds.

“Whatever strategies you develop, the suppliers you select - everything should be closely aligned with the business's needs.”

Sandra emphasises that procurement leaders have to involve themselves in the wider business and make collective decisions, building cross-departmental relationships that foster respect and trust. 

Without this respect and trust, procurement transformation will not work, according to Sandra. For organisations further along in their maturity, siloing will restrict their growth and development and will stall their transformation journey.

As procurement transformation builds momentum both within the Straumann Group and across wider industry, challenging the traditional view and function of procurement will continue to be imperative. 

At Straumann, Sandra is ensuring this is a successful process, adding that: “It’s exciting to see this transformation, as we continue to evolve toward a world-class procurement organisation.”

As Sandra indicates, procurement is all about managing key internal and external stakeholder relationships - making engagement with partners the cornerstone of any successful transformation.

Managing risk through relationships

Straumann is a premium brand that prides itself on never sacrificing quality. For this reason, their approach to balancing cost and risk mitigating is critical to procurement.

“Straumann is a premium brand,” Sandra explains. “We will never sacrifice quality. 

“At the same time, we’re in a heavily regulated industry where meeting those expectations and managing cost is important.” 

Straumann’s approach to this is stringent collaboration with its long-term partners to comply with regulatory expectations. 

“The quality that comes from them directly impacts our product,” Sandra explains. 

“The fact that we've partnered with them for so long means they understand what our requirements are.

“They understand what the industry that we work in requires.

“Based on that long-term partnership, our approach is not always about tough negotiations based on price and more about collaboration to eliminate additional costs from both our operations and making mutual concessions where needed to drive more value all round

“We’re asking, together, how we can refine our shared processes to eliminate operational costs and operate more efficiently.”

Sandra explains with this understanding of industry and regulatory requirements, the Straumann Group’s suppliers are able to deliver exactly what they need without risking price hikes that will significantly impact operational costs.

In addition to our existing long term partners, we are establishing some new and refreshing supplier relationships which have become part of the group’s broader partner ecosystem, which through advanced technological solutions and support has made the procurement transformation more effective, efficient and holistic.

An important partnership ecosystem

The first partnership Sandra praises is Amazon Business, calling the company a ‘game-changer’ for the Straumann Group’s procurement function. 

“One of the big things that I do every time there’s a change in supplier or when we partner with a preferred supplier is to use that opportunity to also streamline our processes and derisk the organisation,” she explains. 

“Being in procurement, tailspend is hard to manage, right? 

“So sometimes a lot of organisations, to simplify things, have people putting these types of spends on P-Cards or just going out to the store to buy small things that they need, which increases the risk of fraud within the environment and risk overall.” 

Sandra explains that Amazon Business provides a one-stop shop for these issues, providing in-built approvals within the platform along with the ability to build a catalog or punch out from within the organisation's system.

“It provides you with so many different functionalities, and you, as the organisation, have the ability to tailor it to your needs,” she says. 

“We know Amazon is like the everything store. For us, it has been very impactful with managing our team’s tail spend as well as creating visibility through powerful analytics built within the tool.” 

Sandra adds that Amazon Business has enabled the Straumann Group to seamlessly automate the invoicing process and simplify the purchasing process for tail spend without extensive invoices or time needed to reconcile expenses on P Cards. 

“Companies like Amazon with proven success in being tech-savvy and tech-forward can help us seamlessly simplify our processes for procurement and AP and also easily scale with us as we grow and change based on their dynamic and advanced technology,” she explains. 

“I would say that Amazon Business has been significant—not just for savings, which is an important part of procurement, but because they provide benefits beyond savings by helping to simplify our processes, allow us to be more compliant and reduce risk within our tail spend management.”

Other tech-forward partners that have been vital for the Straumann Group’s procurement transformation also include Adecco, the company’s MSP provider for staffing. 

“In the past years, we’ve been moving to consolidate our spend with top-notch industry leaders to help streamline our processes,” explains Sandra. 

“Adecco has been a phenomenal partner. They bring very advanced technology, tools, and processes to help us streamline our temp/contingent hiring, whilst providing stellar service to the people that we bring on. 

“In this competitive environment, bringing on suppliers who are competitively priced, who understand the importance of great customer service and partnership, and who see themselves as an extension of the company -  not a separate transactional entity - has been key.”

Other critical partners include Navan, the group’s digitally agile travel management company. 

“Traditional travel management solutions work well, but Navan works better. Navan is a technology-driven platform that gives us real-time visibility into our travel data, patterns and behaviours,” says Sandra.

In the past, we had to request reports from our travel provider and wait weeks for them. Now, with Navan, we can access all travel-related data instantly and in real time. 

“We can also track spending, adjust policies dynamically within the tool, and have full transparency over fees and expenses.” 

There is also Dun & Bradstreet, which has played a vital role in the group’s ability to continuously track and monitor the overall health of existing suppliers as well as enabling them to de-risk the organisation when selecting long-term supplier partners. Additionally, the Straumann Group also globally uses Integrity Next, a tool to help track and monitor its suppliers’ ESG metrics – a pivotal focus for the company.  

“Technology like this is important because the business world is evolving rapidly,” Sandra explains.

“AI, automation and digital tools are becoming critical for optimising operations.”

Straumann’s adoption of these tools positions the group - and its procurement function specifically - in a more competitive position moving forwards.

Outlook for the future 

Sandra says her personality and “can do” attitude is her greatest quality as a professional, enabling her to foster superior connections, conversations and effectively shape decision-making.

“At the end of the day, we are all people behind the emails and meetings,” she says.

“My ability to build relationships and be adaptable - whether being vulnerable when needed or tough when necessary - has helped me throughout my career.”
Another prominent quality Sandra has that matches other procurement leaders is the ability to build and execute long term plans. 

With her procurement strategy planned ahead for the next five years, she shared that the first twelve months will involve extensive evaluation, collaboration and structural growth.

“It’s about really providing support for our business and our region,” she explains.

“Every strategy in place, deal we make, process we implement or change, or important conversations/negotiations we have, are all centred around empowering our internal customers, enabling the success of our company and being that silent but resilient force that is strongly supporting our company’s enterprise goals.”

“Looking at the processes we’ve put in place, stepping back to evaluate their impact, and understanding how we can optimise them. 

“If there’s anything we need to change, we will. We are building solid foundations in order to mature into a world-class organisation.

For the next twelve months, we will evaluate those foundations, making tweaks and changes as needed. Over the next four years, we will scale and take off, and when we do, I want to ensure that we have a solid foundation.”

Throughout this Sandra emphasises they will seek key feedback from partners on the effectiveness of the processes and resources implemented, building new structures that better support the organisation and further the rebranding of procurement. 

“The goal is to get people to trust us—both internally and externally—so that adoption of different processes and tools becomes much easier, building this trust will also allow procurement to continue to become trusted business advisors who are engaged earlier on in projects when we can make the most impact,” she adds.

“Lastly, a major focus for the next 12 months will be on talent, developing my team and providing them with opportunities to grow. 

“Procurement is numbers-driven, but it’s also about people. I want to make sure my team has the tools they need to be successful and to develop the same passion that I have for procurement.

“Transformation requires confidence, and I want to equip them with what they need to succeed.”

Sandra’s passion, procurement expertise, knowledge and skill at building relationships have all been essential to the transformation of the function across the Straumann Group’s North America operations. 

Witnessing the large-scale transformation of procurement over her career, Sandra cites her role in shifting this function from transactional function to a strategic, value-adding lever as her most fulfilling career achievement. 

“Moving procurement into a more influential role within Straumann has been my biggest accomplishment,” she concludes.

“It was a challenge to change mindsets and redefine procurement’s role, but seeing the tangible value it now drives for the organisation has been incredibly rewarding”

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