"Our passionate leaders inspire their employees day after day and help them develop their professional skills."
Name: Odile Wittemans
Position: Catalyst Asia-Pacific Lead
Location: Kraft Foods Asia Pacific, Singapore
Education: Master's in Commercial Engineering with Major in Finance; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Year Joined Kraft Foods: February 2002
What I do:
When I joined Kraft in 2002, we had just started with our European SAP implementation. I had limited SAP knowledge at the time but quickly got the opportunity to enhance my technical knowledge and at the same time learn about business processes within Kraft Foods Europe. I worked on several SAP implementations in Europe as finance team member, then got the chance to manage the finance team in our SAP competency centre. This was initially focused on Europe until we started with our SAP implementation (Catalyst) in North America. I worked very closely with the team in North America to start up the project there and provide consulting advice to the Finance team there for their SAP implementation. I also became responsible for the Finance SAP resources for our global team.
Soon after that I became involved in the feasibility study to implement SAP in the Asia-Pacific region. After successfully convincing the regional executive team of the benefits of implementing SAP using a low-cost model, I then became the IS project manager for the Catalyst Asia-Pacific implementation. Once this was completed, I moved to become the program delivery manager in Asia-Pacific, still being responsible for our SAP systems but now from a project and ongoing support point of view. Recently I was asked to take over the overall project management of the Catalyst project in Asia-Pacific.
Why I love my job:
The 9 years I have worked at Kraft have flown by, it seems like I only joined yesterday! The main reason for that is because I have received so many opportunities throughout the years to grow my skills – from a technical and functional point of view as well (and more importantly) from a leadership point of view. One thing which I really like at Kraft is that you are clearly in charge of your own career – career development is taken very seriously and is not just a paper based exercise done once a year. It is a constant dialogue with your manager throughout the year and throughout your career, and as long as you keep performing, you also keep getting opportunities to further develop yourself. There is a great trust in people's ability to deliver. Kraft as a company also puts a lot of emphasis on developing leaders, not just managers – and provides a lot of tools to help you along the way. This is what makes Kraft a unique company to work for!