The 2nd Value Chain Academy (VCA) has been started on 3rd of September at HQ Budapest, with 12 participants working throughout 3 MOL Group Downstream countries, from Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia.
VCA is a 3 semester long postgraduate program in collaboration with University of Pannonia. The program aims to educate specialists working not exclusively for Downstream Commerce&Optimisation (DS C&O) but for any DS segments to be able to deal with the complex challenges of Oil & Gas supply chain business activities by acquiring a solid knowledge of professional, market leading softwares.
On the opening ceremony, the MOL Group C&O management team and the Deputy Dean of the University of Pannonia, Zoltán Süle have been presented. In his opening speech, Zsolt Pethő (Group DS Commerce & Optimization SVP) underlined the importance of lifelong learning and wished a successful learning journey to the participants. Some of the PIMS Academy Alumni were also our guests, they shared their experiences and said some encouraging word to the new generation. Zoltán Süle expressed his satisfaction on working with MOL Group on the program and the fact that the collaboration is ongoing successfully since 2005. At that time it was PIMS Academy and now is Value Chain Academy but the degree which the students receive remains the same.
In this occasion we asked two colleagues who participate in the Academy, Tijana Radujko (Group Card Business Expert) and Richárd Nagy (Margin Management Expert).
Why do you consider it is a good opportunity to take part in the Academy?
Tijana: We are all facing new trends and challenges in Oil industry, mostly related to decreasing white fuels consumption, increasing usage of renewables sources of energy, increasing efficiency of energy use and finding new market possibilities and products. As it is becoming more demanding, fast-changing and challenging, especially for our industry, I believe that in order to become more flexible and adaptable organization, change needs to start from every individual. Only by that way we can think about future and how to drive the future. In order to use upcoming challenges, we will need complex knowledge and different way of thinking, which I strongly believe this Academy can bring us.
Richárd: I applied to the Value Chain Academy to have a deep and focused understanding of the overall oil industry, specifically about MOL Group activities along the value chain. Besides the theoretical and analytical knowledge, I think this Academy is a great platform to get to know the different stakeholders of the company, what are the main drivers for each value stream and how we are able to synthetize these activities in a profitable way.
What are your expectations from the program?
Tijana: How I see Value Chain Academy is as the Academy that brings together all business aspects of Downstream in such composed way that you get an insight into every part specifically, and I must admit that after participation in training DS4U, I am more than sure that it is really important to be able to see the broader picture of every business challenge in this complex value chain.
By my opinion, it is always beneficial to exchange experience, to improve logic and mindset, or let’s put it like this: “to think outside of sillos“, because only when we genuinely understand all processes, activities, interconnections and dependencies, we are able to act and not to react in order to achive the best results and overbridge all challenges. And that is what I expect from this program.
Richárd: My expectation is that even during this 1.5 year of intensive learning I’ll be able use the new set of tools and mindset to improve our processes and daily work. Additionally I hope that I’ll be able to broaden my professional network, have more opportunity to cooperate with other stakeholders, thus bring more value to the company.
We wish all the best for the participants!
