Details behind the TREE team – interview with Bartosz Michałowski, Order to Cash Manager, TREE

Wednesday, September 3, 2024

Bartek, what does TREE stand for at Mondelēz International?

TREE stands for World Travel Retail and European Export. Two totally different and unique selling channels in Mondelēz International.

“World Travel Retail” is a division focused on the travel retail sector, catering to customers in locations such as airports, ferries, and other travel-related venues, offering products tailored for travelers.

"European Export" likely refers to the division or operations responsible for exporting products from Europe to other countries in that region. This involves managing the logistics, regulatory compliance, and sales strategies for distributing Mondelēz products from European manufacturing sites to various international markets. The focus is on ensuring that products meet the diverse requirements of different countries and regions while maintaining efficient supply chain processes. This is also a channel where Mondelēz is developing their products using Distributors to boost a sale.

What about Order to Cash – what’s hiding behind this process?

Order to Cash (OTC) is a process in a company that begins with accepting an order from a customer and ends with sending the goods to the customer and receiving payment. OTC is one of the most important processes in a company because it is thanks to it that the company can generate revenues. This process is also very complicated and requires the cooperation of many departments in the company. For the OTC process to run smoothly and without disruptions, good management and cooperation between individual departments are necessary. It is also worth remembering about good communication with the customer to be able to fulfill his orders quickly and efficiently.

Now, that we know what your team is responsible for can you tell us what kind of challenges you face on a daily basis?

I am working in very demanding environment, so each day is giving me various daily challenges to manage. These challenges often involve coordination between multiple functions within a company. Working in OTC department, I am responsible for products distribution since order is placed until everything is shipped and invoiced properly for this sale. In theory it should be quite smooth and automatized, however in real life requires strong organizational skills, effective communication, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. A focus on process improvement and leveraging technology can help mitigate many of these issues.

What markets does your team support?

In World Travel Retail we are serving customers worldwide from all duty-free areas or any of them dedicated for travelers. It is very complex business with high fluctuations comes from numbers of travelers. Means we need to be flexible and react fast in no matter what we are doing at work.

How do you organize your and your team’s work?

How do I organize my work? It’s quite simple, good planning and prioritization of tasks helps a lot here.

I encourage my team to prioritize their task as well by building an action plan. In few steps we usually identify the responsible parties and deadlines which must be met for particular task. It helps us to organize them in a way that truly has sense. It is important that the whole team has detailed and clear overview of actions. Each team member needs to know exactly what and when must be done. Then team and I know how to act efficient having time also for other activities.

At the end it is important to track progress of tasks and report each milestone into other departments or stakeholders.

What advice would you give to candidates who want to join the Order to Cash area?

For candidates interested in joining an Order to Cash department the most important thing is to be yourself. On this position you are working with different internal and external stakeholders. Adding to this the fact that we are multinational environment with many people on-board, you need to be sure that it will be interesting path to join.

I believe successful candidate should focus on customer service and building relation with customers. It can be done only with good communication skills as well as good cooperation with different Mondelēz departments who are supporting distribution process. Adding on top strong analytical skills, teamwork, details orientation and problem-solving skills, we have a picture of perfect candidate.