Ivanova is a bundle of energy. And fearless.
Even when she didn’t have such a good command of the language as she does now, she approached others without any shyness. People who don’t ask questions won’t get answers. During her first two years in Germany she learned the language.
Her accent has remained, and she’s still working on the Swabian dialect. She gets to hear it every at Wörwag. She started there in 2013 with an internship in Purchasing, then filled in for a colleague on maternity leave until it became a permanent job in 2013.
“I was faced with new challenges every day. But my co-workers helped me a lot,” she says. In addition, Wörwag enabled her to take another language course in the early phase.
Now she has acquired a good negotiating skill level. Tough in price discussions, but with a realistic sense of the market, the competition, the availability of products and services.
“Wörwag and the supplier have a mutual interest. That’s the common ground we have to find.”
At the same time, you have to deal with the partners fairly and find the right tone. The 39-year-old is responsible for spare parts and laboratory supplies in the Purchasing Department.
Furthermore, she is in charge of IT solutions in Purchasing and therefore works closely with the colleagues there. In the last two years she has been handling the introduction of the purchase requisition system (BANF) into the Navision system.
“Many people here probably think of me when Banf comes up,” she says jokingly. “I’m often the Banf hotline that provides support when needed.” Her current project: setting up a workflow for the raw materials facility. It’s a challenge she doesn’t shrink from.
So far there is only one problem that she hasn’t found a solution to: for the last year she has been trying to pull off an overhead tennis serve – to no avail. Presumably it’s only a matter of time until the serve succeeds.
By Michael Thiem
Photo by Rainer Czarnetzki