Art of Procurement (Philip Ideson)

Everything procurement delivers – from savings to risk mitigation to value – is predicated on having access to clean, trustworthy data. If this foundation does not exist or if it is shaky, then buyers don’t know how much the company is spending with a given supplier, let alone how they can improve the efficiency or impact of a given spend category.

While I was at the Ivalua NOW event in Paris, I interviewed Cyrille Naux, Purchasing and Supply Chain Vice-President at Chassis Brakes International, a multinational manufacturer of automotive brakes and brake components. He gave a keynote presentation about his company’s procurement and supply chain transformation journey – one that is still underway.

Unlike industries such as retail and professional services, which start by managing indirect spend and then gradually transition to influence directs, most procurement teams in the automotive space take a direct-spend first approach. Direct spend suppliers are large, global, and absolutely critical to the company’s operations and their competitive advantage. Strong executive mandates bring the management of direct spend within easier reach for procurement than ‘messy’, non-transparent indirect spend.

For Chassis Brakes, the first step to manage their spend was supplier consolidation: reducing direct spend suppliers from 12,000 to 6,000 (with an eventual goal of 2,000) and indirect spend suppliers from 10,000 to 4,000. They have also taken a hardline approach to supplier master data cleansing and standardization which led to a high quality supplier database they continue to work hard to maintain.

What do childcare, ducks, and power have to do with negotiations? In today’s episode, host Philip Ideson shares three negotiation tips taken from his experience as a procurement practitioner and entrepreneur. 

On today's Art of Procurement, I answer a listener question. The question was: how do you make a supplier happy.

Now, I’m going to assume that the right answer isn’t to give them riches for providing peanuts! So, I sat down and thought through 6 different ways that I think we can all put at least a half smile on the faces of our suppliers this Christmas!

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/113 

I sat down to record today's episode just a couple of hours after Donald Trump emerged victorious in the US presidential election.  And today, I am going to replay a discussion with CPO and former Chief Risk Officer Susan Grelling that I first published in the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote early in the year.

In our conversation, Susan shared the steps that procurement can take to help our organizations turn the management of market uncertainty and volatility into a competitive advantage.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/trumpelected

It is safe to say that we currently find ourselves in unprecedented times. Some of us will be impacted by the spread of the coronavirus more than others, but the likelihood is that it will affect all of us in some way.

At Art of Procurement, we are going to be at your side for the duration, helping you prepare for the ‘unknown unknowns’ with practical advice on how you can mitigate the worst of the impact and turn your response into a competitive advantage.

To that end, we arranged for a short-turnaround Sunday morning podcast recording with Jan Griffiths. As the former CPO of a tier-1 automotive manufacturer, now the Founder and President of leadership coaching consultancy Gravitas Detroit, Jan has weathered her fair share of crisis and uncertainty. She has come through all of it strengthened and determined to succeed, and she shares her insights with us about how we can do the same.

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Host Philip Ideson introduces the Art of Procurement, and explains who the show is for, and the motivations behind its launch

Kelly Barner, Owner and Editor of Buyers Meeting Point, discusses the trends shaping Procurement's future, and the importance of Supply Market Intelligence in making Procurement a competitive advantage.

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

Today’s podcast is part of a special two-week series, our second annual sponsored StartUp and Growth Series, where we aim to shine a light on the early stage and growth companies who are changing the way that leading procurement teams are driving outcomes that truly align with corporate objectives.

We will ask an entrepreneur from seven different companies questions about what gap in the market their solution addresses, how they differentiate their technology and what their tools look like in action.  It’s a great way for you to get to know those who are leading the way.

In today’s episode, I speak with Stephanie Lapierre, Founder and CEO of Tealbook. 

As digital transformation progresses, corporate leadership teams are increasing their focus on the quality and availability of data. Spend analysis is just one internal data resource in a sea of data ecosystems, but it has the potential to serve as the foundational connection point for all procurement analytics.

For this special series, Art of Procurement partnered with Sievo and Buyers Meeting Point to take a deep dive into procurement data ecosystems. We will explore how procurement leaders can meet their analytical requirements while also exploiting the full cross-functional value of data – data that enables corporate growth and competitive advantage. 

In this episode, Kelly Barner and Magnus Bergfors, Global Business Director of Basware, discuss the evolving role of procure-to-pay in helping procurement satisfy business objectives while also improving the internal user and supplier experiences.

• How to ensure that any P2P implementation or digitalization project delivers what the business needs over the long term
• The barriers to supplier adoption and what additional requirements are being added through efforts to bring small and diverse suppliers into the enterprise supply ecosystem
• How CPOs should approach P2P in the coming years, and how they should evaluate their success

AOP Host Philip Ideson starts each interview with a question about what brought that particular guest to procurement. With this week’s guest, business consultant and coach Juergen Scherer, it might have been better to ask what brought him THROUGH procurement, because he has held influential roles across procurement, supply chain, sales, and operations.

While he isn’t in procurement today, Juergen’s doctoral thesis on Procurement Marketing received the Scientific Award of the German Industry Association for Purchasing and Supply Management. His knowledge of the function has unquestionably improved his ability to excel in each of his other roles, as well as in his current coaching practice.

Today, Juegen splits his time between Germany and the US West Coast as a business consultant and coach, leading his business called BXB-Exchange. He reached out to Art of Procurement in response to our podcasts about the flywheel effect and its applicability to procurement. We took that opportunity to probe deeper into his thoughts about how procurement can better align with the business as a whole.

In this conversation, Juergen shares examples from his extensive background that illustrate the key part of his business philosophy:

• How procurement can push suppliers to deliver more value while investing in them so that their capabilities are developed at the same time.
• Why, despite the fact that every buyer/seller relationship is unique, there are common success factors that have to be consistently present: trust, open communications, and mutual respect, to name a few.
• How procurement can develop and effectively communicate a “USP,” or unique selling proposition, to both suppliers and internal stakeholders.

“Procurement is at the point where they’re trying to figure out next steps on digitization, and it will be an immediate priority for everyone in the next couple of years.” - Gordon Donovan, Vice President of Research - Procurement and External Workforce at SAP

It is Gordon Donovan’s job to read every single piece of research that’s published on procurement, the workforce, and the supply chain. More importantly, it is his job to figure out what it means. As he told Philip Ideson, “I’ve got the best job in the world.” 

All of this information gives Gordon a deep and comprehensive view of the global procurement landscape and the challenges and opportunities that it presents. 

In this episode, Philip draws on Gordon’s depth of knowledge to discuss the findings of SAP’s recently published Economist Impact report, as well as what the research tells us about procurement’s vision, priorities, and opportunities for the future. 

Listen in to hear Gordon and Phil discuss the report, which included some surprising findings, as well as:

• Why digitization tops the list of procurement’s most important priorities
• How procurement can handle increased complexity and workloads, even as headcounts remain stagnant
• Procurement’s AI maturity journey and where they are on the path to acceptance and adoption compared to other business functions

Links:

• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Gordon Donovan on LinkedIn
• Read the 2024 Sap Economist Impact Report
• Listen to Gordon Donovan in a previous episode: From C-Suite Priority to Procurement 
• Unpacking SAP’s 2024 Economist Impact Report
• Strategy: Managing Risk at Scale

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Procurement has struggled to achieve alignment with the business for a long time, and we’ve always owned that disconnect - feeling that we were somehow falling short, or not communicating clearly, or just plain misunderstanding what is needed of us. But what if the root of the problem is something else… what if it is ‘them?’ 

In the first episode of Procurement for the People, host Katherine McCleery welcomes Daniel Barnes, contract management extraordinaire and founder of World of Procurement – which began as a blog and has expanded to so much more including a Discord community. 

Katherine takes this opportunity to speak with Daniel about why no one ‘gets’ procurement, and what we can do about it:

• How procurement can present a value proposition to stakeholders that fosters understanding
• The harsh reality of supplier contracts and what stakeholders should get out of a good contract review
• Why procurement should have the endgame in mind, no matter where they are in the process

Could there be any better qualification to compete in Ironman events than a 20-plus-year career in procurement? 

We find out in this week’s podcast, as host Philip Ideson is joined by procurement leader turned Ironman Vytas Sliesoraitis. 

Vytas has a diverse procurement background that includes time in procurement at Intel in his native Brazil, leading procurement at Google X (Google’s R&D company), and Global Head of Procurement at Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite. 

In this conversation, Vytas and Philip discuss many of the lessons learned from his long and varied career in procurement:

• The balance he learned to achieve while in procurement at Intel, balancing global strategy with local nuance
• Building trust based partnerships while establishing the procurement function at Google X
• What made him want to train for Ironman competitions and the lessons he has learned that current procurement professionals can benefit from

In this episode, Tania Seary, Founder of Procurious, discusses a wide range of issues from the impact that nano-niching will have on the procurement careers of the future, to the importance of social media in winning the war for talent.

One of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development goals is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, for their own sake and for the sake of economic growth and development. The UN has a number of specific targets that address violence, discrimination, and other harmful practices and there are other third party organizations doing work in this area as well.

Is there something procurement can do to move companies towards global gender equality goals?

That is the topic of this conversation with David Latten, Head of Global Indirect Procurement at Logitech. Not only is he convinced that there is a lot procurement can do to support gender equality, he feels that we are particularly well positioned to do so.

• How a consumer-focused effort to evaluate how “Gender Fair” companies are became his cause internally with B2B suppliers
• The organizations helping with measurement and monitoring of individual companies’ relative gender equality
• His advice for starting a procurement-led effort to emphasize gender equality in your company

Procurement 6 is a new short podcast from Art of Procurement that will be published in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode will have 6 short segments that summarize this week in procurement.  

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

I will be in Las Vegas this week at the ISM Indirect Conference, and with Las Vegas also known as Sin City, I thought it would be fun to look back at some old Art of Procurement episodes and come up with a list of 10 sins of procurement!

Now, frankly, there are a lot more than 10!  However, I had to stop somewhere! These are inspired by my own experiences, and the guests that we have had on the show.  I kept them to what I think are our day to day dealings with suppliers and stakeholders rather than looking at it from an organizational design perspective.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/procurement-sins 

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

I am joined today by Antonio Humphreys, the Senior Manager of Global Procurement at Adobe Systems based in California.

I’ve actually seen Antonio speak before, and he has always been high on my list of practitioners that I wanted to interview and so I’m delighted we were able to make it happen.  We were connected by the team at ProcureCon, as Antonio will be speaking at the upcoming ProcureCon Marketing conference in New Orleans at the end of November.

Antonio has enjoyed a career that, after an internship with NASA, actually started in sales before he jumped over to the other side of the table and joined procurement.  He worked for organizations such as Shell, Hewlett-Packard, and Gap before joining Adobe.

He has a deep background in procurement organizational development and marketing, and those two topics were the focus of our conversation.

I started by asking Antonio what keeps him in procurement after spending time in both sales and procurement...

Sustainable expense management programs should be managed to align outcomes with company objectives. Doing so amplifies their impact, strengthens stakeholder and supplier relationships, and provides real savings that can be reinvested as necessary.

In this 5-part special series, Art of Procurement Host Philip Ideson will take you through the keys to running a successful expense management program, pitfalls to look out for, and tactics to cover incumbent supplier management, strategic sourcing, and demand and category management.

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

“I think category management is great fun because you have the freedom to do things. It’s not following a rote process. It’s using structure to be creative. I think that’s the great benefit of it.” - Mark Webb, Managing Director at Future Purchasing

For many in procurement, category management is “old hat.” Some even assume that widespread adoption and integration of category management structures and processes within the business are non-issues in 2024. They see category management as a mountain that has been scaled, and now procurement just needs to sit back and enjoy the view.

When we look more closely, however, there is still significant room for improvement in category management strategy and for expanded scope of implementation throughout the business. 

In this episode, Philip Ideson welcomes back Mark Webb, Managing Director at Future Purchasing, for a deep dive into the current state of category management, including where we’ve been and how far we have left to go. Mark also shares the results of the 2024 Global Category Management Report, a large, comprehensive study Future Purchasing conducts in partnership with Henley Business School. 

They discuss the importance of stakeholder involvement, the need for more consistency and effective communication, the distinctions between category management and strategic sourcing, and the delicate balance between internal expertise versus external resources in implementation.

Philip and Mark also explore:

• Why 80 percent of stakeholders don’t fully understand their role in category management, and what procurement can do to fix that
• Practical advice to streamline category planning and improve stakeholder engagement
• The ideal model for category management when considering big versus small teams

Links:

• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Read the 2024 Global Category Management Report
• Mark Webb on LinkedIn
• The Differentiators of Category Management Leaders & Followers, w/ Mark Webb

As the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tradeshift, Christian Lanng is on the front lines of the technology evolution, and he gets to see first-hand the impact that innovative technology is having – and will have - on the enterprise.

In today’s Art of Procurement podcast, I sit down with Christian to understand what this will mean for procurement. If Christian’s vision materializes, it will mean a seismic shift is in store for our profession over the next 10 years.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why the measure of procurement’s success will become the cost to change suppliers, not the cost savings achieved from your existing suppliers.
• Why we will stop buying products and services, and start buying outcomes.
• How we will need to think more like a data scientist, analyzing new and expanding sources of information to determine the projects and transactions that matter, and that require human interaction.
• How organizations will transition from current delivery models to accessing procurement talent on-demand, using talent marketplaces.
• Why Christian believes that procurement leaders can turn their retained staff into a profit center by selling that expertize to non-competitors.
• The benefits of a platform & applications approach when building your procurement technology infrastructure.
• Why we are already in the "summer" of bots, and why AI will be the technology that has the biggest impact on procurement.
• Why the procurement professional of the future will need to be "problem solvers" and "opportunists".

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/tradeshift 

For the rest of August, I’m taking a road trip across the United States, and so because I’m out of the recording studio, I’m going to dip into the archive all the way back to 2016 to share some of my favorite episodes from that year with you that are still just as relevant as today - and if you found the podcast after 2016, there’s a good chance that you haven’t yet heard these conversations.

Today’s is a conversation with former procurement practitioner Sylvain Mansottee, now the CEO and Co-Founder of Whispli. It is a story about procurement fraud.

As a practitioner, Sylvain received the call from the newly appointed CPO of a large Australian based construction company to assist in building a new procurement function.  

Within 2 months, he had uncovered a $20M fraud that spanned 12 years and led to the perpetrator admitting to the crime, and ultimately being sentenced to 15 years prison.

Today’s Art of Procurement is Sylvain’s story.  Sylvain discusses how he uncovered the fraud, and the decisions he had to make in blowing the whistle.

We then talk more specifically about procurement fraud.  Sylvain shares a number of fraud red flags and provides tips on how you can ensure you have an environment where a whistleblower feels safe in coming forward if they have information to share.

Sylvain’s story is really absorbing, and also, for me, a wakeup call to realize that procurement fraud is real, and that any one of us in procurement may find ourselves in the same position as Sylvain given the nature of our roles.

Marketing is one of those spend categories that procurement often has a hard time breaking into. They are less concerned with cost than their counterparts in other functions, and most of the services they contract are not only complex, project-based efforts, they are usually evaluated from a highly subjective point of view.

Kathleen Jordan is an Associate Director at Source One, a Corcentric Company, where she has been focused on the marketing category for years. She is familiar with the opportunities in marketing spend as well as the common disconnects that may prevent procurement from bringing marketing spend under management and cost marketing professionals the ability to make their budgets go further.

In this interview, Kathleen shares her point of view with Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner on:

• Some of the most effective sourcing strategies for marketing spend and which specific categories should be looked at by procurement as good starting points
• The trends and implications hitting the marketing industry and consumers of B2B marketing services as the world transitions from traditional to fully digital marketing
• Tips and best practices procurement can use to bridge gaps in understanding or priorities between their team and their marketing colleagues

Hi there everyone, and welcome to this week’s Art of Procurement interview, which is powered by SIG.

My guest today is Chris Camejo, the Director of Product Management and Threat Intelligence at NTT Security - probably the scariest sounding title I’ve ever had here on Art of Procurement. Chris and I connected in person at the SIG Fall Summit in Carlsbad, California, where we had an opportunity to talk about what threat intelligence means and what role procurement can play in strengthening a company’s security risk level.

We often refer to “the business” when we are trying to ensure that we take a larger perspective on procurement’s work. But at the end of the day, “the business” is made up of many individuals, each one of them is a different type of procurement stakeholder. We want to share more stakeholder voices because procurement is always at risk of misunderstanding or misinterpreting what they really need from us.

At Mastermind LIVE Fall 2021, Philip Ideson moderated a session with Chet Patel, Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Americas at BT, and Cyril Pourrat, CPO at BT Sourced, BT’s procurement services company. 

Art of Procurement has had a front row seat to watch the transformation of the BT Sourced enterprise procurement team, one that we believe is setting the standard for the future of procurement. In this session, focused on stakeholder collaboration, we got to hear:

• What a procurement digital transformation journey looks and feels like to stakeholders observing from the outside
• How closely related partnership with the business and partnership with suppliers are for procurement
• How procurement can establish themselves as a trusted advisor to the business - even when that means telling them ‘no’

“A good procurement person has two qualities: One is they're curious. They want to know how things are made. How did we get it here? Why is the supplier doing that? What is the price? What is the cost? So, curiosity is the number one thing and the number two thing is emotional intelligence. Do they have the capability to build relationships inside and outside the business?”

In this week’s podcast, Philip Ideson is joined by Bill Michels, Vice President of Operations Americas at CIPS. They discuss the global nature of today’s supply chains and the impact that shift has had on the professional procurement community: specifically, they discuss the ongoing impact of trade tariffs around the world, and the proactive actions that can be taken to prepare for economic recession.

In this conversation, Bill talks about:

• Why procurement needs to start focusing on influencing buyer behavior, not their spend
• The destabilizing impact of tariffs, and whether it is possible for them to represent an opportunity as well as a challenge
• How procurement leaders can begin to proactively plan for an economic recession.
• How procurement skills development is being impacted by the very different interests and needs of the four different generations making up the current workforce

What will the future of procurement look like, and how as procurement professionals can we prepare for disruption that is heading our way?  

In the first of a two part series, I explore the likelihood that procurement as a function will even exist in 10 years time - in response to a number of projections that I have recently heard about the future of our profession.  

I then share my perspective on how I believe procurement will evolve, based on both my personal experiences and learnings to date from interviewing thought leaders on the Art of Procurement.

For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/nextgen1 

It has been well established that having a diverse and inclusive workforce increases results and employee satisfaction, so why wouldn't’ the same be true for companies that invest in building a diverse supply chain? That question is the one that started Jaime Crump down the path to become a supplier diversity expert and consultant.

Jamie is the president of The Richmond Group where she provides consulting and coaching services to corporate and certified diversity-owned businesses in the areas of strategic sourcing and procurement strategies, supplier diversity initiatives, and optimizing the leverage of a diversity certification.

Although supplier diversity programs are well-intentioned, they also have to be good for business, and as Jaime points out, there is a lot of research highlighting the correlations between a more diverse supply base and quantitative business improvement. The American Sociological Review, Harvard Business Review, and McKinsey have all studied the issue and found strong evidence to support true supply chain diversification. 

In this interview, Jamie explains:

• Why the majority of diversity spend is associated with indirect suppliers.
• How stakeholders (or distributed buyers) are ultimately the ones with the power to make the greatest difference in supplier diversity.
• The fact that the effort to ensure supplier diversity is never done, and why it can’t be put on ‘cruise control.’

Today is the last day that content will be published in support of The Procurement Revolution event. We have had 40 revolutionaries share their perspective on such as wide variety of topics – tactical, strategic and a little bit of crystal ball gazing too!

There was a particular submission from the event that I think embodies my thoughts on what the role of procurement really is - and why change must come from within. 

It was recorded by Pierre Lapree, the Founder of a procurement performance management SaaS business called Per Angusta. When I received Pierre’s submission I could not help but be inspired.  Listen in, and I hope you are inspired too!

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/EP93

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

In this episode, AOP Host Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner (AOP Content Director and Owner of Buyers Meeting Point) discuss their major take-aways from September’s news, industry topics and podcast interviews.

In September, we heard four diverse interviews:

• NBA CPO Joe Postiglione started the month by reminding us of the importance of self-empowerment as well as how powerful a truly engaged manager can be.
•  Mahmood Shah, Director of Global Procurement at MetLife, brought the continued importance of change management to light by talking about his company’s exploration of emerging technologies.
• Chris Sawchuck, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group, shared recent research into World Class Procurement – including how (and now not) to pursue World Class status.
• Finally, Deutsche Telecom’s Hakan Cakir provided an example of how procurement can move into uncharted waters without feeling pressure to already know everything.

This month’s discussion topic is how to make the most of the fall conference season. Whether you are a ‘frequent flyer’ or only attend one event a year, Phil and Kelly provide advice on making the most of your time onsite, how to survive those awful coffee breaks and the answer to the question all conference-goers ask at some point: if a session is not well done, do I really have to stay for the whole thing?

Unless you are new to the show, you will have heard me talk all about The Procurement Revolution event that I co-organized with Kelly Barner of Buyers Meeting Point. 

We were thrilled with how the event panned out. We had 40 revolutionaries, over 50 pieces of content and five live Q&A interviews throughout the week. 

We learned a ton from the things that went well, and the things that didn’t.  One of my regrets was that I wasn’t able to dedicate as much time as I would have liked to pull together all the disparate submissions into some key call’s to action. 

So, what I thought I would do today is to share four different takeaways that I took from all the great submissions that we received. 

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/TPRtakeaways

If 2019 was the year of emerging technology hype, then 2020 holds the potential to be the year that we turn our attention to the work that needs to be done to derive concrete value from that technology: blockchains included.

In late 2019, Remko Van Hoek, Clinical Full Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Arkansas – Sam M. Walton College of Business and a Member of the CSCMP Board of Directors, co-authored a book titled Integrating Blockchain into Supply Chain Management: A Toolkit for Practical Application. He and his three co-authors were looking to combine the understandable enthusiasm for distributed ledger technology with the knowledge we have about emerging technologies of the past. Their goal: to provide actionable insight and realistic use cases.

In this conversation, Remko answers questions about:

• The use cases he and his co-authors had the opportunity to study and what they learned from those leading companies
• The role of third party advisors in blockchain pilots and implementations
• How to increase the likelihood of success with a blockchain pilot project, including project scope, partner selection, and setting internal expectations

In the second part of our Value Based Procurement series, I am joined today by former CPO & Founder of Supply Chain Advisors Joanna Martinez and Jordan Early of Old Street Labs. 

Joanna, Jordan and I explore where to look to find opportunities to create value for our organizations.  We discuss a wide range of options, from supplier driven innovation to how to make a stakeholders experience with procurement more streamlined and user friendly.

For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/procurementvalue 

Procurement 6 is a new short podcast from Art of Procurement that will be published in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode will have 6 short segments that summarize this week in procurement.  

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

Despite the procurement mindshare dedicated to technology, it hasn’t changed things as much as we all would have liked. Most of procurement’s sourcing activities happen the same way they always have, albeit with much improved user interfaces. This is especially true for complex service categories that have always defied our processes and templates.

Keith Hausmann is the Chief Revenue Office at Globality. He also has the unique distinction of being both a former client - and a former boss - of Art of Procurement Host Philip Ideson. His enthusiasm for a worthy business challenge and the agile nature of innovative start-ups recently led him to join this AI-powered services sourcing platform provider.

In this interview, Keith provides his point of view about several of the strategic challenges that procurement still faces ‘after all these years’ and the role that procurement technology can play in resolving them:

• Technology as an enabler for procurement teams that feel pressure to reduce indirect costs but want to do incredibly challenging and interesting work
• Why it is never a good idea to let a supplier - even an incumbent - define the scope or demand for a stakeholder (and why it keeps happening)
• The unique requirements procurement teams have when sourcing complex services categories

Whether we are responsible for Procurement and our stakeholder is the c-suite, or we are developing a Category Strategy and our stakeholders are the business users. Alignment continues to be one of the greatest challenges for procurement. Ultimately, it becomes the differentiator that determines whether you are perceived as being a trusted advisor or a back office function.

Indeed, it is not possible to become a mature procurement organization without true strategic alignment, at scale. How can that alignment be sustainable, and not contingent only upon a team member’s personal relationship and rapport with an individual stakeholder, or group of stakeholders?

There is one tactic that consistently works. In today’s show, I will explore why treating your senior level stakeholders as investors in the company of “procurement” is key to building alignment - and I’ll share how you can get started!

“We have to incentivize the supplier to collaborate with us in a way that creates a different way of doing something – it might take us all out of our comfort zones, but it’s going to deliver a better outcome.” - Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Research at SAP

Services procurement makes up a large percentage of most organizations’ spend and it is a key driver of enterprise growth and performance. At the same time, a recent global study conducted by Art of Procurement and SAP revealed that this category presents serious challenges for procurement leaders and is primed for improvement.

To better understand these challenges and opportunities, Philip Ideson speaks with Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Research at SAP, about the research findings. 

In this episode, they discuss key findings from the study and one-on-one follow-up interviews:

• Why ‘services procurement’ is a slippery term for some, and how it should ultimately be defined
• How procurement can leverage services spend to move from a tactical or administrative role to one where they strategically partner with the business
• The most egregious mistakes global procurement leaders are currently making when it comes to services spend (and how to correct them)

Links:

• Gordon Donovan on LinkedIn
• From C-Suite Priority to Procurement Strategy: Managing Risk at Scale w/ Gordon Donovan and Matthew Montgomery
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

Today's Friday Show is in response to a listener question: how can I get early engagement with my business stakeholders?

In this episode, I take a look back at my experiences as a practitioner, and look at the key elements that differentiated the projects where I was able to engage early and those where I was nothing more than a rubber stamp.

For more information, go to: http://artofprocurement.com/61

When the first edition of Managing Indirect Spend was published, Joe Payne and Bill Dorn often spoke to customers about what strategic sourcing was and what value it could bring to their organization. 10 years later, much has changed, but a lot has remained the same. Procurement is now much better known and recognized as a valuable corporate function, and yet we are still facing many of the same challenges we were back then.

Authors Joe Payne, Bill Dorn, Dave Pastore, and Jenn Ulrich all work for Corcentric, where they spend their time working with procurement teams to help them transform and mature. Many of their real life experiences are included in the book, allowing procurement leaders to learn from the journeys of others.

In this conversation, the authors speak with Host Philip Ideson about:

• How procurement can secure ‘sponsorship’ for strategic sourcing projects and encourage the business to engage them as early as possible
• The common mistakes or ‘landmines’ that undermine procurement’s efforts to bring spend under management
• Options for procurement organizational design that make it possible to address all of the levels of project complexity that naturally arise

Procurement has been working to digitally transform spend and supplier related processes for years, but even the companies that have succeeded can always do more. Each procurement process connects to other enterprise processes, functions, and systems. The more integrated all of those components are, the better positioned the company is to respond to disruption and seize competitive advantage.

In this conversation, Tony Harris, Global Vice President, Global Business Network Solutions at SAP, and host Philip Ideson discuss what today's integrated business networks actually are and what use cases he has seen. In addition to sharing his detailed thoughts about data models, spot buying, and business networks, Tony also shares some tips for procurement leaders that want to start on their own business network design and implementation journey.

For example: 

• Looking for ways to speed up the typical RFP process so that it supports the business instead of hindering progress
• Ensuring that third party services and contingent workforce providers are included in distributed sourcing and buying platforms
• Opportunities for supplier value creation associated with leveraging global business networks

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Saying that someone has or embodies the ‘spirit of entrepreneurship’ implies a lot of different drives and qualities. There is the willingness to take calculated risks, the need for self-accountability, contagious levels of energy and creativity, and a true understanding of the top to bottom impact of business decisions. Procurement can absolutely benefit from professionals with an entrepreneurial background – the question is how we can add them to our ranks.

I interviewed Jill Robbins, Senior Director of Global Procurement - Indirect Goods & Services for Elanco, a global animal health company. She is the perfect example of both an entrepreneurial spirit and a non-linear career path. In addition to working in procurement, she is the author of a children’s book, co-owns a small business with her husband, and has worked as a consultant.

Empowering procurement to make the maximum contribution to the business requires a combination of analytical and broader business skills. Starting with a solid foundation in data, the most valuable professionals add to their experience over time without worrying whether they are following the fastest route to the top, but rather doing the most important, and the most interesting, work.

In this conversation, Jill shares her perspective on:

• The importance of finding a mentor that you connect with, regardless of the company they work for, the function they work in or their gender.
• Whether certifications really matter, either in career investment or in hiring/recruiting.
• The time and place for rules and norms, and when decision makers should push boundaries for the sake of creating an advantage.

Today’s Art of Procurement interview is a real treat.  It is chock full of actionable insights on how we can position our careers, and our organizations, to fully take advantage of digitization and its impact on what, and how, we buy.

My guest is Bill Huber.   Bill is an active participant in the procurement community and I have followed his career for some time.  Bill has worked as a practitioner – most recently as Chief Procurement Officer of Wachovia - as a service provider as head of IBM’s procurement outsourcing offering - and as a consultant and advisor.  Today, Bill is a Partner at Information Services Group (ISG), responsible for Digital Platforms and Solutions.

Areas we cover in today’s conversation include:

• Has Bill’s experience as practitioner, service provider and advisor changed his perspective on the procurement value proposition?
• Why many procurement organizations have become the enemy of differentiation.
• What procurement can do to have maximum impact on an organization.
• Why changing metrics matters – especially to those companies that achieve real transformation… and where procurement can start.
• What does “digital” really mean?
• What will the impact of digitization on what and how we buy?
• Will technology render much of procurement redundant, and where should we focus to change our value proposition?
• How can procurement align with the digital economy:?
  • New ways of segmenting spend, so that you can focus on what is truly material.
  • Options for accessing capability, so that retained teams can focus only on what makes their business a competitive advantage.
  • Rethink contracts and contractual SLA’s to ensure they are fit for purpose and incent all parties to focus on the delivery of outcomes.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/billhuber

Are you ready for 2019? 

In today's podcast - the last of 2018 - I reflect on what has changed for procurement this year, and what hasn't! 

I then share a couple of predictions for 2019, including my recommendations for areas of technology investment next year. 

Finally, I leave 2018 with three questions to consider over the holiday break that will help you kick-start your change journey in 2019. 

For a long time, procurement has gotten feedback that our terminology - and, more specifically, our abbreviations - have a distancing or alienating effect on internal stakeholders and budget owners. But if language has the power to push people away, it can also be used to purposefully clarify, align, and collaborate.

Steve Wills is the founder and Managing Director of Procurement Central and formerly served as the Procurement Advisor to the 2012 London Olympic Games. He has extensive business experience with blue chip organizations and has worked with leaders in industry and commerce as a CPO to transform complex procurement and supply chain functions.

In this interview, Steve outlines:

• Some of the ways procurement can use language and messaging to bridge the gap between ourselves and the other functions in the organization
• The more expansive notion of stakeholder management procurement should embrace if we want to build stronger relationships with the business
• What to do when circumstances call for pragmatism instead of our polished procurement processes

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Procurement 6 is a new short podcast from Art of Procurement that will be published in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode will have 6 short segments that summarize this week in procurement.  

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

“If you want to be a customer of choice, it's not going to come down to the contract, it's going to come down to the relationship, even at the individual level.” - Oliver Jones, Director (Procurement) for H&Z Management Consultancy

Procurement may be a highly tech-driven function – and growing ever more so by the day – but at its core, the quality of procurement’s relationships with internal stakeholders and suppliers ultimately determine their success or failure for the business. 

In this episode, Philip Ideson speaks with Oliver Jones, Director (Procurement) for H&Z Management Consultancy, about why the “relationship” part of supplier relationship management (SRM) is vital for procurement’s ability to deliver value to the business. He also shares his perspective on how procurement can overcome some of the more common obstacles to creating strong relationships, but why, in the end, it’s well worth the effort – for procurement, for suppliers, and for the business in general.

They also discuss:

• How multiple metrics of procurement’s success – like risk management, ESG, or value beyond savings – are all tied back to (and dependant on) supplier relationship management
• Why the ‘center-led’ operating model is the optimal framework to enable successful supplier relationship management
• Best practices for dividing procurement’s focus and prioritization among tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 suppliers

Links:

• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Oliver Jones on LinkedIn

Procurement has always been fertile ground for tech entrepreneurs. We have pulled together some of the most compelling – and potentially disruptive – procurement solutions for a Special Startup Series. We will ask each entrepreneur questions about what gap in the market their solution addresses, how they differentiate their technology and what their tools look like in action.

In this podcast, we interview Sam Jenks, Chief Marketing Officer at Kodiak Hub, a supplier relationship management platform founded in 2015.

Discussion highlights include:

• Why supplier insight has to be based on both robust scorecards and data analytics.
• That (believe it or not) Excel continues to be Kodiak’s biggest competitor.
• How this is the time – even according to well-known consulting firms and CTOs – to be an early adopter and partner with a startup

Sustainable expense management programs should be managed to align outcomes with company objectives. Doing so amplifies their impact, strengthens stakeholder and supplier relationships, and provides real savings that can be reinvested as necessary.

In this 5-part special series, Art of Procurement Host Philip Ideson will take you through the keys to running a successful expense management program, pitfalls to look out for, and tactics to cover incumbent supplier management, strategic sourcing, and demand and category management.

In this four-part special series, host Philip Ideson speaks with members of the Sievo team. In each episode, we discover a unique way that differentiated decision making can help procurement 10X their impact: procurement as an information hub, ESG analytics, investments in talent, and crossing the data to action gap.

In the fourth and final episode in this series, he is joined by Sammeli Sammalkorpi, CEO and Co-Founder of Sievo, to bring the whole series together by looking at how procurement can cross the data to action gap.

They take this opportunity to discuss: 

• What the next frontier in procurement analytics may look like 
• Whether automated decision making will replace procurement professionals 
• How procurement decision makers should think about procurement data assets

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

To support this need for balance, the Art of Procurement team brought together a broad range of experts to speak at Digital Outcomes 2023: one of our largest virtual events of the year. We heard about technical challenges and human growing pains… in addition to technical triumphs and human evolution.

In this episode of the pod, Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner share their combined takeaways from this fast-paced two day event:

• How to take new ideas from a relatively safe incubation phase to full scale corporate programs
• The risks that exist for procurement teams that are not able to successfully leave the status quo behind and embrace new ways of working and thinking
• The opportunity that exists for procurement organizations that use digital platforms as impact multipliers, delivering expanded forms of ROI

Procurement has been working hard to expand our value proposition beyond savings for a long time, and the current conditions in service-based industries may provide a perfect opportunity. Many service and people-based industries are being hit hard by what is being called ‘The Great Resignation.’ Managing these categories on cost alone will definitely not be enough.

In this episode, host Philip Ideson speaks with ​​Amy Fong, Vice President of Sourcing and Vendor Management at Everest Group. Amy has had a front row seat to procurement transformation as both practitioner and an advisor, and she is currently focused on services categories. This interview was recorded as part of PASA’s (Procurement and Supply Australasia) ninth annual PASA Premier Confex.

Amy answers service-specific questions about:

• The roles and industries where labor shortages are the greatest - and therefore the potential price increases are the highest
• Evidence that companies may be pre-buying digital services the way they were hoarding toilet paper in 2020
• The trends she sees with regard to service providers integrating technology and automation into their delivery models

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

As procurement professionals, we often see our peers across the negotiating table as adversaries. However, there is a lot that we can learn and apply from the art of Sales, particularly when it comes to influencing others.

This week’s guest on the Art of Procurement is Stan Garber, President of Scout RFP. Stan is a proven sales and business development leader, and I wanted to tap into that experience to focus on two specific use cases where procurement can lever Sales techniques to increase their sphere of influence.  First, we explore ways of selling the procurement value proposition internally, and then shift focus and consider how you can convince larger suppliers to provide “customer-of-choice” status when your level of spend alone may not merit such treatment.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/scout 

In part two of this four-part special series, we will cover the policies and plans of Democratic Candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Vice President Kamala is 60 Years old and a former Senator and Attorney General from the State of California. She became the presumptive Democratic nominee on July 21, 2024 when President Biden suspended his campaign for re-election, and the official nominee on August 22 when she accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Listen in as Kelly Barner explores her policy positions and platform:

• Detailed plans for renewable energy and the environment
• The lack of detail regarding her position on trade and tariffs
• Strong statements about China, specifically around the race to dominate AI, domestic labor protections, and intellectual property concerns 

Links:

• Kamala Harris for President website
• A New Way Forward for the Middle Class
• Transcript of the September 10, 2024 Presidential Debate on ABC
• Kamala Harris Democratic National Convention Speech Transcript
• Democratic Party 2024 Platform Document
• 60 Minutes Interview with Bill Whitaker
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” 

After taking an honest look at some of procurement’s most pressing challenges and flaws in episodes 1 and 2, Philip Ideson and Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham shift their focus from problem-spotting to solution-seeking with special guest, Oliver Hurrey, one of the world’s foremost experts on purposeful procurement.

Through his work on sustainability and decarbonization in the supply chain with the Scope 3 Peer Group and the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, Oliver is the ‘real deal’ when it comes to empowering purpose-driven procurement teams to create meaningful change.

In this episode, Oliver shares compelling real-world examples of instances where procurement has looked beyond traditional measures of success – and some pretty challenging constraints – to find purpose and meaning, proving what is possible when procurement takes a deliberate approach to problem solving.

For example, Oliver shares how an innovative carbon pricing initiative is transforming the way major corporations evaluate suppliers, and the story of one little-known family-owned painting business that impressed seasoned procurement leaders at an international conference by sharing how they frame sustainability initiatives as a competitive advantage.

These stories of purposeful procurement prove how procurement can lead organizational change and differentiated value creation when they choose to innovate beyond the status quo, to emphasize and incentivize the right KPIs, and to stand up to broken, ineffective systems. 

Oliver’s own experiences with purpose-driven procurement create a clear path for what’s to come in episode 4 and beyond in “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement” as we dive increasingly deeper into how procurement can envision and implement the kinds of transformative practices that create meaningful, lasting impact.

Links:

• Oliver Hurrey on LinkedIn
• Rich Ham on LinkedIn
• Learn more at FineTuneUs.com

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

I am joined today by Julienne Ryan, Principal of J Ryan Partners. Julienne is a former Executive Director of ISM-New York but the majority of her career has been in the world of HR, recruitment, and organizational development.

Her keynote was focused on effective communications, and so I invited Julienne on the show to talk about the art of storytelling and how we can use that technique in our careers and to influence our stakeholders.

On November 4, 2015, the Art of Procurement podcast officially launched. In 5 years, we’ve released 345 episodes and surpassed 500,000 listens. We’ve gone from being a new, unproven idea to being a trusted voice in the community and the #1 weekly podcast in all of procurement.

To celebrate this occasion, we are running a special series that will extend through the rest of November. For the next three weeks, there will be a daily 5-minute show that answers one of the most interesting and frequently-asked questions we have received from listeners. The questions will be answered alternately by AOP Founder and Host Philip Ideson and AOP General Manager Kelly Barner. (Fun fact: Kelly was AOP podcast guest #6.)

Thank you for joining us for this series and for being part of the AOP community - whether you have been with us since episode #1 or not!

“If you want to be successful in what you do personally or professionally, you’ve got to manage relationships because the show goes on. You need strong relationships with contractors and suppliers that you know can deliver.” - Matt Mehler, President of PROcurement Solutions

Have you ever wondered what it is like to manage procurement for a large, high-profile venue? According to Matt Mehler, former VP of Procurement for Madison Square Garden, it’s exciting, but there’s also a tremendous amount of pressure.

Madison Square Garden is a large corporate entity that hosts hundreds of sporting and entertainment events per year, welcoming millions of people to its facilities, which also include entertainment venues off site and even in other cities.

In this podcast episode, the opening session of Categorypalooza 2023, Kelly Barner interviews Matt about the complexities and challenges that come along with managing procurement for a large venue with many different types of services.

They discuss topics like:

• How to manage services procurement in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment
• The pivotal role relationships play in large-scale services spend management
• Managing expectations and measuring success in a complex organization with multiple stakeholders
• Navigating the nuances of supplier relationship and performance management in an advertiser- or sponsor-supported organization

Links:

• Matt Mehler on LinkedIn
• Watch on demand: Categorypalooza 2023
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

Procurement is in the midst of a period of significant change - driven in large part by an exploding ecosystem of digital solutions. With these new options comes new expectations, specifically the need to provide a consumer-like buying experience for all categories. 

For instance, the way that procurement buys technology is changing - from a one-size-fits-all model, to one where care is taken to architect a tech stack that can meet the needs of the business. 

In this episode, host Philip Ideson welcomes two guests: Dr. Ferhat Eryurt, a Partner at ap-solut Group, and Lukas Wawrla, Co-founder and Managing Director at Archlet. They took the opportunity to discuss:

• Where procurement is on the digitization journey today
• How procurement should manage the many options presented by combining platforms and best-of-breed solutions
• Whether procurement is giving enough weight to the stakeholder experience when building out a technology ecosystem

Much has been written about the fact that the Millennial Generation will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020.  How to attract and retain Millennial professionals is becoming an increasingly important challenge for procurement leaders as large numbers of baby boomers retire by the day.

In the first part of today's episode, I connect with M.L. Peck (of the Institute for Supply Management - ISM) and Donna Cicale (of THOMASNET.com).  We talk about the challenge of attracting Millennials into the supply chain and procurement profession, and the 30 Under 30 program that ISM and THOMASNET.com developed to showcase talented and emerging leaders.

In the second part of the interview, I sit down with Amy Georgi, a Program Manager responsible for Procurement M&A at Fluke Electronics.  Amy is the current Megawatt Winner of the 30 Under 30 Program.  Firstly, Amy and I talk about procurement's role in facilitating M&A in a manufacturing environment. We then transition into a key pillar of motivation and job satisfaction for Millennial professionals - the ability to have flexibility in their work locations.  From personal experience, this is something the solicits passionate perspectives that vary wildly!  In our conversation, Amy shares tips for procurement leaders faced with employees who want and value location independence, and for professionals on how to stay in touch with the home office when working remotely.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/30under30 

The self-service approach has been used in a number of corporate process areas, such as requisitioning, contingent labor, benefits, employee onboarding, mobility, and travel booking. What’s more, it has been in use for decades - it is no longer an untested method. Procurement must catch-up with stakeholder expectations for scalable, digital enablement in purchasing as well.

At Art of Procurement’s Digital Outcomes event in March, session moderator Philip Ideson had the opportunity to speak with Elisabeth Schlag Lawrence, SVP, Head of Procurement Governance & Enabling at Bayer, and Mita Gupta, Senior Vice President at Globality Inc., about this topic.

The central question was whether self-guided buying can enable the business to scale quickly and easily - and how procurement can adjust to the change as well.

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

Procurement plays a pivotal role in the delivery and execution of the Olympic Games.  However, it was not always like that.  The organizing committee of the 2012 London Olympic games took the decision to invest in strategic procurement like never before.  The result: the success of team created a legacy whereby the IOC has recognized that procurement must play a pivotal role in the delivery of all subsequent Games.

I am joined today by Gerry Walsh, the CPO of the London 2012 games.  We discuss his and his team's Olympic journey, including the key challenges his team faced, how they overcame them, and the extraordinary lengths that they went to, to ensure that the Organizing Committee fulfilled their CSR commitments.

For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/olympics 

“The largest corporations that spend the most on business travel are generally at about 75% of their 2019 spend, and they seem to be plateauing there. The growth is really coming from the small and mid-sized enterprises – those are the ones that are powering the recovery.” - Scott Gillespie, Founder & CEO of tClara

The current state of business travel is in an interesting place, characterized by a healthy dose of cautious optimism and adaptability that’s counter-balanced by concerns over climate implications and the rising cost of travel.

The post-pandemic “recovery” that we all expected is indeed underway, but it has also exposed some hesitancy in the market as some business travelers have grown to prefer the convenience (and low cost) of Zoom over in-person travel.   

To discuss this and more, I recently welcomed back Scott Gillespie to the podcast. Scott is the founder and CEO of tClara, a company that provides advice, thought leadership, and innovation to business travel industry stakeholders.

Scott is an industry-leading expert on travel strategy, carbon emissions, justifiable travel, traveler friction, and trip valuation. He has also worked across the travel industry and got his start in the ATK strategic sourcing practice of the 1990s while managing the corporate travel category.

Scott was first on the podcast all the way back in 2016, and we recently reconnected over a piece of research that he has undertaken called “The Justified Business Trip” that measures the ROI of individual business trips and its usage in managing travel demand.

In this episode, we also discussed the current health of the business travel category. Scott has recently attended the 2023 GBTA conference, and I started by asking him some of his takeaways from the event.

We covered things like:

• Key factors driving the recovery of the business travel industry
• Most common pain points in business travel
• Quantitative models for justifying business trip expenses
• How to differentiate low-value from high-value trips and prioritize your company’s or team’s travel budget accordingly

Links:

• https://www.tclara.com/register-for-tjbt
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottgillespie2008/

When it comes to governance during the sourcing process, your experience probably matches one of the following two scenarios:

1. You have a strict 7 or 8 step process, and at the end of each step you have to get an approval of some sort to move to the next.  
2. You have an approval council that wants to see proof that you checked every single box during the sourcing process.  

What do these scenarios have in common? They are burdensome, create mountains of paperwork, and really slow down the process. No wonder stakeholders want to bypass procurement altogether.

In this podcast, AOP Founder and Host Philip Ideson shares his easy 2-step governance process, one that he created when he was an Indirect Sourcing Manager earlier in his career. This process - and the templates required to carry it out - are part of one of the AOP Mastermind mini-courses that you member companies will be able to access on July 1st,.

“You have to build a business case and be mindful and purposeful about your continuous improvement and your education around the art of what is possible.” Joël Collin-Demers, Consulting Principal at Pure Procurement

The rapid expansion in the procurement technology landscape in recent years has left many procurement leaders feeling overwhelmed by choice and complexity and second-guessing themselves about how to successfully take advantage of all the opportunities that technology provides.

In this episode, Philip Ideson speaks with Joël Collin-Demers, Consulting Principal at Pure Procurement, about why continuous improvement, rather than transformation, might be the key to successful procurement digitization. 

Joël explains how the tendency to view transformation as a means to a clearly defined endpoint often leads to overwhelmed teams and unrealized value. Instead of a one-off digital transformation overhaul, he advocates for a measured, strategic approach that starts with understanding business processes and builds technology capabilities incrementally over a sustained period of time.In this episode, Joel and Philip explore:

• Practical steps on how to embark on a digitization journey and develop an effective procurement technology roadmap, no matter where you’re starting from
• How to navigate trends and changes in the procure tech market, including full-suite versus single-point solutions
• How to leverage the relationship between procurement and IT to overcome constraints to digitization

Links:

• Joël Collin-Demers on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube

This week is Big Idea Week on the Art of Procurement - a mini series of shorter interviews with procurement thought leaders ahead of their participation in the Procurious Big Idea Summit.

Today, I welcomed Martin Chilcott, Founder and CEO of 2degrees, onto the show.  Martin is a serial entrepreneur and a sought after speaker who is passionate about solving our greatest supply chain sustainability challenges.  In our conversation, Martin shares why sustainability is critical as we attempt to accommodate a growing global middle class, and the role that procurement can play in building sustainable supply chains through the power of collaboration.

For links and show notes, go to http://artofprocurement.com/sustainability

220: #TakeAction: Show You Care (Pay Your Supplier)

I do not have an interview for you today. In fact, for the month of October, we are going to do something completely different.

I ask practitioners about their challenges where ever I go, and the single piece of feedback I get is that for all the great ideas they read and hear about, it is hard to put them into practice

First, I know many of you listen to the pod while commuting or working out - and it is hard to stop in the middle of a podcast and takes notes on what actions you want to take.

And second, there is always a challenge for people between wanting to invest in their own personal development, and the time pressures of a hectic job.

We have crowned October as #TakeActionOctober - because no phrase is complete these days without a hashtag!

October will be all about taking the actions you need to elevate the influence and impact of you AND your team.

Every day this month, you will hear a micro-sized pod - no more than 5 minutes per day - that I selected to inspire you to act.

We’ve curated Content from the back catalog of over 200 Art of Procurement episodes, and more than 1,000 articles featured in our weekly newsletter This Week in Procurement. I’ll also throw in some of my own experiences for good measure.

The commitment I ask of you is to take one action to put into practice - or to coach or mentor a team member or peer - your key takeaway from each episode.

How to Buy a Gorilla?

The good news is that it is a figurative question rather than a literal one!  In fact, it is the title of the book written by today’s guest, David Meikle.

David has a deep background in advertising, including work with some of the world’s most iconic brands, for agencies such as Ogilvy and Mather, where most latterly he was the Managing Director of their Russian business.  

The gorilla in question was an award-winning 2007 TV advert in the UK created to advertise Cadbury’s chocolate.  The advert in question was a 90-second shot of an actor dressed up in a gorilla costume, playing the drums, to the Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight”.  The ad was considered a runaway success.

In short, How to Buy a Gorilla is all about buying creative services - using advertising as the example - with a focus on creating productive relationships between procurement, internal marketing, and advertising agencies.  

While our conversation is based on the advertising business, the principals we discuss can be applied to any people-based creative services where success may be difficult to define, but that requires an alchemy that goes way beyond the contract to create an environment that enables creative individuals and teams to do their best work.  

On November 4, 2015, the Art of Procurement podcast officially launched. In 5 years, we’ve released 345 episodes and surpassed 500,000 listens. We’ve gone from being a new, unproven idea to being a trusted voice in the community and the #1 weekly podcast in all of procurement.

To celebrate this occasion, we are running a special series that will extend through the rest of November. For the next three weeks, there will be a daily 5-minute show that answers one of the most interesting and frequently-asked questions we have received from listeners. The questions will be answered alternately by AOP Founder and Host Philip Ideson and AOP General Manager Kelly Barner. (Fun fact: Kelly was AOP podcast guest #6.)

Thank you for joining us for this series and for being part of the AOP community - whether you have been with us since episode #1 or not!

Now that procurement professionals and organizations have absorbed the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are stable enough footing to start to serve others - including our suppliers.

Many of the programs procurement has put in place in recent years have incentives partnering with small, diverse businesses. Those disruptive companies are now at high risk of being disrupted by the pandemic, in some cases permanently.

Amanda Prochaska is a long time procurement leader, working for companies like the Kellogg Company, Kraft Heinz, and MGM Resorts International. In 2019, Amanda founded HPP, a company that specializes in helping companies of all sizes achieve operational excellence by supporting the performance of their key suppliers.

HPP has set up a Recovery Program to help suppliers take advantage of assistance from the Small Business Administration (SBA):

• Special steps being taken by the SBA, with backing from the US Treasury, to help small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
• Government eligibility requirements for SBA loans and how the funds need to be used
• The types of product and service suppliers that procurement may want to share this information with (i.e. facilities maintenance providers for buildings that have been closed down temporarily)

Procurement 6 is a new short podcast from Art of Procurement that will be published in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode will have 6 short segments that summarize this week in procurement.  

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

Procurement has always been fertile ground for tech entrepreneurs. We have pulled together some of the most compelling – and potentially disruptive – procurement solutions for a Special Startup Series. We will ask each entrepreneur questions about what gap in the market their solution addresses, how they differentiate their technology and what their tools look like in action.

In this podcast, we interview Rowena Ludwig, Chief Marketing Officer of TraDove, a social networking platform built to match and connect business buyers and sellers and blockchain payment solution provider.

Discussion highlights include:

• How blockchain tokens can be used to facilitate B2B payment transactions.
• The security and information storage implications of a B2B blockchain v. a traditional one.
• Why social network-based technology is the most efficient way for global buyers and sellers to connect.

Procurement 6 is a new short podcast from Art of Procurement that will be published in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode will have 6 short segments that summarize this week in procurement.  

Segments will range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that have captured our attention this week.

In September of 2021, Art of Procurement collaborated with BT Sourced, the procurement services group at BT, to produce a hybrid event called Dare to Discover: Reaching New Heights for Procurement. As part of this event, Philip Ideson had the opportunity to facilitate three executive panel sessions. 

In this week’s episode, you’ll get to hear the last of those panels, a discussion focused on the formation of procurement companies. He interviewed three leaders who work, not just in internal procurement departments, but companies that spun procurement out of their organizations to create independent procurement companies. 

The panel featured Cyril Pourrat, Founder and Chairman of the Board at BT Sourced; Vanessa Pepperell, Global COO and Strategy Procurement VP at Aquanima; and Beatrice Felder, CEO of BuyIn, who support companies like Deutsche Telekom and Orange. The conversation they had gives all procurement organizations and leaders an opportunity to consider what it is like to think like an external service provider.

Of particular interest are their comments on:

• The stories and journeys behind their move from internal procurement lead to externally facing service providers
• What suppliers of the companies they support think about the shift in model and how it affects their experience
• How they think the model of a procurement operating company will evolve from this point forward

Today I am joined on the show by Charlotte de Brabandt.  As you will hear in the show, Charlotte was recently honored by ISM, as part of their 30 Under 30 Awards program, as the Megawatt winner, and for good reason!

In her day job, Charlotte leads Energy Procurement for Johnson & Johnson.  But that only tells half the story!  Charlotte is also a prolific public speaker, TEDx organizer, charity worker, and she is passionate about the intersection of procurement, technology and the future of jobs.

In our conversation, we talk about the project that led to Charlotte’s 30 Under 30 Award, I ask for advice on how to improve my own public speaking, and Charlotte shares some of her habits that allow her to fit everything in!

It’s been a long, winding road that has brought procurement to its current state of flawed incentive structures and measurement challenges. Rob Hills, CEO of Hills Advisory Services and former Deloitte partner, has seen it all unfold firsthand. 

But recognizing problems and how they were created is only half of the battle. 

With over three decades of procurement experience that stretches back all the way to the formative days of strategic sourcing at A.T. Kearney in the mid-1990s, Rob has seen the classic procurement dilemma play out more times than he would have liked. CPOs “plant a victory flag” on savings while CFOs fail to see procurement’s win materialize on the P&L.

In the sixth episode of “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement,” co-hosts Rich Ham and Philip Ideson speak with Rob about this measurement gap, how it has evolved over time, and why procurement’s measurement and incentive systems have remained largely unchanged over the years, despite their obvious flaws. 

Rob also offers a unique historical perspective of the disconnect between negotiation and execution, especially as procurement grapples with balancing increasing workloads and larger portfolios of spend with shrinking resources. 

Rob, Phil, and Rich also explore potential innovative thinking about incentives, metrics, and process design that could finally address the longstanding challenges in demonstrating procurement’s full purpose, value, and impact for the business.

Links:

• Rob Hills on LinkedIn
• Rich Ham on LinkedIn
• Learn more at FineTuneUs.com

Although most corporate conversations about data focus on quality, data utilization is also a critical concern. 95% of data never gets used, and since the useful life of data can be as short as a few days or weeks given the industry, value is being lost every day. 

Fortunately, new data is being created at an even faster rate; the decision to get started is ours to make.

This episode is based on an AOP Live session focused on the results of the fifth annual Data Quality and Governance Study conducted by The International Association for Data Quality, Governance and Analytics (IADQGA). 

Kelly Barner was joined by Joseph Yacura and Vishal Patel to answer live questions related to data quality and actionability:

• How to get started on a data quality journey despite the complexity of today’s business environment
• Best practices and rules of thumb about the lifespan of corporate data
• What procurement should be doing differently and/or better with the system-generated data to which they already have access

In this four-part special series, host Philip Ideson speaks with members of the Sievo team. In each episode, we discover a unique way that differentiated decision making can help procurement 10X their impact: procurement as an information hub, ESG analytics, investments in talent, and crossing the data to action gap.

 In the second episode, he is joined by Heta Pirttijärvi, a Product Manager at Sievo, to talk about ESG analytics.

 They take this opportunity to discuss: 

• Why ESG topics are becoming more important and receiving more attention 
• The main obstacles companies struggle with as they try to translate their ESG vision into an actionable strategy 
• Procurement’s likely future role in ESG initiatives

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.

Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.

Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

“It’s still on us, as procurement professionals, to invest the right amount of time in building relationships and building our narrative.” - Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director Procurement Beauty and Wellbeing North America, Unilever

Unilever has built a notoriously well-integrated procurement program, and they are widely recognized for the strong partnership between procurement and the rest of the business. 

In this episode, Philip Ideson explores what procurement excellence looks like in practice with Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director of Procurement, Beauty and Wellbeing North America at Unilever.

Drawing on Unilever’s success, Ashish explains how procurement can transcend traditional boundaries of cost savings to become an integral part of business decision making, innovation, and revenue growth.

Ashish also discusses:

• How procurement can build trust and credibility with stakeholders by ‘speaking the language of the business’
• Balancing long-term supplier relationships with the immediate need for supply chain resilience 
• Having constructive conversations with stakeholders about risk without being seen as a roadblock  

Links:

• Ashish Dhongde on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube

It’s easy to think that in this world of access to information, being able to forecast, anticipate and (most importantly) RESPOND to changes is a straightforward task.

Just Google search the category or read articles from credible news sources and off you go. Right?

If the last few years have taught procurement anything it is that casual, high level research is not enough.  We need to understand what changes are coming and develop the insight required to help the company prepare for that change.

Because of the importance of market intelligence to procurement’s work, we kicked off Categorypalooza 2022 by talking about how it can be used to generate insight that offers actionable value to the business. In this session, Host Philip Ideson speaks with ProcurementIQ’s Embry Davis and Ben Kempenich about how all of us can be prepared for the uncertainty and disruptions to come:

• How to know which data is the most reliable
• How the speed of business is impacting the shelf life of intelligence
• Which stakeholders and suppliers procurement should turn to as potential sources of category insights

Joining me on the show today is Dave Quillin, the manager of procurement for Alliant Credit Union, the seventh largest credit union in the United States.

Dave has specialized in technology procurement with organizations such as Orbitz and Groupon before taking on a new opportunity at Alliant to build a procurement and vendor management office from the ground up.

In today’s Art of Procurement, Dave shares his journey at Alliant.  What I really like is that Dave built his organization by first listening to the needs of the business, and by focusing more broadly on value rather than cost savings alone.

Dave shares the importance of balancing process with agility, particularly in regulated industries such as financial services, along with lessons learned along the way.

For his work at Alliant, Dave was recognized by Supply & Demand Chain Executive as a member of their 2017 Pros to Know.

On November 4, 2015, the Art of Procurement podcast officially launched. In 5 years, we’ve released 345 episodes and surpassed 500,000 listens. We’ve gone from being a new, unproven idea to being a trusted voice in the community and the #1 weekly podcast in all of procurement.

To celebrate this occasion, we are running a special series that will extend through the rest of November. For the next three weeks, there will be a daily 5-minute show that answers one of the most interesting and frequently-asked questions we have received from listeners. The questions will be answered alternately by AOP Founder and Host Philip Ideson and AOP General Manager Kelly Barner. (Fun fact: Kelly was AOP podcast guest #6.)

Thank you for joining us for this series and for being part of the AOP community - whether you have been with us since episode #1 or not!

Today I am joined by Michael Shaw.  Michael is well known through the Sourcing industry, particularly here in the US, he is currently chairperson of the American Council of Sourcing and Procurement Executives.

The heart of today’s conversation revolves around a concept called 3SI – Supplier Specific Sourcing Intelligence. The premise is that a number of companies struggle to access the supplier market intelligence that they need to really enable them to build win-win relationships with key suppliers.  We tend to focus on win-lose, or leverage when it comes to using market intelligence.  Following the principles of 3SI provides the ability to craft deals with key partners – and Michael provides an example of a Microsoft licensing deal – that provide better results than a typical negotiation would achieve.

In this Art of Procurement special series, host Philip Ideson asks members of the WNS Denali team: How do you design an end-to-end ecosystem based procurement operating model? Throughout the four parts of this series, they provide their insight about the basics of an ecosystem approach, and then each set of guests digs into specifics across category management, source to contract, and procure to pay processes.

In the fourth and final episode in this series, he is joined by Sushant Adhikari, Director, and Sanjeev Singh, Director of Capabilities and Solutions, both at WNS Denali. 

In this interview, Sushant and Sanjeev focus on the procure to pay process:

• Why it is a mistake (and a lost opportunity) to think of procure to pay as a tactical process
• The critical role that data quality plays for organizations that are trying to maximize the ROI of their procure to pay capabilities
• The most important challenges that leading procurement organizations are overcoming through mature procure to pay