So here we are: The Best of 2016 List.

As the year comes to a close, I sat down to consider which episodes have been the most powerful and impactful in 2016.  Some of these have been my personal favorites, others determined by download numbers.  What I did try to do is to make the list as diverse as possible, and it features interviews with CPO's, CEO's, Founders, Educators and Consultants.  There should be something for everyone here!  

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/bestof16

Pierre Mitchell was the first supply chain practitioner to become a procurement "industry analyst" with roles at AMR Research (now Gartner) followed by The Hackett Group, and now Spend Matters. There are few people, if any, that cover procurement than understand, and have such passion for, the growth of our profession.

Both Pierre and I were together last week at the ISM Inside Indirect Conference 2016 in Las Vegas, and so we picked up the mic’s and hit record! So, today’s show is an informal chat covering a range of topics.

Areas we cover include: 

• What challenges in procurement is Pierre motivated to try and help solve?
• Has procurement evolved over 2016 or as we still in the same position, with the same challenges and questions, as we were 12 months ago?
• How can we differentiate marketing hype with reality when it comes to potentially game changing technologies?
• What is the most overused and most underused procurement KPI?

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

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 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 

This week I welcome Gordon Donovan on to the Art of Procurement.  Gordon is a presently a member of the procurement leadership team at Metro Trains Melbourne, and he has a broad range of experiences as a practitioner including Head of Procurement roles, consultant and training.

Gordon's career spans both the UK and Australia, and includes roles at organizations such as the UK National Health Service, Transport for London, Healthscope, ArcBlue and The Faculty.

Today, we are going to discuss influence and I’m willing to say that there are few, if any, who have studied the topic of influence and procurement as thoroughly as Gordon.  He wrote a 20,000 word dissertation for his Masters Degree on the topic of the development of influencing skills within the Australian procurement community, and he frequently weaves the topic into his procurement learning and development programs.

Areas we cover include:

• The need to demystify procurement
• The difference between functional influence and influencing skills.
• The importance of facilitation skills
• An overview of different influencing styles and how to determine which style you should use depending on who you are seeking to influence
• Why kids are the best influencers and what we can learn from them
• Key traits of a successful influencer
• The power of inspiration
• Gordon’s tips for building trust, which is the foundation of building influence.

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

With it being a holiday weekend here in the United States, I thought I would do is share with you one of my favorite submissions from The Procurement Revolution event from back in late September.

More and more, I believe the mindset is a key enabler or roadblock in our efforts to think differently and elevate the procurement value proposition. 

Without that change in mindset, it makes the other necessities – such as competency development – almost irrelevant.  And so I wanted to focus today in the topic of mindset.

Today’s piece was one that I really enjoyed.

It is a submission from Elisabeth Lawrence.  Elisabeth is a long time procurement executive who just after we recorded todays piece joined a leading materials company to set up their Category Management Center of Excellence.

You will hear Elisabeth talk about the need to shift mindsets if we are to take procurement to the next level.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/mindset-shift 

Scott Gillespie is an expert in procurement, and corporate travel.  He was an original member of the AT Kearney team that launched the 7-step sourcing process in the 1990’s, and has since founded a number of companies with a focus on helping organizations better understand, benchmark and measure the performance of their corporate travel programs.  Scott also authors the popular blog Gillespie’s Guide to Travel & Procurement.

Scott passionately believes that corporate travel programs should be managed on outcomes and value, rather than cost alone.  In today’s Art of Procurement, Scott and I discuss innovative ways in which procurement leaders can manage the success of their travel program over and above the traditional cost-focused metrics.

Areas we cover include: 

• The basic key metrics that are foundational to any corporate travel program.
• The best sources of data for gathering travel spend information.
• Cost drivers that have the biggest impact on travel spend.
• An introduction to the concept of traveler friction.
• The importance of taking into account trip outcomes vs. just focusing on trip cost.
• What constitutes a “road warrior” and should they be subject to different travel policies vs. irregular travelers.
• An overview of four key metrics that enable value-focused measurement of a corporate travel program:
  • Scrap rate of travel
  • Traveler risk management index
  • Attrition rate of road warrior population
  • Trip quality

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

Today's episode is in response to a listener question.  I was recently asked for guidance on how to maintain supplier relationships following a tough incumbent negotiation - particularly one that occurs mid-contract. 

Listen in to hear my share five considerations that I have used both as a practitioner and service provider to maintain relationships with my suppliers and clients following difficult negotiations.

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

Jimmy Anklesaria is one of the most prominent thought leaders in procurement today.  Jimmy is considered by many as the go-to expert when it comes to the strategic management of cost. He literally wrote the book (well, two books), and regularly travels the globe helping organizations reduce their third party costs.  Importantly, he does this not through the leveraging of power but by using data as the foundation of fact based sourcing and continuous improvement.

Today’s episode of the Art of Procurement is the second in a two-part series with Jimmy focusing on the strategic management of cost.  

Back in episode 102, Jimmy shared his tips for understanding cost and cost drivers to enable fact based sourcing negotiations.  Today, we shift focus, and discuss eight key steps that procurement professionals can take to manage and optimize costs once the contract has been signed.

Areas we cover include:

• Should we have clauses in contracts that enable flexible pricing as major cost drivers change? If so, how should those be structured?
• Why a consumer price index (CPI) is the worst possible mechanism by which to adjust prices.
• The eight steps that procurement professionals can use to manage cost post contracting including
  • Building a cost-management culture with your supplier
  • Identifying the factors which have the biggest impact on the cost of a product or service
  • How to reduce, change or eliminate activities that create costs.
• The importance of inherent capabilities in building a cost management culture across your procurement organization.

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

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

In today’s Art of Procurement we take a look inside the career journey of Alex Brown, long time Chief Procurement Officer for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and winner of the 2013 Zycus High Performing Procurement Leader award.

In this wide ranging discussion focused on developing a long term career in procurement, Alex shares a number of key decision points that he had to make on his journey to becoming a CPO.  

Listen in to the conversation to hear Alex’s perspective on a number of issues facing today’s procurement professional, including: 

• The value of having sales experience as a differentiator within procurement.
• Is there value in pursuing a professional procurement certification?
• The importance of “destabilizing” from your comfort zone.
• How you can lead transformation programs as a legacy employee.
• The keys for a Manager to put themselves in the best possible position to become a Director, and for a Director to become a Head of Procurement / CPO.
• The importance of dedicating enough time as a leader to the forward looking and strategic aspects of a job in face of the demands to solve today’s problems.
• The two things that Alex knows now that he wished he would have known earlier in his career.

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

Today is the Art of Procurement's first birthday!

What a crazy, and rewarding, 12 months it has been.  

Today I go behind the scenes at the Art of Procurement.  I look back at the first 12 months and reflect how the show has evolved over the past 12 months - and importantly what are some of the lessons that I have learned.  Not procurement lessons, but lessons from my journey as a podcast host.

I then look forward to 2017.  What are some of the things I want to do better?  If you are interested in my vision for the next 12 months, I'm happy to share, warts and all!

Thanks for joining my on this journey to help elevate the role of procurement.  I have learned A TON, and I hope you have too!

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/turning1 

Jimmy Anklesaria is one of the most prominent thought leaders in procurement today.  Jimmy is considered by many as the go-to expert when it comes to the strategic management of cost. He literally wrote the book (well, two books), and regularly travels the globe helping organizations reduce their third party costs.  Importantly, he does this not through the leveraging of power but by using data as the foundation of fact based sourcing and continuous improvement. 

Jimmy had so much information to share that we recorded two separate shows!  These cover the strategic management of cost from initial sourcing to end of contract. 

Today, we focus on the initial sourcing and negotiation process. Jimmy shares a number of insights, including:

• Why as a young company Director he did not understand the importance of procurement, and what his light bulb moment was.
• The most important part of the negotiation process
• Why business deals have to be win-win to be sustainable over the long term
• What a procurement professional can do to better understand the cost of a product or service before they begin a negotiation
• How you can use publicly available information to develop should-cost models based on understanding key cost drivers
• Whether you need to pay for data or not.
• Why, while you can acquire data from third parties or a central COE, a procurement professional must not abdicate responsibility for understanding the costs and cost drivers of a product or service.

This conversation was an eye-opener for me, particularly as we consider how to apply cost management techniques that are prevalent in the procurement of Direct materials to Indirect services.

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

I was thrilled to be a part of the Zycus event as the media partner for the conference. As part of the partnership, I was able to moderate a main stage panel event and present a separate session in the leadership tract. In today's episode, I provide an overview of the two sessions that I was involved in.

I also share my key takeaways from the activities that I was able to attend - with topics such as the Internet of Things, Relevancy of Procurement, Procurement Innovation and the role of technology in procurement as a competitive advantage (the answer may surprise you).

For more information, and to download a copy of my slides from session that I led, visit http://artofprocurement.com/horizontakeaways 

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

Carlson Rezidor - one of the largest hotel groups in the world with brands such as Radisson and Park Place – embarked on a path to identify, build and deploy a global source to pay platform in mid-2015.

I am joined on the Art of Procurement today by Scott Deibert, the SVP of Procurement, and Bart Baetens, Director of E-Procurement for Carlson Residor.

In today’s show, we chronicle their journey. I ask Scott and Bart to share the key decision points and lessons learned, as the sought to transform their global procurement technology stack. 

Topics that we discussed include:

• Why did Carlson Rezidor decide to pivot from their existing technology stack to a new solution.
• Why did they decide to source an end to end suite rather than a series of point solutions.
• What was their key criteria for selecting the platform that they ultimately chose?
• What were some of their key challenges as they deployed and rolled out the platform?
• What would they do differently?
• What is the once area that they still continue to struggle with.
• How are they planning to continue to leverage procurement tech post roll-out – what is the #1 technology capability that is on the horizon that they want to take advantage of.

If you are interested in the practical side of procurement technology – and the realities of embarking on a S2P transformation, you will not want to miss today’s show!

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

Today’s episode is the second in a two-part series considering Category Management: what we can do not only to implement Category Management, but also do so in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

The reason why I think this is important is that often I have seen Category Management implemented for the right reasons, but after the initial burst of energy and picking the low hanging fruit, it becomes difficult to keep the momentum going and provide value in other ways.

Today’s guests on the show are Lynn Rideout, Senior Manager of Category Management, and Chris Eyerman, Senior Director of Program Management, both at Denali Sourcing Services.  In part two of this two-part series, we discuss three key imperatives for a Category Manager that are required to become a trusted advisor:

1. Know Your Stakeholders

2. Understand Your Categories

3. Deliver Results 

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

Today’s episode is the first in a two-part series considering Category Management: what we can do not only to implement Category Management, but also do so in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

The reason why I think this is important is that often I have seen Category Management implemented for the right reasons, but after the initial burst of energy and picking the low hanging fruit, it becomes difficult to keep the momentum going and provide value in other ways.

Today’s guests on the show are Lynn Rideout, Senior Manager of Category Management, and Chris Eyerman, Senior Director of Program Management, both at Denali Sourcing Services.  In part one of this two-part series, we discuss the building blocks that are required to build a strategic and sustainable Category Management capability.

Specifically, we will discuss:

• Why Lynn and Chris believe that Category Management is a fundamental shift in the way an organization approaches procurement rather than an extension of the sourcing process.

• The journey to building a sustainable category management program and the failure modes that impact an organizations ability to launch, sustain and scale.

• A deep dive into the building blocks of strategic category management, covering vision process, governance and capabilities. 

If you are interested in hearing how you can use Category Management to make a difference to your stakeholders, today’s show is for you.

For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/CMpart1

Back in early September, the Art of Procurement left the recording studio and went live for the first time with a webinar that I hosted with a friend of the show, RFP365. 

The theme of the webinar was Weighted Scoring.  Specifically, how you can use weighted scoring as part of your sourcing process, to help make decisions based on facts, rather than feelings.

The webinar was broadly split into a couple of different parts – I was asking the questions of RFP365 in terms of technology – how can you set up your RFP’s to enable weighted scoring – and then my co-presenters turned the tables and asked a number of questions of my in terms of the practicalities.

Today I am sharing the part of the webinar where I was asked the questions. 

You will hear Anna Spady and Dave Hulsen – both Art of Procurement alumni – asking me a number of questions such as my thoughts on how to avoid biased questions, scoring mistakes, when is weighted scoring not appropriate and what to do when the top scoring supplier is not selected.

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

Corporate Social Responsibility – or CSR – is a key value lever that procurement can pull to differentiate ourselves from the perceptions of the past, and that can enable us to play a role in revenue generation, not just cost reduction.  Indeed, how companies approach their CSR commitments will play an ever increasing role in the way that they are perceived by their target customers, impacting brand value and ultimately pricing power.

In today’s Art of Procurement, I am joined by Jason Pearson, the President & CEO of the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC).

From my experience, influencing and managing supply chain sustainability – covering both Direct and Indirect spend categories - is something that as a procurement community we have not yet tackled head on.  Examples of success are limited to a few leading edge procurement teams.

So in today’s episode, I wanted to explore what we – as procurement professionals and leaders – could do to integrate sustainable thinking into the way that our organizations buy.

In my conversation with Jason, we discuss:

• Why is supply chain sustainability so important?
• What can procurement leaders do to make sustainability a prioritization for their organizations (Jason recommends a number of case studies for further reading).
• How can we initiate cross-sector collaboration to address sustainability issues that impact all the players in our industry but that require an industry wide response?
• How can procurement leaders prioritize sustainability initiatives – for example, by supplier or by category?
• The eight Direct and Indirect spend categories that lend themselves to sustainability initiatives, particularly when you are looking to start a program and are seeking early wins.
• The impact that legislation is having – and will continue to have – on how we building sustainability into our scoping and sourcing activities.

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

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

Back in 2012, Sylvain Mansotte received the call from the newly appointed CPO of a large Australian based construction company to assist in the building a new procurement function.  He jumped at the chance, and one of his first priorities was to understand his new employers’ third party spend profile.

Within 2 months, Sylvain had uncovered a $20M fraud that spanned 12 years and led to the perpetrator – a finance executive with 30 years of experience in the company – admitting to the crime, and ultimately being sentenced to 15 years in 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.

The experience inspired Sylvain to found Whispli, a two-way platform that enables the anonymous communication of sensitive information.  Originally designed as a tool to help whistleblowers report potential frauds without fear of recriminations, the platform is now being used across many industries, including helping students anonymously report bullying or harassment at school.

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

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

It has been all hands on deck this week preparing for The Procurement Revolution. In the course of recording content, there was a piece that I just couldn’t wait for next week to publish.  So, I thought I would hand over the reins of the Art of Procurement Friday Show today to Kate Vitasek.  

Kate is a faculty member in the University of Tennessee’s Graduate and Executive Education programs, and founder and lead researcher for the Vested business methodology.

I asked Kate to provide her perspective on an area that she believes we need to think differently about to help us to continue to mature as a profession.  Listen in to hear Kate explain the concept of sourcing business models, and why different sourcing approaches are needed based on the nature of the relationship you are trying to build with the selected supplier.

For more information, visit http://theprocurementrevolution.com