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

“We never put our own priorities first. If I save money and diminish my stakeholders ability to succeed, then I am counter productive and they are not going to use me again.” – Greg Antoniono, Anthem

Today on the show, I am joined by Greg Antoniono.  Greg is the Sourcing Director for Marketing at Anthem, one of the giants of the US Health Care industry

Over the course of the last eight years, Greg has taken his marketing procurement group on a journey from having very limited influence to being a key partner with a direct line to the Chief Marketing Officer.

In today’s show, Greg and I discuss the key steps and learnings that he, and Anthem, took on that journey.

Areas we cover include:

• The major steps that enabled Anthem Marketing to become a trusted partner to their business stakeholders.
• The importance of executive level support.
• Why you should never put your own priorities first.
• Why Greg believes why products or services should not be immediately labelled as commoditized when they historically may have been so.
• The biggest disruptions impacting marketing stakeholders at the beginning of 2017.
• Why Anthem embraces small businesses and start up’s – including making direct investments – as a way to identify and facilitate supplier-led innovation.
• Greg’s biggest learnings on the journey to date – including the need to evolve to remain relevant, align, and recognize where you can add value.

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

January 2017 marks the first month of a new collaboration that I am very excited about.  I am co-hosting a new monthly show, imaginatively titled The Month in Procurement, with Mark Perera. 

Mark is the CEO and Founder of Old St Labs, the Founder of Procurement Leaders, and as I have got to know him, I see how passionate he is about levering innovation and technology to help businesses really harness the power of their supply networks.

The show is meant to be a conversation.  We’ll be bringing in other people to join us every month to just chat about the issues of the day and their impact on procurement, and, frankly, anything that we have on our mind!

I’ll be leaving the edit button at home, so what we say, is what you will hear!

This Month in Procurement will have its own podcast channel that you can subscribe to, and I’ll let you know when that is ready to go.

However, for this month, I’m including our conversation in the Art of Procurement feed. 

I hope you like it – let me know what you think.

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

My guest on today’s show is Mark Webb. Mark is the Managing Director of UK based procurement consultancy firm, Future Purchasing.

Following experience as a practitioner and then in consulting with PwC and QP Group, Mark co-founded Future Purchasing, and they have grown from strength to strength since their inception back in 2002.

Future Purchasing undertakes what I think is the leading piece of industry research on the subject of Category Management.

They just put the final touches on their 2017 Global Category Management Leadership Report, a research collaboration with Henley Business School.

What I wanted to do in my conversation with Mark is to pick apart some of the key findings, and understand what differentiates the leaders from followers in terms of their approach to category management, and the subsequent results that they enjoy.

Areas we cover include:

• Why Category Management should be a business process, not a procurement process.
• The background behind the development of the Category Management Leadership Report.
• What differentiates a leader from a follower.
• A summary of the key recommendations from the report, highlighting areas with procurement control, and those that require stakeholder engagement.

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

Today’s guest on the Art of Procurement is Mark Trowbridge, the co-founder and Principal for Strategic Procurement Solutions, and the former Director of Sourcing and Contracts at Bank of America.

Mark is a published author, and a regular presenter at procurement and supply chain conferences. In fact, it was at the recent ISM Indirect conference in December that Mark and I met. As I got to know Mark I knew that I needed to invite him onto the show, and fortunately he accepted my invite without reservation.

The main topic of today’s conversation is the notion of procurement superheroes – what are their characteristics, how can procurement leaders best deploy, and retain them. 

However, as you will hear in the interview, we discuss much more than that!

Areas we cover include:

• Why procurement is making a shift back to full value procurement
• Why CPO’s are being replaced by business leaders, and what procurement leaders can do to stop the trend.
• Why e-auctions and competitive bidding events do not always lead you to the lowest cost, and what you can do instead.
• The 6 key attributes of procurement superheroes, and how they are changing as the procurement value proposition evolves.
• How can a procurement leader build an environment to help all employees act at a superhero level.
• Mark explains the concept of taking intelligence risks that has had a big impact on his thinking.
• What are the right ways and wrong ways to position savings reporting?

Mark’s two resolutions for procurement in 2017.

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

Welcome to 2017!  In this first show of the year, I share details of Art of Procurement's publishing schedule in 2017, invite applications to a new AOP Circle of Experts, and share thoughts on facilitating innovation following a recent visit to a startup accelerator program.

For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/ep116