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

Note: This is a special - early and shortened - version of our This Month in Procurement podcast due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. We would like to thank you, our listeners and followers, for sharing your time and energy with us during the year. The procurement community is amazing. We continue to be enthusiastic about being part of your network and having you in ours! 

In this week’s podcast, Philip Ideson is joined by two members of the Procurement Leaders team, David Rae, their Chief Product Officer, and Geraldine Craven, Head of Research. They recently completed a study in cooperation with Bain Consulting to understand what is changing in advance of the arrival of 2020 and what remains the same.

In this conversation, David and Geri talk about the key recommendations in Procurement Leaders’ 2020 CPO Planning Guide, including:

• The need for procurement to connect with the broader C-suite agenda
• The organizational differentiation that Procurement Leaders is seeing among companies that focus the customer experience, innovation or risk management
• Whether it is easier to drive transformation when change is already underway or when a team is at the beginning of their journey
• The skills that leadership teams need to make sure are in place within procurement, and why it is critical that procurement recruit from outside the function

“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

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

In October, we heard a total of seven podcasts:

• A solo show from Philip Ideson on Getting Executive Buy-in for a Procurement Change Initiative
• A five-part series with leadership team from Efficio, titled “A CPO’s First 100 Days”
• An interview with Ryan Flynn, a Principal at Deloitte Consulting, about their 8th annual CPO Survey 

This month’s discussion topic is one that most procurement professionals – most people, in fact – think about this time of year… How can I set myself up for success in the new year? With less than 60 days remaining in 2019, there isn’t a minute to waste. The AOP team is already actively engaged in the planning process, and we are positive 2020 is going to a much brighter – and bolder – year!