According to the Cimpress corporate website, “We manage our businesses in a decentralized, autonomous manner so as to ensure we remain close to our customers, focused and entrepreneurial.” Now go back and read that statement again – this time as a member of the procurement team supporting such a collection of businesses.
Evert Karsen is the Vice President of Global Procurement at Cimpress. From his office in Switzerland, he leads a team of procurement professionals that support Cimpress’ multiple autonomous brands, including Vistaprint, Easyflyer, and BuildASign.
They don’t have a mandate to lean on with internal stakeholders, but they don’t have a savings target either. That combination of conditions has made it possible for them to deliver a wide range of value types and build a services-oriented relationship with the business.
You are probably familiar with some of these terms if you have ever participated in a complex contractual arrangement: arbitrator, mediator, certified deal architect, even the “wise persons committee.” All of these titles refer to objective third parties that are brought in to help resolve high-stakes situations.
Kate Vitasek, a member of the graduate faculty in executive education at the University of Tennessee, and the creator of the Vested model, has recently co-authored a whitepaper that takes the concept of the roles above and modifies it to meet the needs of ongoing, complex third-party relationships.
A “standing neutral” is a form of alternative dispute resolution. It is different than the roles above in that a standing neutral is brought in before the conflict occurs; they are part of a contract’s governance structure. They are neutral, and mutually approved by the parties to the contract.
Kate provides background and case examples to show:
Procurement can no longer turn a blind eye to bad data. If we are going to leverage our data for advanced applications such as AI, machine learning, RPA, etc. we have to address data quality now - without spending more time or allowing it to become more fragmented.
Joe Yacura is a former CPO of organizations such as Fannie Mae, Bank of America and American Express, and is the co-author of the 3rd Annual Data Quality and Governance Study in partnership with Dr Rob Handfield and the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) at NC State.
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 January’s podcast interviews and announce the official launch of Procurement, Inc., the new Art of Procurement framework for repositioning procurement as a strategic services business.