We are all customers in our personal lives, and most of us can easily distinguish between a good customer experience and a poor one. But can procurement create a positive customer experience in a B2B setting for all of our different stakeholder groups consistently and at scale? Absolutely - but we have to set the right expectations and priorities first.

This interview, based on one of the most popular sessions from AOP Mastermind LIVE 2020, features Stephanie Thum, CCXP, Founding Principal of Practical CX, discussing the fundamental principles of customer experience with Art of Procurement General Manager Kelly Barner. 

Key takeaways from this session include:

• The core values emphasized in formal customer experience development and how procurement stands to benefit from putting proven practices into use 
• Suppliers are not one of procurement’s customer groups, but they are absolutely vital and we can’t create a positive customer relationship without them
• The difference between creating or fostering a good customer experience and putting in the energy and effort to repair a poor or damaged customer experience

After years of investment in talent and technology, procurement has become a catalyst for enterprise transformation. No other function is in a better position to lead disruptive change and reinvention than procurement. But if we want to thrive in the ‘next normal,’ we must be able to go let go of the past, be bold, and embrace intelligent risks. 

This interview, based on one of the most popular sessions from AOP Mastermind LIVE 2020, features Chris Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group, and Keith Hausmann, Chief Revenue Officer at Globality. They join Host Philip Ideson to discuss how leading CPOs are helping their teams re-imagine the ‘art of the possible’ and to drive new sources of value for their companies and for their stakeholders. 

Key takeaways from this session include:

• Digitizing legacy processes is not enough to be agile in today’s challenging, fast-paced environment
• Procurement should not try to generate revenue, but rather work to enable revenue through creative strategies
• Since large companies tend to buy from other large, stable companies, procurement needs to be focused on incentivizing suppliers to deliver their very best work
• Capabilities that can be leveraged - regardless of where in the organization they sit - should be pulled into procurement projects rather than expecting to increase headcount

To meet today’s challenges in supply chain spend management, we must embrace automation. Gone are the days of being able to throw bodies at a problem. Systemic inefficiency not only creates unsustainable processes, it creates enormous waste and revenue risk. Now is the time for procurement to lead through change.

Procurement teams are uniquely positioned to lead supply chain resilience initiatives. That’s because procurement brings together the right suppliers, products, and materials needed to fulfill customer demand. 

In this podcast based on an AOP Live session, Tom Kieley, CEO and Co-Founder of SourceDay, and Go Kamiyama, Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives from NetSuite, answer audience questions about:

• How we can better understand supply chain-related spend management challenges
• What resilience and responsiveness to demand signals look like in practice, and how procurement can incorporate them in their existing processes and frameworks
• Opportunities for procurement to embrace automation for the purpose of increasing supply chain visibility and resilience

For all the stories of stress and struggle we heard in 2020, there have also been some amazing examples of heroism and success. Procurement teams worked long hours with little information to go on to keep their operations running, often partnering with suppliers and colleagues to find creative solutions on the fly.

Art of Procurement recently partnered with Ivalua to interview several CPOs about what they learned in 2020 and how that will change their approach going forward. 

In today’s bonus podcast, I thought I would share just a couple of short outtakes from two of the CPOs - Dan Symon, the CPO of New York City and Sajid Kunnummal, the Vice President and CPO at Navistar.

January 1, 2021 won’t bring a return to normal, but it does mark a new beginning. Procurement has never stopped maturing and evolving, and the past year brought on an enormous growth spurt. We’ve uncovered hidden weaknesses, seen the benefits of transparency and risk management, and forged new partnerships both inside and outside of the company.

To read more about how CPOs are pivoting their teams to enable success in 2021, you can get the full paper at artofprocurement.com/2021pivot.

Financial services spend has never been what you might consider ‘low hanging fruit,’ but many procurement organizations are getting to the point where they are not only ready to manage it, the organization needs them to bring consistency and transparency to these critical supplier relationships and operational requirements.

Diego De la Garza, Senior Director Global Services & Delivery at Corcentric, brings over a decade of industry experience to the table to address this complex spend category. Whether the company is B2B or B2C, the increasing role of technology in global business is increasing the range of financial services requirements most companies have and raising the bar on what current partners need to be capable of. 

In this interview, Diego describes the financial services category with Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner:

• How new or disruptive technologies are redefining financial services or altering how companies partner with providers meet those needs
• The key internal relationships procurement needs to manage when sourcing financial services and how those other functions measure success
• The nuances and opportunities to switch suppliers and how they compare to other, less regulated, categories of spend