We often refer to “the business” when we are trying to ensure that we take a larger perspective on procurement’s work. But at the end of the day, “the business” is made up of many individuals, each one of them is a different type of procurement stakeholder. We want to share more stakeholder voices because procurement is always at risk of misunderstanding or misinterpreting what they really need from us.
At Mastermind LIVE Fall 2021, Philip Ideson moderated a session with Chet Patel, Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Americas at BT, and Cyril Pourrat, CPO at BT Sourced, BT’s procurement services company.
Art of Procurement has had a front row seat to watch the transformation of the BT Sourced enterprise procurement team, one that we believe is setting the standard for the future of procurement. In this session, focused on stakeholder collaboration, we got to hear:
Data was a major topic in 2021, whether the focus was on quality, access, or analytics. There always seems to be too much data, not enough data, or trust issues from procurement and/or the business to make our decision-making processes as data-driven as we would like.
At Categorypalooza 2021, Betsy Pancik, Joe Adamski, and Nick Buitrago from ProcureAbility considered the challenge of getting accurate data to inform procurement’s buying strategies and offer their personal tips on how to overcome those challenges.
Betsy Pancik moderated the session, which included deep dives on topics such as:
In 2021, we facilitated a lot of discussions about category management. Is it still fit for purpose or does this 25-year old business process need to evolve faster to keep up with the ways procurement continues to change?
At Mastermind LIVE Spring 2021, Nancy Nicoll, VP of Indirect Sourcing Center of Excellence at Retail Business Services, and Jaime Robles, CPO of Caseys General Stores, joined Philip Ideson for a panel session to discuss procurement operating models - specifically, whether category management is 'dead' or 'alive' and if procurement should pursue a relational or expertise-based model for working with the business.
They answered questions such as:
Supplier experience management is a new area of focus for most procurement teams, even though we often serve as the primary point of contact for suppliers. We just haven’t thought about it before. If we want to improve the supplier experience, becoming customers of choice in the process, we are going to need to revisit many of our policies, processes, and programs.
In an effort to better understand the supplier experience and the opportunity associated with improving it, we partnered with HICX to run a three-part AOP Live series. We were joined by leading practitioners to answer audience questions on three topics:
The three hours of conversation were full of insights and inspiration, and we’ve edited the best portions of them into this podcast.
Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap to building the procurement function of tomorrow.
In TRANSFORM - a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality - we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies who are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.
In the third episode in the series, host Philip Ideson talks with Vanessa Pepperell, Global COO and Strategy Procurement Vice President of Aquanima, the procurement company of Santander. Their two decades’ worth of expertise now allows them to support external clients as well.
In this interview, Vanessa explains how Aquanima is driving digital transformation in services procurement:
There are multiple ways for procurement to achieve savings - and some are more collaborative than others. The more planful we can be about the overall process, the more opportunities we are creating to work arm-in-arm with the business in pursuit of those savings.
Art of Procurement recently hosted an AOP Live webinar with Joe Payne, SVP of Source-to-Pay at Corcentric, and Dave Quillan, Senior Manager of Procurement at Alliant Credit Union (ACU) to discuss how procurement should discuss savings with the business and what incentives can be used to ensure the business feels rewarded by the process.
Dave and Joe share their experiences and points of view to these topics and more:
Each change journey is unique - and yet - can benefit from embracing proven best practices that have been formalized by specialists with equally unique expertise. The benefits of taking such a journey are becoming clear at the University of Massachusetts, as they bring their print, marketing, and branded merchandise spend under management through a partnership with SupplyLogic.
David Cho is the Chief Procurement Officer and Managing Director at the University of Massachusetts. His team began their change journey with an investment in their partnerships (both internal and external), technology, and data that helped them achieve a deeper understanding of their marketing and print services spend. They worked at the category level to inform strategies and decisions that would have a lasting impact and deliver multiple forms of ROI for the university.
In this episode, based on an AOP Live session, David is joined by Phil Schoonmaker, CEO of SupplyLogic, and Host Philip Ideson to answer live audience questions about what he and his team have learned on their change journey:
Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap to building the procurement function of tomorrow.
In TRANSFORM - a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality - we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies who are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.
In the second episode in the series, host Philip Ideson talks with Adam Brown, Head of the Procurement Digital Garage and Senior Manager of Transformation at BT Sourced. Adam and his team are leading the way in transforming the role and the impact of procurement beyond traditional boundaries.
This interview gives Adam a forum to talk about the importance of building a digital procurement ecosystem to enable lasting transformation:
Building self-service capabilities that distributed buyers really don’t have to worry about getting right
In 2021, 62% of the companies in the S&P 1500 index did not provide an annual forecast - some even stated that there is just too much uncertainty for them to be accurate (WSJ, 9/22/21). This is a reality that all companies in all industries worldwide have accepted; market conditions will remain uncertain for the foreseeable future.
In this episode, based on an AOP Live session, host Philip Ideson talks with Sherri Barnes, Director of Market Intelligence Services at ProcureAbility, and Kristen Rellihan, Senior Manager of Advisory at ProcureAbility. They discuss how procurement can develop strong buying strategies despite the certainty of uncertainty in the market and what tactics may be best suited in our current inflationary environment.
Sherri and Kristen also answer live audience questions about:
Usually the transformation journeys we hear about are focused on a single company, but there are instances of industry wide transformation efforts as well. The oil and gas industry is a perfect example. These companies are looking to evolve into broader chemical and energy organizations for the sake of sustainability, and procurement has the opportunity to become a strategic partner in this transformation.
In this episode, host Philip Ideson gets a look into the role of procurement transformation in the oil and gas industry by interviewing Artem Sherekh, the Global Oil and Gas Practice Lead at SAP, and Ferhat Eryurt, a partner at apsolut Group. Headquartered in Germany, apsolut Group is an SAP and SAP Ariba consulting partner that delivers on-premise cloud and hybrid procurement solutions.
After shining a light on the role of procurement in the oil and gas industry, Artem and Ferhat talk about:
Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap to building the procurement function of tomorrow.
In TRANSFORM - a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality - we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies who are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.
For the first episode in this special series, host Philip Ideson talks with Dr. Elouise Epstein, a partner at Kearney and the acclaimed author of Trade Wars, Pandemics, and Chaos: How Digital Procurement Enables Business Success in a Disordered World. She is surely at the forefront of driving the procurement profession to an elevated future.
Dr. Elouise shares her honest perspectives on:
The State of the Procurement Profession report, one of the largest studies of the profession, is now in its fourth year. Among the key takeaways is data that suggests cost-related objectives remain dominant, with sustainability initiatives far down the list of priorities, despite discussions and content that suggest more progress has already been made. The silver lining is that the entrepreneurial procurement movement seems to be taking hold, and may usher in a time of accelerated change.
In this episode, host Philip Ideson is joined by Dr. Marcell Vollmer, Partner and Director at Boston Consulting Group, and Christoph Bode, Professor at the Business School of the University of Mannheim and Endowed Chair of Procurement. They recently collaborated, with the assistance of ISM, to survey the procurement profession, and have published their findings in the newly released report “State of the Procurement Profession 2021.”
The key findings of the research focus on entrepreneurial orientation, digitization, and ESG, as well as considering procurement reporting structures:
In a recent Art of Procurement survey, access to market insights was cited as the second most pressing challenge for procurement professionals. Even when procurement is able to access the insights they need, they still have to ensure that they are up-to-date, harder than ever given the level of uncertainty and unpredictability in today’s business climate.
In this week’s episode, Host Philip Ideson is joined by Ashley Cruz, Manager of Client Services at ProcurementIQ, and Thomas Lawson, their Product Development Manager. Starting by providing an honest look at procurement’s legacy relationship with market intelligence, they share some of their best tips for making insights actionable and provide a behind the scenes look into how ProcurementIQ builds their market intelligence reports.
In particular, Ashley and Thomas answer questions about:
The high number of low-cost transactions is just the beginning of the challenges with tail spend management. Spend often finds its way into the tail through multiple ‘wrong turns,’ each of which requires a different approach by procurement and a correspondingly different resolution. There is no one ‘cause’ of tail spend and therefore there is no one solution.
In this episode, which is based on an AOP Live session, host Philip Ideson speaks with Jean-Baptiste Anne, Head of Enterprise Sales and Professional Services Teams for Amazon Business, and Vishal Patel, VP of Product Marketing at Ivalua about all things tail spend.
How do they define it, how to integrate self-service models, and ways to look at the ROI of your tail spend program.
Jean-Baptiste Anne and Vishal Patel answer audience questions about:
Procurement has been working hard to expand our value proposition beyond savings for a long time, and the current conditions in service-based industries may provide a perfect opportunity. Many service and people-based industries are being hit hard by what is being called ‘The Great Resignation.’ Managing these categories on cost alone will definitely not be enough.
In this episode, host Philip Ideson speaks with Amy Fong, Vice President of Sourcing and Vendor Management at Everest Group. Amy has had a front row seat to procurement transformation as both practitioner and an advisor, and she is currently focused on services categories. This interview was recorded as part of PASA’s (Procurement and Supply Australasia) ninth annual PASA Premier Confex.
Amy answers service-specific questions about:
We have observed a huge surge in investment in procurement technology startups over the last 12 months, and many of them are leveraging new ‘cognitive’ technologies to be smarter and more intuitive than the procurement technology of years past. In order to truly understand the value proposition of these solutions, procurement needs to have a solid grasp of what cognitive technology is and how its introduction will impact current technology, processes, and talent.
In this episode, host Philip Ideson speaks with Melissa Drew, an Associate Partner at IBM. Melissa has 27 years of procurement and supply chain experience, from both an industry and consulting perspective. She collaborates with organizations to reimagine how companies should look in order to remain competitive and was recently recognized as a global leader in consulting in the ‘Excellence in Influence’ category.
Since most procurement organizations are in the early stages of thinking about cognitive technology, Philip asks Melissa questions about:
Everyone who works for the Clorox Company is encouraged to lead ‘with their head, heart and guts.’ For procurement, this meant boldly accepting - and even driving - change by reimagining their indirect procurement operating model.
Art of Procurement was recently joined by Kathy Thrasher, a Senior Procurement Manager at The Clorox Company, and Mike Caldron, Senior Group Manager at WNS Denali, for an AOP Live session all about their transformation journey. When asked what made the greatest difference in their success, Kathy knows the answer offhand, “Communicate, communicate, communicate.”
Clorox transformed their indirect P2P - half of their total spend as a company - in the middle of the pandemic, during a time when they were ‘all hands on deck’ trying to support the global spike in demand for antibacterial products. They were able to move from operating without any purchasing system to empowering distributed buyers and suppliers to meet their own transaction and information needs.
In this episode, host Philip Ideson speaks with Kathy and Mike about:
News of supply shortages and price increases seem to be everywhere. For consumers, that means their dollar doesn’t buy quite as much as it used to, but for procurement, it means every supplier email or call is likely to be a request for a price increase. What is procurement to do?
In this crossover episode from The Sourcing Hero podcast, produced in partnership with Una, Host Kelly Barner flips the tables to interview AOP Founder and Managing Director Philip Ideson. His advice on how to address supplier price increase requests is timely - as is his input on how procurement can avoid being ‘re-pigeonholed’ as a cost-only team.
If you enjoy this interview, subscribe to The Sourcing Hero podcast for weekly conversations on topics of interest to procurement with a wide-ranging group of guests.
In this conversation, Phil shares his perspective on:
It isn’t often that procurement has the opportunity to hear the sales perspective on our work, but that is precisely what we bring you in this episode of the Art of Procurement podcast.
Chris Mele is the Managing Partner of Software Pricing Partners. In this interview, he provides an outsider’s perspective on two topics that are important to procurement:
Before hitting play, we would like to offer a special listener’s caution on this conversation...
There are two ways to listen to this episode. You can either hear a salesperson advocating for process changes that might make his job easier (not recommended), or you can hear honest input that will help you design your sourcing strategy to better deliver what the business needs from its supply partners. Which way you listen is entirely up to you.
Procurement, treasury and accounts payable have one set of shared objectives when it comes to supplier engagement and management, but all too often they operate in silos. This complicates supplier management and does little to improve their experience while working with a company. Restructuring how these groups work together through procurement transformation can create opportunities to support each other’s goals and therefore better deliver against business expectations.
In this episode, Host Philip Ideson is joined by Joe Payne, SVP, Source-to-Pay at Corcentric, and Jennifer Ulrich, Senior Director of Advisory at Corcentric. They are both return guests on Art of Procurement and are two of four authors of the recently released book: Managing Indirect Spend.
This conversation is based on a recent AOP Live webinar titled, “Bridging the Gap Between Procurement, AP, and Treasury through Procurement Transformation.”
In that session Joe and Jennifer answered questions from a live Art of Procurement audience about:
“I'm going to change your mindset. You're going to want me to help you. You're going to want my team. You're going to want more procurement and you're going to advocate for us. I love watching it shift.”
Many procurement leaders have been tasked with building the first procurement organization at their company. It is always a challenging journey, with many unexpected twists and turns. For fast-growth companies with a global footprint, establishing formal procurement is absolutely critical, but it has to be done in a way that does not impede the growth trajectory.
Sarah Kaye is the Director of Procurement at Spin, a part of Ford Mobility, an electric scooter and bike-share company. She is combining her passion for marketing with the procurement experience she gained working at organizations such as Target, Radisson Hotel Group, and WeWork.
Sarah’s responsibilities at Spin began at the beginning; building and growing the company’s very first procurement team.
In this conversation, Host Philip Ideson and Sarah discuss how she is building procurement capabilities that truly align with the needs of the business, and how she is leveraging her marketing skills to build and sell the procurement value proposition:
Corporate travel is one of the most complex spend categories that procurement has management responsibility for. For almost two years now, business travel has been in a state of flux resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, leaving most companies and procurement teams with a whole series of unanswered questions:
How should your corporate travel policy change to reflect new realities? How do you negotiate deals when volumes are uncertain? How do you account for traveler safety? And how do you integrate sustainability into your travel program?
In this four-part special series brought to you in partnership with Egencia, the world’s business travel platform, we will cover all of these pressing issues and more.
In the final episode of the series, host Philip Ideson speaks with Kristina Zdrilic Siljedahl, Global Account Manager and Sustainability Ambassador at Egencia, to discuss the tactics and metrics that companies can use to integrate sustainability into their travel program.
Corporate travel is one of the most complex spend categories that procurement has management responsibility for. For almost two years now, business travel has been in a state of flux resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, leaving most companies and procurement teams with a whole series of unanswered questions:
How should your corporate travel policy change to reflect new realities? How do you negotiate deals when volumes are uncertain? How do you account for traveler safety? And how do you integrate sustainability into your travel program?
In this four-part special series brought to you in partnership with Egencia, the world’s business travel platform, we will cover all of these pressing issues and more.
In the third episode of the series, host Philip Ideson speaks with Caitlin Deegan, Senior Director of Strategy at Egencia, to discuss the elevated responsibility organizations have to protect traveler safety, and what actions they can take to minimize risk as much as possible.
Corporate travel is one of the most complex spend categories that procurement has management responsibility for. For almost two years now, business travel has been in a state of flux resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, leaving most companies and procurement teams with a whole series of unanswered questions:
How should your corporate travel policy change to reflect new realities? How do you negotiate deals when volumes are uncertain? How do you account for traveler safety? And how do you integrate sustainability into your travel program?
In this four-part special series brought to you in partnership with Egencia, the world’s business travel platform, we will cover all of these pressing issues and more.
In the second episode of the series, host Philip Ideson speaks with Delphine Boulton, Director of Consulting at Egencia, to discuss different approaches procurement teams can take to negotiate travel deals when traveler demand is uncertain.
Corporate travel is one of the most complex spend categories that procurement has management responsibility for. For almost two years now, business travel has been in a state of flux resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, leaving most companies and procurement teams with a whole series of unanswered questions:
How should your corporate travel policy change to reflect new realities? How do you negotiate deals when volumes are uncertain? How do you account for traveler safety? And how do you integrate sustainability into your travel program?
In this four-part special series brought to you in partnership with Egencia, the world’s business travel platform, we will cover all of these pressing issues and more.
In this first episode of the series, host Philip Ideson speaks with Ann Dery, Director of Global Travel at S&P Global, and Rob Fodor, Global Account Manager at Egencia, about the changes companies are making to their travel policies in the short term and their perspective on when different types of travel will resume.