Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.
Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.
Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.
“It’s still on us, as procurement professionals, to invest the right amount of time in building relationships and building our narrative.” - Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director Procurement Beauty and Wellbeing North America, Unilever
Unilever has built a notoriously well-integrated procurement program, and they are widely recognized for the strong partnership between procurement and the rest of the business.
In this episode, Philip Ideson explores what procurement excellence looks like in practice with Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director of Procurement, Beauty and Wellbeing North America at Unilever.
Drawing on Unilever’s success, Ashish explains how procurement can transcend traditional boundaries of cost savings to become an integral part of business decision making, innovation, and revenue growth.
Ashish also discusses:
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Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.
Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.
Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.
“Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” Warren Buffet’s vice chairman Charlie Munger’s succinct and insightful take reminds us of the power of incentives—and provides a backdrop for this project.
In this first episode of the “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement” podcast, produced collaboratively by the teams at Art of Procurement and Fine Tune, Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham, Philip Ideson, and Kelly Barner lay the groundwork for this year-long series of bi-weekly episodes featuring hand-picked guests that will explore various flaws within commonplace procurement department incentive structures, and how those flaws are holding the profession back from its most purposeful potential.
This first conversation sets the stage for frank discussions with practitioners, procurement leaders, and subject matter experts about how prevailing systems of incentives create harms to the status quo, what a healthier system might look like, and the outcomes such improved systems might produce—both within the company’s walls and beyond them.
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Building off the previous discussion about “purposeful procurement,” Philip Ideson, Kelly Barner, and Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham are back to take a bold, honest look at the systemic flaws that have all too often shaped procurement’s behaviors and limited their impact.
In this candid conversation, we share and discuss real-world examples about how current incentive structures elevate short-term thinking and less-than-exceptional outcomes, ignoring the huge potential procurement has to generate value.
By tackling uncomfortable truths about dysfunction within the procurement system, Phil, Kelly, and Rich explore the topic with thoughtfulness, precision, and the kind of hard-won wisdom that can only come from years of experience in the procurement trenches. Listen in as we ‘interrogate’ procurement’s role in perpetuating flawed approaches and processes, usually to their own detriment. The candid exploration of these flies in the ointment will also serve as a springboard to solutions as Season 1 progresses.
Stay tuned for episode 3, where our guest Oliver Hurrey will offer a glimpse of what truly inspiring and purposeful procurement looks like in practice.
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As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
After taking an honest look at some of procurement’s most pressing challenges and flaws in episodes 1 and 2, Philip Ideson and Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham shift their focus from problem-spotting to solution-seeking with special guest, Oliver Hurrey, one of the world’s foremost experts on purposeful procurement.
Through his work on sustainability and decarbonization in the supply chain with the Scope 3 Peer Group and the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, Oliver is the ‘real deal’ when it comes to empowering purpose-driven procurement teams to create meaningful change.
In this episode, Oliver shares compelling real-world examples of instances where procurement has looked beyond traditional measures of success – and some pretty challenging constraints – to find purpose and meaning, proving what is possible when procurement takes a deliberate approach to problem solving.
For example, Oliver shares how an innovative carbon pricing initiative is transforming the way major corporations evaluate suppliers, and the story of one little-known family-owned painting business that impressed seasoned procurement leaders at an international conference by sharing how they frame sustainability initiatives as a competitive advantage.
These stories of purposeful procurement prove how procurement can lead organizational change and differentiated value creation when they choose to innovate beyond the status quo, to emphasize and incentivize the right KPIs, and to stand up to broken, ineffective systems.
Oliver’s own experiences with purpose-driven procurement create a clear path for what’s to come in episode 4 and beyond in “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement” as we dive increasingly deeper into how procurement can envision and implement the kinds of transformative practices that create meaningful, lasting impact.
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“I look at building a business case in terms of storytelling, and the story that you have to be able to tell in procurement is around better, faster, and cheaper.” – Pratik Patel, Director - Category Management - Labor/North America Technology Spend, Mastercard
Understanding how to address skeptics, overcome objections, and communicate procurement’s value will ultimately determine how much buy-in (and resources) procurement receives. This holds true whether you are building a business case to establish a new procurement function or lobbying corporate leadership in a well-established team.
In this episode, Philip Ideson talks with Pratik Patel, Director - Category Management - Labor/North America Technology Spend at Mastercard, about how procurement can use everyone’s desire to eliminate waste to build a strong business case for investment and support.
Pratik also discusses:
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Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.
Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.
Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.
“Instead of taking an inward look at your sourcing and procurement models, consider the easiest, simplest experience that you can provide to your internal customers.” – Ryan Bradford
Procurement is in the midst of a transformative period, but at the heart of all this change is one thing that is always relevant: the customer experience.
Procurement has traditionally done itself a disservice by approaching the source-to-pay process with their own goals, needs, or processes in mind. But, by taking a more customer-centric approach and prioritizing their internal stakeholders, they can actually drive more value for the entire organization.
In this episode, Philip Ideson speaks with experienced procurement leader and seasoned executive Ryan Bradford about how procurement can refine their approach to customer engagement. In many cases, this creates an opportunity to challenge conventional thinking about how procurement should interact with their customers to achieve the best outcomes.
As Ryan says, it starts by putting the customer experience first.
Ryan also discusses:
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Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time.
Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement.
Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.
“Procurement is going to make a transformative leap. It may be in a year. It may be in three years. But it’s going to happen. So start experimenting.” – Remko Van Hoek, Full Professor of Practice SCM, Executive Director CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame, hosted by Walton, University of Arkansas - Sam M. Walton College of Business
It’s time to make procurement fun again.
That’s what Remko Van Hoek, Full Professor of Practice SCM, Executive Director CSCMP Supply Chain Hall of Fame, hosted by Walton, University of Arkansas - Sam M. Walton College of Business, told Philip Ideson when they sat down together at DPW Amsterdam 2024.
In this episode, Remko shares insights from the 10X Procurement survey he led in conjunction with DPW, and what it reveals about how AI and digital transformation are injecting opportunity, value, and, yes, even fun back into procurement.
The survey also uncovered a troubling ‘inspiration to action’ gap between procurement’s AI readiness and their ability to successfully execute at the pace required by the rest of the business.
Along with discussing digital transformation pressures, Philip and Remko also explore:
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