490: Helping Procurement Push the Envelope w/ Baber Farooq

Procurement currently finds themselves at the intersection of many challenges. The war in Europe, inflation (possibly recession?), sustainability, diversity, and the Great Resignation are just a few. All of these need to be balanced with the core deliverables of cost and risk management, making data, digital experiences, and measurement more important than they have ever been.

SAP has recently commissioned a number of research studies with The Economist, IDC, and Harvard Business Review, all looking at different opportunities for procurement to impact the business. In order to get some idea of their findings, Philip Ideson recently interviewed Baber Farooq, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy, Procurement Solutions at SAP, at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, Florida.

In this conversation, Baber shares his perspective on:

• Why initiatives like sustainability will struggle to have an impact without the measurement and reporting that procurement is already well-suited to provide
• The importance of SAP sponsoring studies on the topics of greatest importance to procurement, and not to support a specific product or functionality rollout
• The two top findings that stood out to him from all of the data and research he has had the opportunity to review