682: A Breath of Fresh Air: Building Procurement in High-Growth Companies with Liem Hua

“At larger traditional companies, there is a common theme in procurement that ‘I need a seat at the table, and I need to justify to you why I am in this room with you.’ But a startup is actually a breath of fresh air. There are not that many tables, so you are at the table, regardless of whether you like it or not.”- Liem Hua, Head of Procurement at Rippling

Building and scaling a procurement team in a high-growth startup can look very different from traditional corporate environments. Procurement has to adjust their approach to almost everything, from stakeholder management to strategy building and hiring to the very role they play in the business. 

In this Art of Procurement episode, Philip Ideson speaks with Liem Hua, Head of Procurement at Rippling, about the differences between procurement’s role and scope at a startup or high growth company versus a large, traditional enterprise. Liem has held a number of different roles at startups and high-growth companies, but he has also worked for large corporations like Delta Airlines, and he understands the kind of code-switching procurement has to engage in depending on their environment. 

In this episode, Philip and Liem discuss:

• How startups make it easier for procurement to play a larger, more impactful role in the business, and ways procurement can take advantage of this
• How procurement should adjust their approach in an environment where growth, scalability, and speed are top priority
• Best practices for procurement in hiring, processes, goal-setting, and negotiating in a high-growth company

Links:

• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Improving Internal Perception of Procurement from Intake to Procure w/ Liem Hua, Michael Denari, and Rujul Zaparde