416: Designing Procurement to Accelerate Success in a High Growth Business

"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:

• The level of sophistication she is able to bring to procurement's internal relationships by making personal connections aimed at delivering long term value
• Why the best problem she has is too many contracts to negotiate and execute
• The importance of procurement taking programs like diversity and inclusion or sustainability and moving beyond tracking and reporting to full advocacy with the business