Art of Procurement

It seems that we live in a service-centric world these days, and that includes a growing number of procurement spend categories. Although we've made headway in IT, legal and marketing, there is one category of professional services spend that still gives most of us reason to pause: management consulting. In this episode of the podcast, I ask Helene Laffitte, Founder and CEO of Consulting Quest, some of the questions I hear most frequently about managing consulting spend. For instance: How can we find the 'right' consultant? When should I lean towards small/boutique consulting over the big brands? Are daily rates an effective pricing model? What if we don't know exactly what we need from the consultants (yet)? What are the primary drivers of price in a consulting services agreement? Ironically, when managing consulting spend, procurement's best opportunity to add value may occur long before the list of participating providers is finalized and the RFP is sent out. According to Helene, the most critical activity when sourcing consulting is defining scope, objectives, milestones, deliverables and deadlines. These components will not only drive the qualification and selection process, they may determine whether or not the whole engagement is successful. As Helene points out, procurement's ability to listen and discern the difference between what the business is asking for and what they need is essential. And once that need is defined, we move to challenge #2: being "tight" on what is needed while being "flexible" about the approach. Listen in for advice and insight on this complex services spend category from a proven consulting procurement expert.

The commonly-cited disconnect between procurement and finance all comes down to one central question: where did the money go? As hard as procurement works to negotiate and track different types of savings, they always seem to evaporate or be reallocated for other projects. In the best cases, this gets the enterprise more value for their dollar, but in the worst cases can lead to reduced credibility for procurement – especially with finance. I'm joined today by Dana Small, Global Category Manager at BioMarin and author of the Ms. Category Management blog. It is rare to find a procurement professional with a background in finance, and rarer still to find a procurement practitioner so willing to share their insight and experiences that they start a blog. In Dana we find both, and that's a real win for the procurement community. While working in Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Dana realized that by the time an efficiency opportunity is identified by finance, it is usually too late to act upon it. So she decided to move 'up' in the process, and pursued a role in strategic sourcing. At the encouragement of a colleague, she began sharing her experiences via a blog in early 2019. Doing so has not only bolstered her professional reputation, it has also changed how she reflects back on her "day job". In this podcast, Dana talks about the importance of reflection and perspective in all procurement work, whether it is tracking savings, working with suppliers or engaging with the community at large.

Last week, I had the opportunity to facilitate a webinar last week with procurement consulting firm Efficio, titled Driving Greater Procurement Performance from Complex Direct Spend and Factory Indirects. In the webinar, I was joined by two of their US-based principal consultants, Arthur Mattouch and Waldo Saville. During the webinar, Arthur and Waldo shared three case studies demonstrating the strategies and tactics that can be used to deliver sustainable savings in a mid-cap manufacturing environment. In today's podcast, I am sharing this case study, along with a couple of questions that I asked during the webinar. This is a company looking to quickly reduce costs through a coordinated cost reduction program, while minimizing disruption on the business. As you will hear, they ended up switching suppliers for only 12% of the total number of parts. To watch the entire webinar on-demand, including the supporting presentation, you can register here.

What do childcare, ducks, and power have to do with negotiations? In today's episode, host Philip Ideson shares three negotiation tips taken from his experience as a procurement practitioner and entrepreneur.

As we enter the summer, I'm going to spend some time answering some of your most frequently asked questions. These pod's are going to be bite-sized, so I'd love to hear your feedback on whether you like the shorter podcasts or not. One of the topics that I get asked the most about is negotiations. So for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to share some insights based on my own experience. This week, I'm going to dig into the archive and share a part of a podcast I recorded 3 years ago - specifically with regards to the question of how to maintain supplier relationships after a tough incumbent negotiation. It is a topic that I have a lot of experience of - both from the practitioner and service provider sides of the table!

If procurement is going to attract the 'best of the best' to join our ranks, no matter what their background, then at some point we can expect to work alongside someone with no experience in procurement. Whether such a move is successful is likely to be dependent on the individual transferring in as well as the overall culture of the organization. I interviewed Liam Moniz, Manager of Procurement Systems & Services at Fortescue Metals Group, during SAPAriba LIVE in Austin, Texas. Two years ago, Liam had no experience in procurement, and, as he told me, "didn't know a purchase order from a purchase requisition or invoice". Based upon his success in other roles, the business brought him into procurement to be a fresh set of eyes as they invested in process, technology and talent transformation. His background in IT Service Delivery and Support prepared him for the technology-focused parts of transformation, but process and customer satisfaction were another matter. To address those, Liam leaned on his understanding of business objectives and his desire to engage with stakeholders in pursuit of value – including through the implementation of guided buying.

Whether you are a consultant or a practitioner, it seems like the grass is always greener on the other side. Consultants are constantly on the road, work late hours and are subject to high expectations from their management team and the point people on each customer account. Practitioners find themselves at the mercy of consulting teams they didn't personally decide to hire, lack the influence naturally extended to external parties and are often left to deal with the details – and the devil in them – once the consultants have flown off to their next engagement. I'm joined today by Mark Richardson, Head of Procurement, Fleet & Administrative Services at AAA Southern California. He is uniquely qualified to discuss the differences between procurement consultants and practitioners because he's been both. Having joined AAA initially as an individual contributor, he now manages the team who were initially his peers. In this podcast, Mark addresses the challenges of making the transition from consultant to practitioner and making the transition from peer to leader.

Today I am joined on the show by my good friend, procurement executive recruiter Iain McKenna. Iain is Founder and Managing Director of the executive search firm Sourcing Solved. Our conversation is split into a couple of different parts: In the first half of our interview, we discuss the hiring process, and specifically if our reliance on AI - such as keyword searching on CV's and resumes - severely restrict an organizations ability to hire the best candidate for a role. Iain shares tips on how procurement leaders can hire for personality, drive, EQ and an empathetic management style rather than those with the best keyword match. In the second part of the interview we switch focus and specifically discuss hiring in the context of procurement services and software firms. A number of firms are aggressively hiring in this space, and yet their initial brief tends to focus on hiring from competitors rather than from industry. We discuss how, as a practitioner, you can best position yourself for a move into consulting or to a procurement software firm - and the benefits for software and consulting firms in hiring practitioners.

Many procurement organizations pay lip service to innovation, but few are taking the steps required to make it a reality. Part of this has to do with the difficulty overcoming the paralysis of the unknown and part of it has to do with a willingness on procurement's part to risk failure. Ironically, facing the unknown and pushing past the fear of failure makes it far more likely that disruptive innovation will be achieved. I'm joined today by Cyril Pourrat, Chief Procurement Officer at Sprint. They are three years into their transformation journey, one that has a new purpose in the context of Sprint's pending merger with T-Mobile. If the merger goes ahead, procurement will be expected to drive significant synergy-based savings. If it does not, achieving cost savings will become even more critical for Sprint to thrive as a stand-alone company. In preparation, Cyril and his team have launched a number of innovative programs. One of them is 'Procurement Digital Labs' – an initiative that is empowering a multi-generational team to identify and experiment with a broad range of technologies. The objective is to provide buyers with far deeper insights use in the development of their sourcing and category strategies. Another is enabling the use of predictive analytics in negotiations. In this podcast, Cyril talks about: The enabling technologies being evaluated by Sprint to help break the mold of traditional procurement thinking How design thinking has changed their procurement value proposition and attitude towards disruptive change The potential of hands-free procurement, made possible by digital assistant technology

If you've been in the workplace – any kind of workplace at all – for longer than six months, chances are good you've experienced poor management at least once. Sadly, being in the workplace for years or even decades doesn't come with the same odds of encountering even one great manager. Why is that? Why are great managers so rare? I'm joined today by David Deacon, career HR executive and the author of The Self Determined Manager: A Manifesto for Exceptional People Managers. He and I talked about the complex effort we call management, or as David defines it, "a hugely important, impactful role that most people don't do very well." The main challenge is that most poor managers don't want to be bad managers; they've just never experienced a good manager. And without a proper role model, it can be very hard – although not impossible – for an individual contributor to scale themselves and their impact by effectively leading a team of people towards a single, unifying goal. According to David, great managers start by truly knowing themselves. They are as clear about their mission, vision and purpose as they are objective about their personal strengths and weaknesses. Great management requires the creation of an environment where the team can thrive, and it is usually supported by a natural sense of empathy that inspires each member of the team to do a little better than they thought was possible every single day.