Art of Procurement

Over the course of the last 15 years, Tom Beaty has grown Insight Sourcing Group (ISG) from a one-man operation to one of the leading procurement and sourcing consulting firms. Ranked by Inc Magazine among the fastest-growing private companies in America for the last 10 years, ISG is regularly recognized as one of the nation's best boutique consulting firms to work for. In today's episode, recorded live at the SIG Spring Summit, I start by asking Tom what he is seeing in the field today in terms of the key challenges that CPO's are facing, and some of the ways that they are working to solve those challenges. We then focus on the topic of "what comes after sourcing". We explore the startling statistic that only 60% of "addressed" spend is actually spent with the contracted supplier, and specifically, how can procurement professionals address and mitigate the risk of the savings leakage that occurs as a result.

My guest on the show today is Brian Bancroft. This is Brian's second appearance on the show. We originally sat down back in episode 126, and I enjoyed the conversation so much that I have been eager to find an opportunity for us to record another pod. Brian has a wealth of experience across, and outside of the procurement function, and has enjoyed roles including as Senior Director for Indirect Procurement and Shared Services, and then CPO of Asia Pacific and Africa regions for Kellogg's, and most recently the VP of North America Indirect Procurement, and then of Direct Procurement for The Coca-Cola Company. Since we last talked, Brian has made the move to Church and Dwight, where he is Chief Procurement Officer, embarking on another procurement transformation journey. And it is procurement transformations that are the subject of our conversation, where I ask Brian to share his learnings from executing a number of transformations around the world.

Digitization is a hot topic in procurement today, and while it will undoubtedly have a big impact on the future of our profession, it is often difficult to separate the hype from the reality. There are few organizations better positioned to help me explore this topic than HfS Research – a company I have followed for a long time – and their Chief Strategy Officer, Saurabh Gupta. In today's episode, Saurabh provides a "Three Horizon" roadmap. Horizon One technologies are those that must be explored and utilized today, while Horizon Three technologies are those that are more experimental. I also question Saurabh to share details of HfS' "OneOffice" thinking, and to answer a question that has long been on my mind: how exactly an analyst research report is written.

I have long admired Vodafone as being a pioneer in both embracing and supporting supplier enabled innovation and last year Vodafone partnered with the government of Luxembourg to launch what I believe is an innovative approach to working with smaller, growing, companies that they named Tomorrow Street. I wanted to learn more about Vodafone's approach, and so I invited Warrick Cramer, the CEO of Tomorrow Street, and Mark Perera, the CEO of Old St Labs and a Tomorrow Street partner, to join me on the show. On launching Tomorrow Street, Warrick shared how he had a blank piece of paper in terms of where to position it within the Vodafone organization. I really enjoyed learning why he chose to partner with procurement, and the opportunity that he sees for procurement in facilitating and delivering supplier enabled innovation.

Today's show comes to you straight from the SIG Spring Summit last week in Washington DC, and features Danny Ertel, the founding partner at Vantage Partners. Danny's practice focuses on helping buyers and providers of services enter into, manage, and when necessary, remediate their relationships. Danny is a lawyer by training, and prior to founding Vantage Partners, he served in a number of high profile roles including as a law clerk to Justice Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court and as a Senior Researcher at the Harvard Negotiation Project. Danny has co-authored four books, including "Getting Ready to Negotiate – The Getting to Yes Workbook" with Roger Fisher, and is frequently cited in publications such as The Economist and Harvard Business Review. I have followed Danny's work for a long time. He first came to my attention as a thought leader and subject matter expert when while I was a Category Manager for Outsourcing & Offshoring, and I was delighted to welcome him onto the show. We focused our conversation on ways in which we can turn around difficult relationships, both with suppliers and internal stakeholders.

My guest on the show today is Walt Charles, the Chief Procurement Officer at Biogen. Walt will be well known to a number of listeners – he is a long time CPO with such illustrious companies as Johnson & Johnson's Consumer Division, Kellogg's, Kraft Foods, and now at Biogen. As you will hear in the interview, Walt is very passionate about the potential power of procurement, but also believes that some of our more traditional approaches – such as the parent principle - may no longer be fit for purpose. Walt has achieved significant results throughout his career by redesigning processes and investing in enabling tools and technology. In our interview we talk about the "how", with a specific focus today on tools and technology. But in the first part of the interview, I wanted to dig a little deeper into Walt's background, and his philosophies as a leader.

Back in September 2016, Kelly Barner and I opened the mic for 40 revolutionaries to share their thoughts on the future of procurement as part of The Procurement Revolution event. One of the conversations that we enjoyed the most was with Jack Miles, the former CPO of CIBC, AIG, Computer Associates and the Secretary of State for the Florida Department of Management Services. Our topic of conversation with Jack is just as relevant today as it was 18 months ago. We focused on the topic of mindset, and how a growth mindset is so important to be successful given the changing nature of procurement. In today's show, I am publishing the Q&A with Jack in its entirety.

I was delighted to welcome onto the show this week Jocelyn Stahl, the Director of Indirect Sourcing for The Hershey Company. The Hershey Company are on an ongoing transformation journey to build an Indirect Procurement organization that embodies the ideals of being a catalyst. In our conversation, recorded live at ProcureCon, I ask Jocelyn to share the work that she and her team are doing to create a culture that respectfully challenges the status quo while maintaining a laser focus on the needs of the stakeholder – which can often come into conflict with one another! I also ask Jocelyn her perspective on Guided Buying as a strategy to not only as a tactic to manage tail spend but also as an opportunity to increase the stakeholder perception of working with procurement.

In the episode this week, I want to talk a little bit about the idea of stepping back and challenging things that we do every day, or the things that have become "generally accepted procurement thinking". I won't be seeking to suggest we are doing things wrong, or that things need to be fixed. No, my intent is to help us all, collectively, get our creative juices flowing! I kick things off by challenging three of our commonly held beliefs and strategies: supplier consolidation, high spend equals high importance, and that our stakeholders have seek to avoid, rather than collaborate, with procurement.

I'm joined today by Jeanette Nyden. Jeanette is a well renowned contracts and negotiations specialist, who approaches her work with a focus on building win-win, sustainable, agreements. In fact, Jeanette was a co-author with Kate Vitasek and David Frydlinger of Getting to We: Negotiating Agreements for Highly Collaborative Relationships. Today's podcast is the first of a two-part series that I am recording with Jeanette that will deep dive into negotiating balanced deals. Jeanette has a fascinating background – including as a trial lawyer and professional mediator – that she applies to her work. Today, we focused on the role of procurement as the facilitator, and how Jeanette's applies her learnings as a lawyer and mediator to pre-negotiation preparation and developing the persuasive arguments that are necessary to secure complex, yet balanced, deals.