Art of Procurement

Hi there everyone, and welcome to this week's Art of Procurement interview, which is powered by SIG. My guest today is Chris Camejo, the Director of Product Management and Threat Intelligence at NTT Security - probably the scariest sounding title I've ever had here on Art of Procurement. Chris and I connected in person at the SIG Fall Summit in Carlsbad, California, where we had an opportunity to talk about what threat intelligence means and what role procurement can play in strengthening a company's security risk level.

Welcome to today's Art of Procurement interview powered by SIG. Today's show is part of a mini-series of six different episodes that I recorded live at the recent SIG Fall Summit in Carlsbad, California. Being a live recording, you'll hear background noises like baristas making coffee, venue employees taping wire to the carpet, and lots of other little sounds in between. We actually had a booth set up in the main corridor of the conference venue, so you're sure to get the atmosphere from the event from those interviews. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Alan Holland, the founder and CEO of Keelvar. Given that Alan has a degree in computer engineering, a PhD in artificial intelligence, and has worked as a research fellow and a lecturer, he is probably one of the most qualified people in procurement to answer my first question, "What really is AI?"

My guest this week on the pod is Tim Cronin, the CPO of GuideWell, a not-for-profit mutual holding company in the healthcare industry. Tim and I connected live at the SIG Fall Summit in Carlsbad, California, where we had an opportunity to talk about his journey with Sourcing Business Models in a presentation with Kate Vitasek, founder and lead researcher for the Vested business methodology. What I really enjoyed about our conversation is that Tim shared putting the theory of ​​Sourcing Business Models into practice - what worked, what didn't, and what lessons were learned along the way.

You will notice from the title, that this is not an ordinary Art of Procurement podcast. In fact, it is not an AOP podcast at all. As regular listeners will know, I have been working very closely with Kelly Barner – we partnered on The Procurement Revolution, co-founded Palambridge, and Kelly helps me behind the scenes to keep the wheels on here at Art of Procurement. Kelly has been hosting a procurement and supply chain podcast for over six years, and in fact it was one of my inspirations behind starting Art of Procurement. We announced yesterday that Kelly's show – Buyers Meeting Point – or BMP Radio – will be produced by, and hosted on, the Art of Procurement Network. Today, as an introduction to BMP Radio, I am including today's episode in the AOP feed. Kelly's guest is Jonathan O'Brien. Jonathan is the CEO and Owner of Positive Purchasing, an international procurement consultancy and training provider. He is also the author of four books, the most recent of which was just released this year, titled 'The Buyer's Toolkit: An Easy to Use Approach for Effective Buying.'

Hi there everyone, and welcome to this week's Art of Procurement interview, powered by SIG. My guest today is Christian Lanng, the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Tradeshift. I'm really happy to welcome Christian back to the show. He first joined me in August of 2016, all the way back in episode 80! It was one of my most enjoyable interviews because Christian has strong views on the future of procurement, and the intersection of technology and supply chains. In today's conversation, I wanted to follow up to see what, in his mind, has changed since we last spoke – is technology evolving as fast as predicted? How does Christian see organizations starting to adapt? I was also interested to learn how Tradeshift determines which 'future technologies' to invest in, and why they recently became members of the Hyperledger project, a global, open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.

Today, I am joined by Gene Zaino, the founder and CEO of MBO Partners. MBO Partners are at the forefront of the gig or the project economy. I was delighted to welcome Gene onto the show to discuss a little bit more about the gig economy - particularly in the context of knowledge-based workers. We discussed how organizations can start thinking about taking advantage of an on-demand workforce. And if they already are, what are some of the things that they can do to take it to the next level? So, my first question for Gene was if he could share a little bit more about what MBO Partners actually does.

I am joined today by Antonio Humphreys, the Senior Manager of Global Procurement at Adobe Systems based in California. I've actually seen Antonio speak before, and he has always been high on my list of practitioners that I wanted to interview and so I'm delighted we were able to make it happen. We were connected by the team at ProcureCon, as Antonio will be speaking at the upcoming ProcureCon Marketing conference in New Orleans at the end of November. Antonio has enjoyed a career that, after an internship with NASA, actually started in sales before he jumped over to the other side of the table and joined procurement. He worked for organizations such as Shell, Hewlett-Packard, and Gap before joining Adobe. He has a deep background in procurement organizational development and marketing, and those two topics were the focus of our conversation. I started by asking Antonio what keeps him in procurement after spending time in both sales and procurement...

I am joined today by Julienne Ryan, Principal of J Ryan Partners. Julienne is a former Executive Director of ISM-New York but the majority of her career has been in the world of HR, recruitment, and organizational development. Her keynote was focused on effective communications, and so I invited Julienne on the show to talk about the art of storytelling and how we can use that technique in our careers and to influence our stakeholders.

I am joined today by a repeat guest and friend of the show David Hearn. David is a long time procurement executive for companies such as Juniper Networks, Kaiser Permanente and Sun Microsystems. Today, he is the CEO and Founder of advisory firm CPO Advisement Services. I caught up with David at the recent ProcureCon Indirect West conference in Scottsdale where he was talking about Machine Learning and its impact on procurement. Our chance to talk came in the midst of the hotel's garden, surrounded by birds, waterfalls - and a construction site! With this natural backdrop, we started our conversation about machine learning - the opportunities for procurement and the long term value proposition.

I am joined today by two guests, Jen Warner and Eric Martin. Jen Warner is the Vice President of Compliance and Chief Development Officer of Ashe Legal Group (a member of the Palambridge ecosystem). Prior to joining Ashe, Jen served as the Chief Compliance Officer of a Fortune 500 multinational company and, in that role, oversaw the company's global data privacy compliance program. Eric Martin is the Associate General Counsel and Global Privacy Officer for JELD-WEN in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is responsible for all labor and employment and privacy matters, including GDPR compliance. Our conversation today is on the topic of GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, an EU-based regulation that takes effect on May 25, 2018. Once that date arrives, all organizations - regardless of their location - that collect personal data in the EU (including consumer data, customer data, employee data, other third party data) must demonstrate that they are in compliance or face strict penalties.