Art of Procurement

Today on the Art of Procurement, I welcome back David Bush, the Chief Revenue Officer for SpendHQ. David joined me back in Episode 139 to share his advice on the steps that procurement leaders can take to gain greater visibility into supplier spend, which is the foundation of robust procurement strategies. Today we continue the conversation with a look to the future - how will spend analytics evolve, and what impact are emerging technologies likely to have in the way we understand and gain visibility into the products and services that we buy.

It is Independence Day week here in the US, and so what I thought I would do today is to go back into the achieves and replay one of my solo shows that I recorded almost 18 months ago now. It is a topic that I remain passionate about – why I think we in procurement should care less about being "best-in-class", and more about what our internal organization really needs from a procurement function.

We have all read the blog posts and listened to the talking heads who inform us that Generation X believes this, and Millennials believe that. But are these generational labels actually true, or do we use them as a lazy or misinformed way to try and understand and connect with peers who are not within our own age group. That is the topic of today's Art of Procurement. I am joined in today's discussion by two experts in the field. Jim Baehr is group lead for Sourcing Strategies Group and through roles both in consulting and as a procurement leader has helped a number of organizations through procurement transformation initiatives. Joining Jim is Mike Urick. Mike is Graduate Director and Assistant Professor at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Both Jim and Mike have joined forces to explore the future of work and the impact of generational labels at they seek to understand how procurement leaders can mitigate the coming talent shortage in our profession.

Today on the pod I am joined by David Bush, formerly of IASTA and Determine, and now Chief Revenue Officer for spend analytics specialist SpendHQ. It has been a year since I first met David, and so his appearance on the Art of Procurement is long overdue! I invited David onto the show discuss the topic of spend analytics. Spend analytics have always been a bit of a pain for me - I have spent a lot of time playing with pivot tables and searching Google to try and categorize suppliers which leads to lots of errors and a lot of time invested! But I know that it doesn't have to be like that. I invited David on to the show to hear his advice on the steps that procurement leaders can take to gain greater visibility into supplier spend, which is the foundation of robust procurement strategies.

We are in for a treat this week on the show. I am joined by Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, the inventor of the personal computer, and a serial entrepreneur. Steve really needs no introduction! Steve recently keynoted the Coupa Inspire conference in San Francisco that I attended a couple of weeks ago. Coupa arranged for Steve to spend 15 minutes with me after he got off stage, and so fresh off his fireside chat, we sat down and I recorded the conversation. As I considered what kind of questions to ask to maximize our 15 minutes together, I focused on areas that have been a key part of Woz's experiences as an innovator, and from his first-hand experience building the Apple brand with Steve Jobs.

This Month in Procurement returns, and this week Mark and I welcome a special guest, Sigi Osagie. Sigi is the charismatic author of the popular procurement book, Procurement Mojo, and a has an extensive background driving performance improvement and change across multiple functions and industries - both as a practitioner and business owner. Mark and I invited Sigi to join us this month to chat about Procurement Mojo, and to hear Sigi's perspective on some of the actions we can take to create procurement success.

At the Art of Procurement, we get many press releases - usually detailing client wins, technology updates, or company acquisitions. However, there was one that came across my desk recently announcing the launch of an Indirect Procurement Standard. With my interest piqued, I reached out to the author of the Standard - Sime Curkovic - to learn more. Sime is Professor of Supply Chain Management at Western Michigan University, and joins me on the show today to share more details about the Indirect Procurement Standard - what was the need, how was it developed, and what does the final output looks like.

There was a time, not long ago, when the only procurement professionals who bought software had responsibility for IT sourcing. Today, with the explosion of SaaS, and the use to SaaS technology to deliver tradition labor based services, buyers across many categories must now negotiate software licenses, either directly or with the help of their peers in IT. At the same time, IT sourcing professionals are faced with the increasing supplier requests to move from on-premise to cloud based solutions. My guest on this episode of Art of Procurement is Randy Roth, the President of Seprio. Randy helps me unpack the world of software licensing, while providing tips to help procurement build stronger relationships with IT, navigate the move to the cloud, and negotiate with the big boys.

As a procurement leader, how do you balance the needs of your stakeholders with your responsibility to be guardians of third party spend? That is the challenge being addressed head on by today's guests on the Art of Procurement. I'm delighted to be joined by David Natoff, the Head of Procure to Pay at Google, and Dr Bernd Huber, the Head of Google's Sourcing Center of Excellence. We focus our conversation on how Google Procurement continues on their journey to become a trusted business partner in a complex and agile organization, while ensuring that they remain strong corporate guardians. Balancing these two objectives that are often in conflict with each other is Google Procurement's greatest challenge – one that they are solving through their journey to move their sphere of influence.

I am joined today by Shaz Khan, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Vroozi, a leading cloud-based business purchasing platform. Shaz has a deep background in procurement technology, with a particular focus on SAP. As long time listeners will know, I learn more and more every day about the nuts and bolts of procurement technology, while tending to spend more time looking for trends that I think will impact our profession. One of those trends is self-service sourcing – empowering the organization to buy directly the vast majority of products and services they need, one the frameworks and governance structures are in place to support it. And so, the main topic for today's conversation is that of self-service sourcing. Is it a threat, or an opportunity for procurement?