Art of Procurement

I sat down to record today's episode just a couple of hours after Donald Trump emerged victorious in the US presidential election. And today, I am going to replay a discussion with CPO and former Chief Risk Officer Susan Grelling that I first published in the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote early in the year. In our conversation, Susan shared the steps that procurement can take to help our organizations turn the management of market uncertainty and volatility into a competitive advantage. For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/trumpelected

In today's Art of Procurement we take a look inside the career journey of Alex Brown, long time Chief Procurement Officer for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and winner of the 2013 Zycus High Performing Procurement Leader award. In this wide ranging discussion focused on developing a long term career in procurement, Alex shares a number of key decision points that he had to make on his journey to becoming a CPO. Listen in to the conversation to hear Alex's perspective on a number of issues facing today's procurement professional, including: The value of having sales experience as a differentiator within procurement. Is there value in pursuing a professional procurement certification? The importance of "destabilizing" from your comfort zone. How you can lead transformation programs as a legacy employee. The keys for a Manager to put themselves in the best possible position to become a Director, and for a Director to become a Head of Procurement / CPO. The importance of dedicating enough time as a leader to the forward looking and strategic aspects of a job in face of the demands to solve today's problems. The two things that Alex knows now that he wished he would have known earlier in his career. For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/careerdecisions

Today is the Art of Procurement's first birthday! What a crazy, and rewarding, 12 months it has been. Today I go behind the scenes at the Art of Procurement. I look back at the first 12 months and reflect how the show has evolved over the past 12 months - and importantly what are some of the lessons that I have learned. Not procurement lessons, but lessons from my journey as a podcast host. I then look forward to 2017. What are some of the things I want to do better? If you are interested in my vision for the next 12 months, I'm happy to share, warts and all! Thanks for joining my on this journey to help elevate the role of procurement. I have learned A TON, and I hope you have too! For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/turning1

Jimmy Anklesaria is one of the most prominent thought leaders in procurement today. Jimmy is considered by many as the go-to expert when it comes to the strategic management of cost. He literally wrote the book (well, two books), and regularly travels the globe helping organizations reduce their third party costs. Importantly, he does this not through the leveraging of power but by using data as the foundation of fact based sourcing and continuous improvement. Jimmy had so much information to share that we recorded two separate shows! These cover the strategic management of cost from initial sourcing to end of contract. Today, we focus on the initial sourcing and negotiation process. Jimmy shares a number of insights, including: Why as a young company Director he did not understand the importance of procurement, and what his light bulb moment was. The most important part of the negotiation process Why business deals have to be win-win to be sustainable over the long term What a procurement professional can do to better understand the cost of a product or service before they begin a negotiation How you can use publicly available information to develop should-cost models based on understanding key cost drivers Whether you need to pay for data or not. Why, while you can acquire data from third parties or a central COE, a procurement professional must not abdicate responsibility for understanding the costs and cost drivers of a product or service. This conversation was an eye-opener for me, particularly as we consider how to apply cost management techniques that are prevalent in the procurement of Direct materials to Indirect services. For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/costmanagement

I was thrilled to be a part of the Zycus event as the media partner for the conference. As part of the partnership, I was able to moderate a main stage panel event and present a separate session in the leadership tract. In today's episode, I provide an overview of the two sessions that I was involved in. I also share my key takeaways from the activities that I was able to attend - with topics such as the Internet of Things, Relevancy of Procurement, Procurement Innovation and the role of technology in procurement as a competitive advantage (the answer may surprise you). For more information, and to download a copy of my slides from session that I led, visit http://artofprocurement.com/horizontakeaways

Unless you are new to the show, you will have heard me talk all about The Procurement Revolution event that I co-organized with Kelly Barner of Buyers Meeting Point. We were thrilled with how the event panned out. We had 40 revolutionaries, over 50 pieces of content and five live Q&A interviews throughout the week. We learned a ton from the things that went well, and the things that didn't. One of my regrets was that I wasn't able to dedicate as much time as I would have liked to pull together all the disparate submissions into some key call's to action. So, what I thought I would do today is to share four different takeaways that I took from all the great submissions that we received. For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/TPRtakeaways

Carlson Rezidor - one of the largest hotel groups in the world with brands such as Radisson and Park Place – embarked on a path to identify, build and deploy a global source to pay platform in mid-2015. I am joined on the Art of Procurement today by Scott Deibert, the SVP of Procurement, and Bart Baetens, Director of E-Procurement for Carlson Residor. In today's show, we chronicle their journey. I ask Scott and Bart to share the key decision points and lessons learned, as the sought to transform their global procurement technology stack. Topics that we discussed include: Why did Carlson Rezidor decide to pivot from their existing technology stack to a new solution. Why did they decide to source an end to end suite rather than a series of point solutions. What was their key criteria for selecting the platform that they ultimately chose? What were some of their key challenges as they deployed and rolled out the platform? What would they do differently? What is the once area that they still continue to struggle with. How are they planning to continue to leverage procurement tech post roll-out – what is the #1 technology capability that is on the horizon that they want to take advantage of. If you are interested in the practical side of procurement technology – and the realities of embarking on a S2P transformation, you will not want to miss today's show! For more information, visit: http://artofprocurement.com/techtransformation

Today's episode is the second in a two-part series considering Category Management: what we can do not only to implement Category Management, but also do so in a way that is sustainable over the long term. The reason why I think this is important is that often I have seen Category Management implemented for the right reasons, but after the initial burst of energy and picking the low hanging fruit, it becomes difficult to keep the momentum going and provide value in other ways. Today's guests on the show are Lynn Rideout, Senior Manager of Category Management, and Chris Eyerman, Senior Director of Program Management, both at Denali Sourcing Services. In part two of this two-part series, we discuss three key imperatives for a Category Manager that are required to become a trusted advisor: 1. Know Your Stakeholders 2. Understand Your Categories 3. Deliver Results For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/categorymanagement

Today's episode is the first in a two-part series considering Category Management: what we can do not only to implement Category Management, but also do so in a way that is sustainable over the long term. The reason why I think this is important is that often I have seen Category Management implemented for the right reasons, but after the initial burst of energy and picking the low hanging fruit, it becomes difficult to keep the momentum going and provide value in other ways. Today's guests on the show are Lynn Rideout, Senior Manager of Category Management, and Chris Eyerman, Senior Director of Program Management, both at Denali Sourcing Services. In part one of this two-part series, we discuss the building blocks that are required to build a strategic and sustainable Category Management capability. Specifically, we will discuss: Why Lynn and Chris believe that Category Management is a fundamental shift in the way an organization approaches procurement rather than an extension of the sourcing process. The journey to building a sustainable category management program and the failure modes that impact an organizations ability to launch, sustain and scale. A deep dive into the building blocks of strategic category management, covering vision process, governance and capabilities. If you are interested in hearing how you can use Category Management to make a difference to your stakeholders, today's show is for you. For more information, visit http://artofprocurement.com/CMpart1