Procurement Magazine - March 2022

March 2022 | procurementmag.com

VISA:

Payments, procurement, and the great pandemic pivot TECHNOLOGY: Reduce contract lifecycle management risk

JPMORGAN CHASE:

Driving diversity, equity and inclusion

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION:

Is anything changing on diversity, equity and inclusion?

LYFT:

The universe and the internet of everything

‘CHANGING PROCUREMENT FOR GOOD’ AS THE 5G LEADER Mike Simpson Chief Procurement Officer for T-Mobile, shares his leadership and partnership journey

The ‘Risk & Resilience’ Conference

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Previous Speakers Include:

Aurelien Faucheux

Senior Director, Procurement Performance, Systems & Excellence

Charlotte de Brabandt Technology and Negotiation Keynote Speaker & Host

Aston Martin

Lufthansa

AMAZON

Ninian Wilson

James Westgarth

Group Procurement Director Vodafone Procurement

CPO

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The Procurement Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

GEORGIA WILSON EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANIČKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

ELLA CHADNEY PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA

CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD CALLUM HOOD VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EVELYN HUANG HABBIE AMOS JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE MARKETING MANAGER

KAYLEIGH SHOOTER PROJECT DIRECTORS

TOM LIVERMORE MIKE SADR CRAIG KILLINGBACK

MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS

JASON WESTGATE JAMES WHITE EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

JORDAN HUBBARD MARKETING DIRECTOR

ROSS GARRIGAN

MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Procurement calls for more diversity In honour of International Women’s Day, this issue of Procurement Magazine is jam packed with insights and thought leadership on the current diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) landscape in procurement

“Diverse and inclusive supply chains have huge potential to unlock innovative solutions and deliver a positive impact in operating markets" VAISHALI BAID SENIOR CONSULTANT, ACTION SUSTAINABILITY

While there is a lot of talk about DEI in the workplace, the industry is lacking meaningful action. According to Hays, 62% of employers are actively discussing DEI issues, but only 48% of employees believe this is leading to positive action.

In this issue we speak to four leaders in procurement on their views regarding the present state of diversity and inclusion across the industry, list our Top 10 female CPOs, and get our readers’ thoughts on whether more could be done.

“Diverse and inclusive supply chains have huge potential to unlock innovative solutions and deliver a positive impact in operating markets. The procurement industry is getting there, slowly, but we must continue to deliver an inclusive culture and strategy,” says Vaishali Baid, Senior Consultant, Action Sustainability.

But that’s not all, we speak to more leaders in the procurement sector to discuss other industry areas including risk and resilience, spend management, and contract lifecycle management.

PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

GEORGIA WILSON

georgia.wilson@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

procurementmag.com

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Trailblazer: Taryn Thompson 18 Five Minutes With: Reagan Smith

60

Procurement Strategy

How to navigate procurement complexity and risk

22

68

‘Changing Procurement for Good’ as the 5G leader

Driving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

T-Mobile

JPMorgan Chase

86

Digital Procurement

Is now the time to transform spend management?

94

120

The universe and the internet of everything

Visa – payments, procurement, and the great pandemic pivot

Lyft

Visa

112

140

How to Reduce Contract Lifecycle Management risk

Is anything changing on diversity, equity and inclusion?

Technology

Diversity & Inclusion

M A RCH8.COM

IS HERE Telling the stories of driven, ambitious women in business and society...

V I SIT NOW

E D U C AT E • M OT IVAT E • E L E VAT E

VI SI T N OW

BIG PICTURE

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March 2022

Could procurement solve the Scope 3 challenge?

Global With two-thirds of an average company’s ESG footprint lying with its suppliers - and 70% of organisations saying they don’t understand where their Scope 3 emissions are coming from - procurement is in a prime position to step up and further the drive for sustainability.

Procurement analytics software provider, Sievo, details three ways procurement can reduce Scope 3 emissions: • Improve primary data availability and quality • Harness high-quality secondary data • Focus on emissions hotspots in supply chain

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THE BRIEF "WE ARE FOCUSED ON A BROADER MISSION IMPROVING PEOPLE'S LIVES WITH THE WORLD'S BEST TRANSPORTATION" Zach Greenberger,

Head of Strategic Business Development & Supply Chain Lyft READ MORE

“WE HAVE A REAL OPPORTUNITY THROUGH PROCUREMENT TO IMPACT OUR GLOBAL COMMUNITIES" Eric Smith

Global Head of Supplier Assurance Services JPMorgan Chase READ MORE

“WE HAVE THREE TENANTS IN COMMON HERE AT T-MOBILE: PEOPLE, OWNERSHIP AND ALIGNMENT”

BY THE NUMBERS Does the procurement industry need to be more diverse, equal, and inclusive?

4% Not sure 4% No:

Procurement is DE&I

38% Yes: More

22% Maybe: A start

needs to be done

has been made

EDITOR'S CHOICE

TWO-THIRDS OF ESG FOOTPRINT LIES WITH SUPPLIERS Latest findings from McKinsey reveals that two-thirds of an average company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) footprint lies with suppliers.

READ MORE

10 IDEAS FOR SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC PROCUREMENT With 15% of the world’s green house gases (GHG) coming from public procurement, and 75% of these emissions being produced by industries dependent on public spend, discover 10 ways this function can be more sustainable.

READ MORE

Mike Simpson,

PANDEMIC HIGHLIGHTS THE NEED TO PRIORITISE OPTIMISING ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE (AR) AND ACCOUNTS PAYABLE (AP) According to a Corcentric study, delays and disruptions from the pandemic has shown that 74% of companies lack a real-time view of their cash flow.

READ MORE

READ MORE

Chief Procurement Officer T-Mobile

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March 2022

Ensuring ESG compliance for any operating country As we get closer and closer to the 2030 deadline for climate-based targets, people, scientists and nations alike are ramping up their demands for organisations to be sustainable.

One such nation is Germany. Being among the world’s most sustainable countries, Germany ranks high on growth, employment, social security, and environmental protection.

But… Those looking to operate in Germany beyond 2023 need to start thinking about their ESG responsibilities, or risk facing significant fines, as well as exclusion from public contacts.

Once in effect, Germany’s ESG mandate will apply initially to registered offices and branches in Germany with 3,000 or more employees.

This means organisations need to undertake significant due diligence on their entire supply chain, monitoring for human rights violations and compliance on environmental standards.

Click here, to find out how your organisation can ensure its operations in German will be compliant with its new mandate by 2023.

 MOSS, CIRCULA & PENNYLANE The startup space is buzzing with investments, particularly in spend management.

• Moss raised US$83.6mn • Circula raised US$13.3mn • Pennylane raised US$57mn  JAGGAER JAGGAER unveiled its new vision for 2022 and beyond. The company is committed to Autonomous Commerce, a self-governing B2B commerce experience between buyers, suppliers, IoT and partners.  NICKEL INDUSTRY Nickel prices are the highest they’ve been in a decade, as a result of tightness in the fundamentals. The price rise is driven by the Class One metal market and a historical squeeze in the London Metal Exchange (LME) market, as well as cautious and profit taking investors.  XOMETRY Manufacturing-parts procurement specialist Xometry experienced a 17.4% drop in stock prices, following the release of its 2021 Q4 sales guidance figures

U P MAR 2022

D O W N

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TRAILBLAZER

TARYN THOMPSON JOB TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER (CPO) COMPANY: BANK OF AMERICA

Taryn Thompson is a long-standing veteran of the Bank of America. She has been with the multinational investment bank since 2004.

T

hompson was recruited as an analyst to the company as part of the Finance Management Associate Program (FMAP).

The FMAP is a two-year associate rotational program at the Bank of America designed to accelerate the development of associates into distinguished members of the Corporate Finance group.

Thompson joined the company as Assistant Vice President of Small Business Deposits, and has worked her way up through the ranks to Chief Procurement Officer (CPO).

Thompson is vocal around gender equality and women’s professional growth, connecting, developing and elevating women to make meaningful contributions.

She is also active in supporting families who have members with special needs and she is a founding board member of The Cooper

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March 2022

“ I’m honoured to be a judge at this years World Procurement Awards”

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TRAILBLAZER

Number of years in the industry:

18

Joined Bank of America:

2004

Rank in Supply Chain Digital’s Top 100 Leaders:

#8

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March 2022

Top and middle: Taryn Thompson Below: Bank of America Headquarters, Charlotte, NC, USA

We’re Bank of America

Royall Foundation (CRF),which provides resources and awareness to support such families.

She is heavily involved with professional bodies, too, sitting on the board of TruSight a consortium of leading financial services companies that provides synergies among financial institutions and third-party service providers.

“TruSight has built a truly customerfocused platform that gives banks greater access to end control over the valuable third-party risk data that the utility collects,” said Thompson.

She added: “As a TruSight board member and a client, we have seen firsthand that the added functionality and connectivity capabilities deliver significant efficiency gains to financial institutions’ TPRM programs.”

Thompson will also be a judge at this year’s annual World Procurement Awards.

“I'm so pleased to be part of this prestigious event,” she said. “I’m looking forward to reviewing stories of procurement excellence.”

Thompson holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Finance and Accounting from Clemson University in South Carolina, where she was selected to take part in the university’s Accelerated Development Program (ADP), a 10-month leadership development programme.

Thompson also attended Saint Ursula Academy in 2000.

Among her skillsets are analytics, portfolio management and financial modelling, credit, commercial banking, strategic planning, financial forecasting and many more. procurementmag.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

REAGAN SMITH DRIVEN BY ITS BELIEF THAT TRAVEL IS A FORCE FOR GOOD, EXPEDIA GROUP HELPS PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE WORLD IN NEW WAYS AND BUILD LASTING CONNECTIONS

Q. PLEASE COULD YOU START BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF AND YOUR ROLE?

» My name is Reagan Smith, and I am the

Head of Global Corporate Procurement at Expedia Group.

Q. HOW DID YOU FIND YOURSELF TO BE IN THE PROCUREMENT INDUSTRY?

» I fell completely backwards into it! I was practicing law and not enjoying it one bit.

Through a friend-of-a-friend, my resume ended up in front of the then Head of Tech Sourcing at a major bank. He called me at home and asked me ‘How would you feel about working in procurement?’

My mouth replied ‘That sounds great!’ but my mind thought ‘What in the world is procurement?!’ He hired me, taught me a ton and I’ve been learning ever since.

Q. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR PROUDEST ACHIEVEMENT OF YOUR CAREER SO FAR?

» It actually had nothing to do with

Procurement. I was asked to be a featured speaker on a company-wide telecast for the Annual Visa Pride Employee Resource Group. I’ve been an Ally for LGBTQ people, causes and rights since my youth and to be 18

March 2022

asked to contribute in front of an audience that big – even as a straight, white, male – was a big deal for me and something I take a lot of personal pride in.

Q. WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

» In my experience, indirect procurement

is under-represented or overlooked in so many companies, across sectors and even in the discipline of supply chain itself. I think that dynamic is beginning to shift, and I get a lot of energy out of being one of the voices who’s challenging to change that perception in the field. .

Q. WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU HAVE RECEIVED WHEN TRYING TO CLIMB THE LADDER IN THE PROCUREMENT INDUSTRY?

» Ask ‘Why?’ and ask it often. I find that,

REAGAN SMITH

often, we do a lot of things in procurement because of history or common practice or something similar. But that doesn’t mean its what we ‘should’ do. For example: if your business doesn’t want a category strategy and it doesn’t help them, then why do it? Adjust what you produce to what the business needs!

Worked at Expedia Group: February 2022 - present Previous Companies: Dell Technologies; DXC Technology; Bank of America; Mayer, Smith & Roberts; and Visa Education: B.A. in Business Management from Louisiana State University; MBA in

Q. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING TO DO OUTSIDE OF WORK?

» I have a nine and six year old, so work is often

a reprieve from very busy evening and weekend schedules! But, when I do get some free time, it’s hard to keep me off a lake or river with a fishing rod in my hand. I love being outdoors!

“ W E’VE WORKED HARD TO RECRUIT TOP TALENT AND EVERYONE AROUND ME IS A LOT SMARTER THAN ME AND MORE WORLDLY THAN I AM. I FIND THAT MOTIVATING AND INTRIGUING”

Business from Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business; and J.D. in Law from Texas Tech University School of Law Skills: Risk management, strategic sourcing, banking, business process improvement, business intelligence, process improvement, contract negotiation, leadership

procurementmag.com

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DISCOVER WHO MADE THE CUT. Top 100 Companies in Procurement Read Now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

‘Changing Procurement for Good’as the 5G leader WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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March 2022

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T - MOBILE

Chief Procurement Officer Mike Simpson is making a positive impact in procurement at T-Mobile through leadership, partnerships and cutting-edge tech

T

-Mobile consider themselves the ‘Un-carrier’ –a non-traditional wireless network operator born not from traditional landlinebased companies, but out of the wireless ether that has recently launched the world's first nationwide standalone 5G network (and still the only one in the U.S).

The company has deployed the largest and fastest 5G network and the reach is growing on a daily basis.

This ‘Un-carrier’ ethos originated as a marketing campaign in 2013 to introduce a streamlined plan structure for new customers, dropping years-long contracts with subsidised phones, coverage fees for data, and early termination fees. As former CEO John Legere said in testimony before Congress in June 2018, “We set out to fix a stupid, broken, arrogant industry.”

Since then, the ‘Un-carrier’ has become synonymous with the entire organisation's attitude, shaking up standard practice in telecommunications by boldly reaching new heights like becoming the first telecom to commit to –and achieve –the goal of sourcing 100% of its total electricity usage with renewable energy by the end of 2021.

By listening to customers, taking actions that remove pain points, and breaking free from the old way of working in the cellular industry, T-Mobile is leading the industry. Years ago, it scrapped contracts and transformed its customer care teams –

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March 2022

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Mike Example of an imageSimpson caption procurementmag.com

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getting inspiration for every new initiative by listening to what was coming out of the consumer base. The business listens to its own people and it’s suppliers too, which are as diverse as the workforce.

People, ownership and alignment At T-Mobile, the Procurement teams are crucial to the business running efficiently, profitably and in times of scarcity, getting those countless and crucial buying decisions right. Examples of this include the Procurement team’s massive network supply chain operations, the company’s focus on sourcing 100% of its total electricity usage with renewable energy, multi-billion-dollar agreements with cell site/tower companies, and a focus on working with diverse suppliers.

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March 2022

Part of a relatively small team, Mike Simpson, Chief Procurement Officer, reports into the President of Technology, Neville Ray. It’s this entire Technology organisation that has helped lead 2019’s momentous launch of T-Mobile’s 5G network. Mike Simpson has the lion's share of the organisation’s expenses within his scope, as he explains: “Everything sourced by T-Mobile outside of handsets runs through my shop: Cell tower leases and real estate portfolios.

Anything involving really sensitive technology.

Our computers, office equipment, marketing agreements, consulting, and more. My team drives value and return on investment out of the right purchasing decisions and this often gets down to technology choices”.

Simpson’s leadership teams are structured into business units, with full responsibility for their function, their budget and their

T - MOBILE

MIKE SIMPSON TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: GREATER SEATTLE AREA

EXECUTIVE BIO

people: “We have three tenets that we feature in our Procurement & Supply team: people, ownership and alignment. We have some lofty goals every single year. One thing you always have to think through is: how do you invest in your people and provide consistent leadership?

We’re inclusive, diverse and people-first, so our people drive our business forward.”

According to Simpson, T-Mobile’s core values help to empower the procurement teams, allowing people to make decisions and encouraging ownership of their respective functions.

“We're all owners of this company.

We're all here to delight our customers.

Purposeful alignment across employee teams is vital to achieving great results – for our wireless customers as well as for our internal business units.

Mike Simpson’s Procurement & Supply team at T-Mobile handles all Enterprise, Technology and Network sourcing while also driving the company’s supplier diversity programs, managing its world-class spectrum assets, and leading award-winning energy sustainability programs. His team supports synergy attainment through enterprise-wide sourcing initiatives that have helped pave the way to T-Mobile’s national 5G leadership. His career includes positions in finance, business planning and operations with Nokia Siemens Network as well as Clearwire Corporation. A graduate of Washington State University, Simpson is a sports enthusiast who has even climbed Mt. Rainier – the most prominent peak in the continental United States.

A partner you can count on to deliver the service excellence you cannot live without.

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www.tellworks.com

www.makttrans.com

T-Mobile partners with Tellworks for Network Supply Chain Christo Makrides, Owner and Managing Partner at Tellworks Logistics, discusses the company’s long-standing partnership with T-Mobile

Tellworks partners with T-Mobile In 2007, Tellworks began its partnership with T-Mobile. “We have had a relationship with T-Mobile since the inception of reverse logistics,” says Christo Makrides, Owner and Managing Partner, Tellworks Logistics.

“At Tellworks, we believe that our customers are part of our DNA, and as a result, we have developed an intimate relationship with our customers to provide them with full transparency,” continues Makrides.

When it comes to Tellworks’ partnership with T-Mobile Makrides highlights that one of the major attributes that it brings to the table for T-Mobile is its technology and data analytics. “We were very instrumental in bringing AIMSPlus+ together with other solutions as part of our partnership,” says Makrides. As an enabler of Tellworks operations, AIMSPlus+ produces insight which is used to optimize the supply chain.

“In addition, we developed our own transportation company to give us more intimacy into the supply chain, allowing us

to offer real estate, warehouse management technology and a transportation solution in one package,” he adds.

How does Tellworks plan to work with T-Mobile in the future?

When it comes to Tellworks’ partnership with T-Mobile, Makrides hopes that it is one that is long-lasting. “We hope to continue to provide T-Mobile with analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in a way that provides cost savings and effective production at a high level,” comments Makrides.

He adds: “Overall, I’m very thankful and very happy to be a part of such a great relationship with T-Mobile. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime to be integrated with the development and build-out of 5G. My team, from the executives all the way down to the associates who live and breathe this every day, try to provide whatever it takes on behalf of the customer to make this a success.”

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The telecom industry is going through a massive transformation: 5G promises ubiquitous high-speed data, enabling many new use cases. Yet many are still to be imagined, so it’s hard to predict future demand for 5G services. If you combine this uncertain demand picture with the many current supply chain disruptions, it becomes clear why rolling out the infrastructure for these new 5G networks becomes a highlycomplex undertaking.

Network operators are not the only one with these challenges: All industries are facing high variability of both demand and supply, while having to manage increasingly complex operations, not least because of the increasing number of outside partners (e.g., suppliers, contract manufacturers, service and distribution partners, etc.) involved in global supply chains.

The paradox is that there is so much information available today to make better decisions—everything from market trends, detailed consumer data, real-time IoT

streams, and many more. Most companies recognize this, yet very few are able to leverage all this information for better planning and decision-making. One of the key roadblocks is the inability of traditional enterprise software to process these vast amounts of data, let alone derive knowledge and improved outcomes with the help of modern software algorithms. :o9’s mission is to leverage the power of data and artificial intelligence to help companies make better decisions. With the :o9 Digital Brain platform, companies are able to forecast demand more accurately, detect demand and supply risks and opportunities earlier, evaluate what-if scenarios in real-time, match demand and supply intelligently, and drive alignment across their entire value chain—across customers, internal stakeholders, suppliers, contract manufacturers, and other supply partners.

We believe the :o9 Digital Brain is the most valuable platform for enterprises to help drive supply chain agility, revenue growth, and optimal financial performance, and that better decisions for companies equal a better outcome for our planet.

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DigitalBridge & T-Mobile partner to develop next-gen 5G Marc Ganzi, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), describes DigitalBridge as: “a real estate investment trust, focused globally on the construction, ownership and management of digital infrastructure companies across five key verticals: data centres, macro cell towers, fibre networks and edge infrastructure. We work with our telecommunication partners to help enable their next-generation networks.”

DigitalBridge partners with T-Mobile Being one of DigitalBridge’s most important relationships in the Northern Hemisphere, the company has been “working with T-Mobile for over two decades facilitating the build-out of their next-generation 5G networks, which is a privilege and an honour for us,” he adds.

“T-Mobile has an absolute eye on the future and understands that to deploy 5G effectively, you not only need to focus on the physical layer of the network, but also understand the metaphysical part of the network as well — the software defined layer,” says Ganzi.

Aligning DigitalBridge’s ESG initiatives with T-Mobile “In alignment with T-Mobile’s ESG strategy and their focus on being the most environmentally conscious mobile carrier in the United States, DigitalBridge has made a pledge to have all of our portfolio companies carbon neutral by 2030,” says Ganzi.

DigitalBridge’s unique architecture of subsidiaries Our unique architecture of over 20 portfolio companies allows us to work with T-Mobile, where we can talk to them in a holistic manner when it comes to the future of their network,” he adds.

Today’s challenges in the telecommunications space really come down to the software-defined layer of the network that will play out at the edge.

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Consistent communication of objectives, expectations, corporate-wide initiatives, cost savings initiatives and risk management – these are a few areas where my leadership team and I place attention.”

You won’t find Simpson and his team resting on their laurels either, even if they complete their goals or hit targets in midyear. “We always strive for more,” said Simpson.

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March 2022

Leadership in ways that are unexpected Simpson was inspired by informal lunch meetings that CEO Mike Sievert held with colleagues, so ‘Coffee With Mike’ became his chance to engage regularly with people he wouldn’t usually see or work closely with.

Simpson saw this as a valuable mentoring opportunity and also a way to gain valuable feedback from all levels of the organisation.

It also birthed some great initiatives such

T - MOBILE

“ Pretty much everything outside of retail and handsets runs through my shop” MIKE SIMPSON

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, T-MOBILE

as the case of an industry-wide job training and career placement program – NextTech Diversity – that emerged from the shadows of the pandemic in mid-2020.

“I was challenged about how we could do more at T-Mobile, from the diversity of our supply base while buying and spending more with diverse companies. How could we double-down and actually create jobs in such difficult times?” said Simpson.

Launched in early-2021, the NextTech diversity program has supported the training of 50 women and men of color during its inaugural year – with a success rate at 100% for placing those 50 graduates into career opportunities with multiple companies in the wireless industry.

Simpson and his team have raised awareness about programs that support veterans, women and men of color – as well as supported financial assistance to family members of severely injured, permanently disabled or deceased tower workers. That awareness has an impact across the entire T-Mobile enterprise as the

company recently announced a USD $2.5mn donation supporting the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s scholarships and aimed at opening doors to equitable economic and educational opportunities for young adults.

Simpson added: “We had our first NextTech Diversity graduating classes, for field technicians and tower climbers, up and running within six months. From a grassroots campaign, we've actually grown this initiative; during the fourth quarter of 2021 we expanded the program to train candidates interested in getting licensed as commercially-licensed truck drivers – a huge supply chain need in the U.S. right now.”

“As leaders, we need to actively listen to our teams on a regular basis because some of the best ideas come from throughout the organisation,” said Simpson. “Creating NextTech was a prime example of that,” he said.

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Remarkable outcomes start with a remarkable network.

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Dell drives innovation in a 5G world.

Dell Technologies’ deep relationship with T-Mobile is heralding the way for an even stronger 5G future.

Dell Technologies is striding into a dynamic, collaborative 5G future, as it continues to move way beyond its traditional role as a provider of enterprise IT. The company is now an established strategic partner to a number of telecom firms, helping them modernise their networks, and also to monetise them, by generating new revenue streams.

One of Dell’s customers is T-Mobile, with whom it has been engaged in an innovationdriven relationship for many years.

Historically, Dell’s focus has been on supporting T-Mobile’s IT and network requirements, through its storage, server and client solutions.

“But we’ve now elevated our strategic partnership above this,” says Dell’s Telco Global Sales Leader, Scott Cohen.

“We’re now also collaborating on monetising 5G in the market, as well as on network innovations,” Cohen adds.

Key among these is the 5G Innovation Lab, which launched early in January 2022.

This has seen Dell and T-Mobile partner to unlock 5G capabilities for enterprises and consumers.

“5G has the ability to change the world,” says Cohen. “But use-cases around higher bandwidth, lower latency, and IoT have yet to be flushed out. The 5G Innovation Lab will accelerate this innovation.”

With the transition from 4G (closed architecture) to 5G (open architecture) Dell is well placed to apply its 5G know-how to the wider telecom market.

“We’re a US$100bn company with 165,000 employees,” says Cohen. “For this transformation to happen it takes a business with scale and commitment to enter the ecosystem. The market is coming towards our core competencies, and we plan to respond.”

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March 2022

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Procuring telco success through technology

This is nothing new for T-Mobile. As part of Simpson’s focus on ‘changing procurement for good’ he is the executive advocate of an annual golf tournament that has raised more than USD $3M over eight years for two wireless industry charitable organisations: Warriors4Wireless and the Tower Family Foundation.

It’s a cause dear to Simpson’s heart: “This is a very dangerous, complicated business that tower climbing companies are in. We make sure proper training is provided to veterans seeking a career after their military service.

And, through the Tower Family Foundation we work to make sure financial support is in place for their families

and themselves should an accident occur,” he added.

The pandemic causes massive supply chain constraints When T-Mobile US merged with Sprint Corporation in 2020, in an all shares deal worth USD$26bn, it completely moved the needle for the organisation. But days before the merger was finalized, the pandemic hit and with it, massive global supply chain constraints became reality:

“My team focuses our employees on three tenets: people, ownership and alignment” MIKE SIMPSON

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, T-MOBILE procurementmag.com

43

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“I remember the first calls to our task force.

Do we have enough toilet paper and medical supplies for our retail and customer care and technology teams? They never went home! They stayed on the front lines. We shifted focus to our front lines so they could help our customers.”

Simpson and his team were relentless in their pursuit of the right products; so their crews and personnel in the field, in stores and in call centers had what they needed to build the network and continue to serve customers during such a critical time.

Their actions were a true reflection of what President of Technology Neville Ray, calls the ‘always on’ approach.

“We turned our suppliers into partners at that point in time. We depended on each other and figured things out together. It's changed our culture and how we handle our partnerships with our key providers on a day-to-day basis,” he added.

According to Simpson, the response to the pandemic was a triumph over adversity

also due to more than 30 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that really stepped up and delivered.

“We invested in our supply tool suite and advancements in technology, such as using drones for inventory management.

Our network supply chain partner, Tellworks, invested to streamline our supply chain warehouse and distribution programs.

With more than 2,000 diverse suppliers – there's tremendous opportunity to do more in this area – and many others to thank,” said Simpson.

Guiding procurement in a non-traditional telco Simpson is an advocate of doing things the right way, especially in a company that is proud of its differences from its competitors and its Un-carrier brand.

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The largest private wireless infrastructure company in the US As the only private, at-scale tower company in the US with a permanent capital base, we are a flexible partner with the capacity to help customers grow their networks with ease.

Learn more

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March 2022

T - MOBILE

“The way we procure and manage our backhaul is different as we aren’t a wire line company. We also have our network supply chain that falls under my organisation, which is pretty massive and the engine that runs our network builds”, says Simpson.

“We are also closely engaged with our national and regional teams, who are building cell sites. That’s likely a bit unique.”

Simpson also raises the way they handle asset management, and in particular, the largest asset the company owns: Spectrum.

“Spectrum is the lifeblood of wireless networks. It’s what we are licensed to use from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to benefit our consumers. That asset management sits under my organisation. Our spectrum assets – worth tens of billions of dollars – are a big

differentiator in how we provide this 5G experience that’s well ahead of the curve in this space”, he added.

Spectrum mastery key to market gains T-Mobile has assets in low-, mid- and high-band spectrum. The layer cake strategy was devised by Neville Ray and is a good visual indication of how coverage works. The low band works on achieving nationwide coverage, the mid band is driving widespread 5G adoption and the high band is for more powerful uses requiring massive capacity, such as augmented reality.

Simpson’s spectrum asset management team has done a deep dive into the company’s spectrum and cell sites, resulting in self-built applications that visualize spectrum assets across the

Taking Our 5G Network to the Next Level

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The network infrastructure for what’s next.

Through ever-increasing data consumption, predictive analytics, AI and edge-to-edge connectivity, the Cloud and the future - runs on Zayo.

Video

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March 2022

T - MOBILE

T-MOBILE MOST AWARDED WIRELESS PROVIDER IN HISTORY T-Mobile received the top spot in the J.D. Power 2022 report, marking the ninth consecutive win and the 23rd time T-Mobile has taken the top spot among mobile network operators.

The company has the most wins of any other wireless provider in the history of the study with a score of 823 — a full 26 points above the segment average and the highest scores in all categories including phone, store, app, web, social media and text services. T-Mobile has taken the top spot consecutively in their segment in the J.D. Power study ever since the Un-carrier launched Team of Experts in 2018, which was a case study in the Harvard Business Review.

country. This allows deployment teams to pinpoint spectrum assets at any cell site location and maximize the use of available radio waves.

Simpson states that: “Spectrum frequencies are not always the same across geographies and markets. You have to make the right investment choices and use advanced analytics and workflow engines to bring them to cell site network planning.

From a cost perspective, it’s also vital information we can use.”

Simpson credits his Spectrum team for revolutionising digital license management and aiding operational control, while also making certain our spectrum use is compliant with the FCC. Our tools also provide an understanding of the licenses of their competition, which means field technicians can readily see, in advance, who owns bandwidth at any given cell site. procurementmag.com

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“We're all owners of this company. We're all here to delight our customers” MIKE SIMPSON

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, T-MOBILE

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A good example of the effect of these technologies on cell site strategy was seen with the expanded partnership with some of our largest cell tower landlords: “That was really foundational for us to rapidly start deploying our 5G network. Great shout out to Crown Castle and American Tower for working through very complex engagements with us and signing new agreements during 2021. Both sides saw that as a partnership as a win and it fuels our ability to actually access more locations,” said Simpson.

From disruptors to market leadership Part of the organisation for almost ten years, things were very different when Simpson first joined T-Mobile – the wireless provider was in fourth place in the competitive pecking order. That was just about the time that T-Mobile adopted a challenger mindset that manifested the Un-carrier spirit.

The acquisition of Sprint was significant both for the value of its customers and people – as well as the breadth and depth of mid-band spectrum brought to T-Mobile that they so vitally needed. With coverage procurementmag.com

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Level-up supplier collaboration Connect with all your suppliers, regardless of type or size with a flexible and scalable network.

Learn more

#TogetherWorks

T - MOBILE

“ Our nationwide 5G network is way ahead of our chief competitors – and we are driven to maintain that leadership” MIKE SIMPSON

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, T-MOBILE

the key issue in comparison with big rivals such as Verizon, the acquisition was a gamechanger in both reach and speed.

Now the company is the dominant player in 5G, T-Mobile’s next challenge is to maintain the same drive they had when they were starting out. Simpson adds: “For us to get to number one and stay number one, you have to have a maniacal focus on the customer base. If that ever changes, then we’ll probably not be number one at the end of the day. For us, the wireless consumer is our rallying cry and that's what we get behind every day.”

Simpson is bullish about the achievements: “We are way ahead of the competition in providing a true 5G experience. When considering our locations and the advanced network services we can provide an enterprise business, having a standalone 5G core already created, developed and deployed – all this gives us an edge”, he said.

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The above is a sample of Talon's AI stressed connector model that provides tower crews instantaneous reviews of connections.

GLOBAL SOLUTIONS THAT WORK FOR YOU Talon’s Artificial Intelligence tools are designed to automate both simple and complex tasks. Customers now can further maximize their workflow efficiency by saving resources, time, and adding value through Talon’s enhanced AI Automation feedback tool.

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T - MOBILE

THE LAYER CAKE 5G STRATEGY

DID YOU KNOW...

T-Mobile had a record high of 108.7 million customers, with its low-band, Extended Range 5G network covering nearly everyone in the United States with 310 million people across 1.7 million square miles (and growing). The carrier’s even faster Ultra Capacity mid-band network, covers 210 million people.

High-Band: Super-fast speeds with a limited distance. Does not penetrate indoors directly. Ideal for dense urban areas.

Mid-Band: Considered the 'sweet spot' of 5G spectrum. Faster speeds than low-band with wider georgraphic reach than high-band. Ideal for large urban and suburban regions. Also used for LTE. Low-Band: Travels far and wide, but at speeds comparable to 4G LTE. Great for indoor use and rural areas. Also used for LTE.

Looking to the horizon with technology investments Navigating through the pandemic successfully required sensible investment in T-Mobile's internal systems and the investment choices its suppliers made to transform the ecosystem. On the investing side, Simpson said: “Within procurement, we're adding analytics engines and category management functions and tools to really fuel the right decision making and procurement buys. We're making some great strides and I’m excited to see where we go from here.”

In the network supply chain, automated drones are ensuring inventory is accurate and the business is complying with audit functions and well as delivering greater efficiencies. When it comes to cell site audits, Talon’s flying drones bring more precise inputs into cell site builds. For site maintenance and disaster recovery, they can survey the areas before sending in crews.

Simpson said: “It's amazing to see how you can up-level your game regarding the precision and accuracy that technology can procurementmag.com

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T - MOBILE

T-Mobile Home Internet: Reliable Service Beyond Big Cities | T-Mobile

bring, as far as combining drones, advanced analytics and all those learning capabilities.”

When quizzed on how to revolutionise the buying experience in 2022 and beyond, Simpson says it’s about getting further up the chain with business partners to align on core initiatives and key areas, and to enable a more streamlined buying process from their experience.

“We've started this transformation with the analytics and process controls. I think the next steps are the implementation of NextGen tool suites. We have big plans there and more to share with some significant partners, so there's tremendous value in getting things even faster, to fuel growth for the business.” he said.

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HOW TO

NAVIGATE

PROCUREMENT

COMPLEXITY AND

RISK

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

The risks facing modern procurement teams are varied and growing. We look at technology’s role in helping firms stay safe WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

B

usinesses operate in an increasingly unpredictable world, in which the risks they face are many, varied and sometimes catastrophic. One need only recall the past two years to realise this.

Above and beyond the pandemic, there is risk associated with changing social priorities such as those around environmental, social and governance (ESG).

Here, there is the risk of reputational damage arising from ESG transgressions in the supply chain, which can be large and complex. Unless a business is meticulous about vetting third parties, then it might unknowingly be supporting human rights abuses, modern slavery and environmental damage.

There is also cyber risk. This is a growing concern, because cybercriminals increasingly see supply chains - with their countless upstream and downstream vendors - as a back-door hack into highvalue corporate targets.

Then there is Mother Nature, and her increasingly violent mood swings. As climate change generates increasingly more serious weather events, the danger of supply chain procurementmag.com

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“The supplier base is

THE BIGGEST UNTAPPED ASSET. If optimized properly, it can deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in value, provided that supplier data is agile and available across systems and people.”

Stephany Lapierre Founder + CEO, TealBook

LEARN MORE

PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

“ Risk has always been with us.

It’s just the nature of it has changed” DUNCAN BROCK

GROUP DIRECTOR, CIPS

disruption - from floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters - also rises.

“Then there is geopolitical risk, posed to supply chains by events such as war and social unrest,” says Duncan Brock, Group Director at the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS).

With 100,000 Russian troops camped on the Ukrainian border, Brock’s is a timely observation. Brock adds that for any organisation, financial risk is another significant danger facing firms. “A supplier’s

ownership structure, revenue and growth outlook, as well as major product release delays, can signal fundamental issues with operations, and the future risks that company is likely to face,” he says.

Agreeing with Brock is Jim Bureau, CEO of JAGGAER, a US-based provider of cloudbased business automation technology “Bribery and corruption can occur throughout the sourcing and contract management process,” Bureau says. “By placing strict controls and guidance in place businesses are less likely to be exposed.”

Brock, meanwhile, reminds us that sometimes a combination of risk factors can gang up to cause chaos.

“Supply chain disruption can come about through a combination of risks, as was the case with the Suez Canal blockage, where procurementmag.com

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

“ True resilience requires a 360-degree view of your supplier ecosystem” JIM BUREAU CEO, JAGGAER

you had human error, technical failure and strong winds,” he says.

How can organisations mitigate against procurement risks?

Supply chains are becoming more complex, and often contain thousands of third-party vendors. This means managing the chain can be a huge challenge. Industry 4.0 tech such as the Internet of Things - is helping on this front.

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“In the past, risk management was more of a reactive process,” says Bureau. “Procurement could draw up contingency and action plans, but they had too little visibility to be anywhere near proactive enough, especially beyond tierone suppliers.”

Until recently, procurement’s focus on cost reduction - by minimising inventory and justin-time delivery - resulted in limited wriggle room for organisations to deal with the impact of serious supply chain disruption.

Five risk and resilience technologies in procurement 1.

2.

3.

“True resilience requires a 360-degree view of your supplier ecosystem,” says Bureau. “Procurement should know who their organisation is doing business with. They need to know their vulnerabilities from every possible angle – quality, value, diversity, compliance, financial health, ESG, and performance.”

Yet many businesses struggle to achieve this level of visibility, especially across multiple supplier tiers. This is where data and technology come into play.

4.

5.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being embedded into procurement platforms. It offers actionable and predictive insight, enabling procurement to mitigate disruption and make data-driven decisions.

Predictive analytics can identify likely late deliveries even before an order is placed. It does so based on previous events.

Prescriptive analytics help teams proactively mitigate the risk of late deliveries by leveraging a variety of supply sources.

Embedded intelligence learns from human buying patterns, to automate end-to-end, human-free procurement.

Enterprise commerce platforms bring buyers and suppliers together on the same network. They align buyer needs and supplier capabilities, and integrate with outside solutions, to create a single data ecosystem. procurementmag.com

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

Is there a skills gap in risk management?

A recent CIPS survey revealed that 49% of procurement teams struggle to find the right talent.

“There’s always a shortage of talent in procurement,” says Duncan Brock, Group Director at CIPS. This is certainly the experience of JAGGAER CEO, Jim Bureau, who says: “In recent years we’ve seen a severe procurement talent shortage in many industries. One of the reasons is frustration and burnout, due to working with technology that is out of date, and unable to help teams address today’s challenges.

“It’s draining when risks and disruptions make work a constant challenge, and a monotonous work routine gets in the way of being able to drive forward morerewarding and strategic projects.”

JAGGAER’s technology is helping address this problem, explains Bureau, by eliminating routine tasks through automation. “This enables procurement professionals to focus on morestrategic activities, such as managing and mitigating risk - all of which is supported by analytical software,” he explains.

“This in turn makes procurement a more attractive career option for young talent.”

Brock observes how risk has always been an ever-present factor for procurement and supply professionals, and that it always will be. “It’s just that the nature of those risks change every now and then,” he concludes.

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“ Supply chain disruption can come about through a combination of risks, as was the case with the Suez Canal blockage” DUNCAN BROCK

GROUP DIRECTOR, CIPS

“Many of the simple transactions in today’s supply chains are managed by automation,” says Brock. Some companies are even using artificial intelligence for sourcing decisions.”

While technology can provide value to organisations, offering global and realtime visibility on suppliers and associated risks, Brock warns it’s important companies appreciate that nothing comes without risk.

He says: “Technology comes with its own dangers, for example. Systems can be hacked, and vital information lost, or money stolen.

“As the world’s business systems speed up, we can’t afford to not use digitalisation in supply chains - not just from a risk standpoint, but also to get a competitive edge on competitors.”

He adds: “However, it’s essential organisations have good-quality data and supplier information, otherwise they’ll never fully understand the potential risks they face. procurementmag.com

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DRIVING

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND

INCLUSION WRITTEN BY: ELISE LEISE PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

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JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is using the power of its supply chain and lowering the barriers to opportunity for Black, Hispanic, and Latino suppliers

W

e have a real opportunity through procurement to impact our global communities by generating revenue, creating jobs and driving inclusive growth, says Eric Smith, Global Head of Supplier Assurance Services at JPMorgan Chase.

“And an important component of procurement is supplier diversity, one of the most direct ways to address economic inequality.” For almost three decades, the firm has been committed to engaging with diverse suppliers. But, with JPMorgan’s recent US$30bn commitment to help close the racial wealth gap, the firm is focusing on key drivers of wealth that help drive equity, and inclusion — providing additional small business loans, improving access to lowcost savings accounts, financing affordable housing units, and supporting diverse suppliers, including spending US$750mn more with Black, Hispanic and Latino-owned businesses by 2025.

Increasing Diverse Supplier Spend by US$6bn Above and beyond its US$30bn commitment, JPMorgan Chase is developing creative approaches to scaling its support for supplier diversity. First, the firm is working with its top suppliers to drive a combined increase in spend with diverse businesses by more than US$6bn, with US$1.2bn going to Black, 70

March 2022

Example of an image caption procurementmag.com

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JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

The Gold Standard in Diverse Spend

Hispanic and Latino-owned companies.

While the goal is to reach these spend increases over the next three years, the larger purpose is to have other corporations develop sustainable diversity programmes that will generate new revenue for diverse businesses for decades into the future.

Meeting a mission to support diversity, equity and inclusion will involve forging new paths and encouraging a shift in the overall culture of the business community.

But, Smith and his team understand that one company can’t drive impact alone. It takes a commitment from large and small companies across all industries.

Today, if a supplier wants to do business with JPMorgan Chase, it must demonstrate that it has established a diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure and culture.

According to Smith, that means engaging in active conversations with existing suppliers and building diversity, equity and inclusion into the firm’s minimum control 72

March 2022

requirements. For example, JPMorgan Chase now asks its suppliers annual diversity, equity, and inclusion questions to ensure that their diversity programmes align with the firm’s values.

Diversity is now a finding on the firm’s overall annual assessment that may require remediation and conversation. “Our suppliers need to embrace the need for diversity”, Smith says. “We conduct

ERIC SMITH TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEAD OF SUPPLIER ASSURANCE SERVICES INDUSTRY: BANKING

business with suppliers that have similar values, that have a similar culture, that have a similar drive for inclusion.”

Cyber-Readiness for Black and Hispanic Suppliers Supplier spend isn’t the only aspect of JPMorgan Chase’s push for greater inclusion.

Diverse business owners often need other forms of support. For instance, they may

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: USA Eric Smith joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMC) in January 2016 and is currently the Global Head of Supplier Assurance Services (SAS). He is accountable for driving the third-party risk management assessment activities across the entire JPMC global footprint.

This includes on-site assessments, virtual assessments, application control assessments, third-party information security, and supplier continuous monitoring. Prior to assuming this role in April 2018, Smith was the Head of Cybersecurity for Consumer and Community Banking (CCB). As part of Smith's responsibilities, he represents the firm and the Financial Services Sector on the Delaware Cybersecurity Advisory Council, and is on the Board of Directors of the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council. He also supports JPMC Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) programme by leading the DE&I Council for Global Supplier Services, and is a member of JPMC’s LGBT+ Executive Forum.

Born entrepreneur?

Made entrepreneur?

Finding the right deal. Negotiating the right price. Delivering on time. At EY, we know how choosing the right suppliers can help to achieve strategic goals.

Our Environmental Social Governance Service team is creating a diverse ecosystem for diversity-owned businesses to reach their potential and make a difference. © 2022 Ernst & Young LLP. All Rights Reserved. ED None.

Visit ey.com/supplierdiversity

EY Collaborations: Banking on diversity How EY is helping to create a culture that values diversity both inside and outside our doors EY is one of the world’s leading professional services firms and like JP Morgan has a long commitment to increasing diversity in its suppliers, and helping clients do the same.

Theresa Harrison, EY’s Environmental Social Governance Services Leader, says the first foundation for EY’s strategy comes from an overall commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusiveness (DEI) within its overall organisation and culture. This is then followed by the leadership within its supply chain services.

Diverse supply chains Making sure EY suppliers have aligned goals within their own supply chains is also imperative. To those ends, EY created its own evaluation criteria that examine RFPs, overall ongoing assessments, its vendor management scope, and how organisations can team together to really make a difference and an impact from an ESG perspective.

Harrison notes, “We’re giving it high weighting in all of our specific RFPs, as well as our clients and those who we are actually developing from a client perspective on what their strategy should be, how should they evaluate their

supply chain and what things should they look for in setting goals through our climate change and sustainable services practice.”

Catering to client demand ESG has become a mandatory exercise across the industry, but it’s complicated and confusing – and making sure the right outcomes prevail is essential, says Michael Giarrusso, whose team works with EY clients to develop their thirdparty risk management framework, processes, methodologies ,and technology enablement.

He explains that helping clients learn how to break down barriers in terms of differing methodologies, is often the answer. “We’ve started to consult with our clients on helping to break down those barriers. It’s something that motivates a lot of our people to work with our clients.”

Supply Chain Services goals EY considers diversity as part of its DNA as an organisation. Harrison concludes, “Our Supply Chain Services goals are tied to our performance and participation within supplier diversity. It is really important for us to build this diverse ecosystem, not only for EY, but also from a client-serving perspective.”

Learn more

DOUG ROGINSON TITLE: E XECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Doug Roginson, Executive Director and Relationship Manager at JPMorgan Chase, is the Grant Officer and head of racial equity for its Diverse Supplier Grant initiative.

The Firm issued a US$5mn grant to certified nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), called Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which will manage the grant initiative end-to-end.

JPMorgan Chase has invited other corporations to voluntarily contribute funds that it will match. The firm’s nearterm aspiration is to grow this grant, increasing the available funds over the next several years.

Roginson says meeting industry requirements like cyber security and insurance can be a costly investment for small and diverse businesses, creating a very real barrier to contract opportunities with corporations: “Our primary objective is to increase the number of qualified Black and Hispanic suppliers prepared to serve corporations across multiple industries by helping to eliminate common barriers.”

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JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

“WE HAVE A REAL OPPORTUNITY THROUGH PROCUREMENT TO IMPACT OUR GLOBAL COMMUNITIES

BY GENERATING REVENUE, CREATING JOBS AND DRIVING INCLUSIVE GROWTH” ERIC SMITH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEAD OF SUPPLIER ASSURANCE SERVICES JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

not have a clear picture of gaps in their technology infrastructure, which could potentially disqualify them for work with financial institutions.

Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic highlighted new vulnerabilities that emerged from suppliers having to work remotely.

“The pandemic revealed new cybersecurity risks to the firm”, Smith explains. “We realised that many of our suppliers, when forced to send their employees home, weren’t ready to execute their resiliency plans. We saw suppliers being impacted by ransomware.

And that reshaped the minimum control requirements we have around cybersecurity.”

To assist diverse suppliers in getting their businesses secure and cyber-ready for financial industry clients, JPMorgan Chase recently partnered with TruSight, a risk management utility co-founded

by JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, and Wells Fargo. The firm is using this utility to provide Black- and Hispanic-owned companies with a detailed view of their cybersecurity status.

TruSight reviews several best-practice areas across a company’s operations, collects observations about their control environment and generates a report or assessment of their level of security.

JPMorgan Chase’s TruSight partnership programme aims to eliminate a common barrier to opportunity with financial industry firms by making cyber-readiness more accessible for diverse suppliers. So far, TruSight has provided 25 diverse suppliers in JPMorgan Chase’s pilot programme with complimentary assessments. These assessments provide each diverse supplier with direct feedback on which cybersecurity controls they must increase to improve their industry positioning. procurementmag.com

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Transforming Investments, Forwarding Humanity.

Learn More

LENOX PARK BUILDS ASSET MANAGER DIVERSITY BY DEMOCRATISING CAPITAL Lenox Park gives asset managers techenabled route to diversity and inclusion with benchmarking insights and collaborative networks that democratise capital Asset managers as a corporate cohort have seen very little diversity over the years, reporting in a study that only 1.4% of total USbased assets under management is managed by diverse-owned firms, and patience with such a glaring disparity is running out.

Lenox Park Solutions lets asset allocators assess the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) impact of their capital. The platform has over 2,200 registered organisations, 1,200 asset managers, and represents US$6 trillion in assets under management.

“If you ask the average allocator of capital ‘How did you find your best managers?’” says Founder and CEO Jason Lamin, “The likelihood is they found that manager through their peer group.” So, Lamin made an unbiased solution for potential partners to find each other.

Part of that solution is collaborative dealmaking platform RoundTables. Lamin says “RoundTables was built on a premise that like-minded decision-makers tend to

collaborate with each other and prefer to knowledge-share among their peers. So we created a tech-enabled platform that empowers those individuals to collaborate efficiently in a safe space.”

DRIVING DEI THROUGH KEY PARTNERSHIPS One key partner has been JPMorgan Chase, which joined as a Founding Member as part of its own DEI initiatives.

“We are generating value for them,” says Chief Operating Officer Amber Kizilbash. “But we are also leveraging the broad spectrum of services and partnerships they can provide to a company like ours, at this phase in our growth cycle; and the phases ahead of us.”

For Lenox Park, the intentionality of seeking out diversity will be crucial to future business.

“At the U.S. National level there’s about US$70 trillion of wealth that is going to be transferred to the next generation by 2045,” says Kizilbash.

“When you think about the next generation of leaders that are coming from this diverse millennial economic power, research suggests no other generation has been more focused on impact, and inclusion is one of the single most important values for them.”

EXPLORE MORE

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

“WHEN IT COMES TO SUPPLIER DIVERSITY, THE BEST PRACTICE IS TO PRIORITISE IT” ERIC SMITH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEAD OF SUPPLIER ASSURANCE SERVICES JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

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After these suppliers receive their TruSight assessment results, they have an opportunity to work with several consulting organisations, including Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Protiviti — to navigate steps towards remediation. This is a service they can receive free-of-charge. Remediation complete, diverse suppliers are more prepared to take contract opportunities with JPMorgan Chase as well as other financial institutions.

However, this programme provides additional benefits to participants that go

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

beyond generating reports and remediation plans. It surrounds the supplier with a network of new relationships — both with other diverse business owners, and also with all of TruSight’s founding banks. Throughout the programme, cohort members are given the opportunity to present their capabilities to several financial institutions they can potentially work with.

Though JPMorgan Chase’s TruSight cybersecurity programme may expand in the future, Smith's division is currently set on

PETER VAN ALLSBURG TITLE: H EAD OF DIVERSE SUPPLIER SOURCING Peter Van Allsburg is the Head of Diverse Supplier Sourcing at JPMorgan Chase and works with sourcing specialists to align diverse suppliers against opportunities.

As part of its Racial Equity Commitment, the firm is committed to spending an extra US$750mn over 5 years with Black- and Hispanic-owned suppliers. Van Allsburg’s team works with Category Sourcing and business stakeholders to find opportunities and create go-to-market strategies.

“We take a category-aligned strategy when matching prospective, diverse suppliers with opportunities,” says Van Allsburg. “In partnership with our Global Supplier Diversity team, we conduct significant supplier due diligence up-front to ensure that when diverse firms are being positioned for opportunities, there is a strong chance of success. We position diverse firms with intent to partner with them.

We have support from our senior stakeholders and are transparent about our successes as well as when we may need assistance.”

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WWW.OVERLANDTANDBERG.COM

Empowering Organizations to Securely Manage and Protect Their Digital Assets • Leading global technology solution provider for 40+ years • Customers include global Fortune 500, Enterprise,

SME and SMBs in 100+ countries • Data Management and Security Solutions: • Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Business Continuity, Data Protection • Crypto-currency, IT Integration and Manufacturing

Tackling diversity through data and technology Overland-Tandberg is a global technology company serving over 100 countries. We spoke to its Chairman and CEO, Eric Kelly.

As Chairman and CEO, Eric Kelly takes a dynamic role in leading the company in its global growth strategy.

This has involved an important collaboration with one of the world’s leading banking corporations, JP Morgan Chase, that is expanding the company’s mandate of improving global diversity in the corporate and technology sectors.

Kelly says Overland-Tandberg was on the lookout for a partnership with a bank to fit the company’s growing, global footprint. “We actually started off discussing the banking relationship, and then it quickly moved into a symbiotic partnership—they became our corporate sponsor. The collaboration has gained momentum and velocity, with Overland-Tandberg carrying out business with JPMC on the supplier diversity side, working with their chief procurement officer and their supplier diversity group.

Established trust and success Kelly points to Overland-Tandberg’s long history when he speaks about the company’s robust reputation in the marketplace. As one of the longest

established black-owned global technology companies, it has built up a respected position.

Our vision of “Global Intellect and Inclusiveness” is the ethos that drives the organization – this vision allows us to have a comprehensive understanding of diversity and inclusion.

Diversity and data challenges Multinationals and foreign companies face the same challenges as US companies when trying to find black-owned businesses, says Kelly, it comes down to a lack of access, availability and awareness.

“There are organizations here in the US that showcase specifically black-owned businesses, and diverse companies,” he elaborates. “But I think that from a multinational standpoint of foreign companies, it’s one of access and availability and awareness. How do you find and develop partnerships at scale with diverse companies when there’s no technology platform that’s designed to provide that information?”

Kelly continues, “The world is digital and getting smaller. If you’re a US company you’re directly or indirectly doing business globally.

This challenge has been constant, which led me to leveraging my history in technology to focus on creating a platform that could align these resources across industry and essentially play a key role in closing the digital and diversity divide.” It’s called Bridge 2 Technologies.

Learn more

INCREASING SPEND ON DIVERSE SUPPLIERS: THE STATS • US$750mn in new spend with Black, Hispanic, and Latino suppliers – part of commitment to spend US$30bn by the end of 2025 to advance economic growth and opportunity • Top suppliers to JPMorgan Chase committed to spend US$6bn with diverse suppliers — US$1.2bn specifically for Black Hispanic and Latino suppliers

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“WHEN WE ARE FOCUSED

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

AND INTENTIONAL, THE PROCUREMENT ORGANIZATION CAN SERVE AS A VERY EFFECTIVE TOOL IN FURTHERING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION” ERIC SMITH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEAD OF SUPPLIER ASSURANCE SERVICES JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.

championing its initial cohort of 25 Black and Hispanic suppliers. 60% of the way through the first set of assessments, JPMorgan Chase is seeing the results it expected: some suppliers are wellpositioned to start working with financial institutions; others may benefit from working with a top consulting firm.

Breaking Down Barriers to Inclusion Access to capital is a common challenge faced by diverse businesses, so meeting industry requirements like cyber security, insurance, and bonding is often costprohibitive. Satisfying these requirements can cost a typical small business over US$100,000, creating another barrier to entry into the financial services industry.

To address this issue, the firm is launching a grant programme for Black, Hispanic and Latino-owned companies to provide financial assistance in meeting minimum requirements for doing business with large corporations.

At the start of this new year, Eric will be focused on supporting the initial supplier cohort as they complete the assessment and consulting process. The TruSight programme aims to act as a stepping stone for diverse

suppliers to gain more contracting options within the financial services industry. “The programme is about opening doors for diverse suppliers,” Smith explains. “About eliminating barriers to opportunity.”

The Future of DEI in Finance Eric’s division aims to lead the path forward.

“We all know that we need to do better in diversity, equity, and inclusion," he says.

Financial institutions have realised that they need to expand their view of services and contractors, companies and businesses— and that the old ways will need to change for them to thrive in the future.

“Diversity should be ingrained in the culture of not just the procurement organisation, but the company as a whole," Smith says. “When we are focused and intentional, the procurement organisation can serve as a very effective tool in furthering diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the firm and the wider business community.

When it comes to supplier diversity, the best practice is to prioritise it”.

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IS NOW THE TIME TO TRANSFORM SPEND MANAGEMENT? Traditional or modern?

Procurement Magazine speaks to John Callan, Jonathan Laverentz, and Sammeli Sammalkorpi to discuss spend management’s transformation WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

I

n the past few years, procurement has finally started getting some love at boardroom level, as C-suiters increasingly recognise how the function can favourably impact savings, agility, transparency, flexibility, and resilience. At a time when such things are desperately needed one of the ways procurement helps the all-important bottom-line is through spend management.

“Traditional spend management is a process that has been around for decades, and continues to be seen broadly,” says John Callan, Product and Segment Marketing Senior Director at Coupa, a global technology platform for spend management.

Callan defines traditional spend management as an organisation using tools not designed in the cloud, that lack modern user interfaces, modern data structures, and that are fragmented and distinct from one another.

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Tradeshift spend management solution: Uplift Shop

DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

John Callan Product and Segment Marketing Senior Director, Coupa

Jonathan Laverentz Global Head of Digital Innovation and Product & Customer Marketing, Tradeshift.

Sammeli Sammalkorpi CEO and Co-Founder, Sievo

ADVERT PAGE MEDIA SALE Interos maps supply chain in 3D and real time.

You can know every single thing about how all your partners do business.

Or you can read it in papers.

“ As we continue to mitigate and manage risk, procurement will have a huge role to play” JOHN CALLAN

PRODUCT AND SEGMENT MARKETING SENIOR DIRECTOR, COUPA

“These things are core issue when you're trying to improve and transform the spendmanagement process holistically. It's impossible to do it if you have fragmented processes, and processes that are manual, outdated and labour intensive,” he says.

He also points out that old-school systems “have friction everywhere, and friction just slows things down.”

He adds: “They lack visibility. You really don't know what your organisation is spending. One of the biggest challenges

Coupa spend management solution: Supplier Health

for procurement leaders right now is understanding where the money is being spent. Only when you understand this can you focus on making improvements to the supply chain, and reducing risk.”

For many organisations it is legacy systems, data silos and unstructured data that is hindering their transition to modern spend management solutions.

Jonathan Laverentz is Head of Product & Consumer Marketing and Digital Innovation at Tradeshift, a supply chain payment company. He agrees with Callan that old systems are riven with issues.

“Many companies are relying on outdated solutions that operate individually rather than finding a holistic solution that can be modified to suit their needs,” says Laverentz. procurementmag.com

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“ Traditional spend management is a process that has been around for decades, and continues to be seen broadly” JOHN CALLAN

PRODUCT AND SEGMENT MARKETING SENIOR DIRECTOR, COUPA

Laverentz uses the analogy of LEGO to describe an optimal holistic spend management solution: “The cool thing about LEGO is once you’ve built a set you can pull 90

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it apart and put it back together again in new ways. That is what cutting-edge solutions need to offer. If a company doesn’t like the way a solution works they need to be able to pull it apart and put it back together in a way that meets their needs.”

The best way to move to modern spend management solutions Laverentz stresses the need to understand the concept of 'digitise versus digitalise'. He says this is an 'aha moment' all procurement leaders need to have: “There’s a world of difference between digitising processes and being able to truly run digitally. It’s important senior procurement leadership open their eyes to the truth that digitalising processes and implementing technologies is an

John Callan TITLE: PRODUCT AND SEGMENT MARKETING SENIOR DIRECTOR, COMPANY: COUPA I’ve been at Coupa five years I’m based in Ireland, and my role covers both global and regional European responsibilities, including regional sales and marketing strategy, development and execution.

Jonathan Laverentz Tradeshift spend management solution: Marketplace

TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF DIGITAL INNOVATION AND PRODUCT & CUSTOMER MARKETING COMPANY: TRADESHIFT

opportunity for them to grow and scale their business. It’s not about robots assimilating procurement and taking over people’s jobs.”

Laverentz adds: “Digitalising not only brings speed and flow but also provides feedback. It generates data and actionable intelligence that can be utilise to better understand processes and to recognise where the gaps are.”

He also says procurement organisations should consider taking a step back and analysing their processes.

“Take a look at where those gaps and hurdles are. It’s also important to get your team involved, and they need to be willing to be flexible. Going back to the LEGO analogy, they have to be willing to pull things apart if things aren’t working and put it back together

I have oversight on all product marketing.

My insight helps the company understand what the industry is doing, and how this impacts our product decisions. I have 20 years’ experience in procurement and e-commerce.

Sammeli Sammalkorpi TITLE: CEO AND CO-FOUNDER COMPANY: SIEVO My entire career has been dedicated to building Sievo. We now have 200 employees.

Procurement is the story of my business life. procurementmag.com

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Sievo spend management solution: Spend Optimisation 92

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DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

in a new way. Ultimately it’s about data. It’s about learning, and having a willingness to recognise things won’t change overnight.

These processes can be painful but the outcomes can be extraordinary.”

Agreeing with Laverentz is Sammeli Sammalkorpi, CEO and co-founder of Sievo.

He says the key to any kind of change always comes down to the same thing: mindset.

“Mindset is everything. In the quest to impose processes on the wider company, and in their bid to become more compliant, much of procurement has become a slave to process and compliance. Yet today’s world is volatile, unpredictable and chaotic, so it’s hard managing the procurement function using processes designed for a different, more stable, time. This is why procurement needs to change its mindset.

It needs to ask how it can I survive in such a complex world.”

Sammalkorpi goes on to explain that becoming more data driven is crucial for

success. “It’s no longer enough to offer stakeholders savings or financial returns.” He adds that companies need to embrace both internal and external data, relating to market prices, supplier risks, and sustainability.

“Procurement needs to see itself as the internal interface between the company and its upstream ecosystem,” says Sammalkorpi.

“This means they need to acquire and process all this data."

He also feels procurement needs to become sustainable because doing so “is a great opportunity to increase its perceived value within companies.”

While sustainability is undoubtedly important for procurement’s standing within businesses, its ability to deliver meaningful and powerful spend visibility can elevate it even further, insists Callan.

He says: “We have so many customers who say they benefited from using our product in the early stages of the pandemic, when there was acute focus on spend visibility and changing the authorisation structure for the thresholds for spend.

“Our team was able to reconfigure their approval structure across the entire company in less than one hour, which is exactly the kind of fuctionality that was needed when the pandemic first hit.”

With the pandemic now entering a less disruptive phase, Callan feels the role procurement has to play in a company’s success will be no less critical.

“As we continue to mitigate and manage risk, procurement will have a huge role to play. Procurement leaders have proven they can deliver meaningful value to organisations. Now they're being asked to promote value that’s more strategic in nature, such as spend management.

Executives are realising all this value is tied up together in procurement.” procurementmag.com

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Lyft, the universe and the internet of everything

WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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Zach Greenberger explains Lyft’s growing ‘rideshare’ business and how it is hitting super aggressive targets, in partnership with Oracle

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o digital enterprise is an island entirely of itself. They need strong, well-suited partnerships, realistic but ambitious targets, and some creative “beyond the box thinking.”

That’s how Zach Greenberger approaches his pivotal role at Lyft. Greenberger is a supply chain guy. He knows it link by link. He hails from an impressive background. IBM and Tesla. He’s been with Lyft for three years.

“My focus is delivering value to the endto-end supply chain for our broader business and then fostering partnerships that drive incrementality and loyalty to our customer base,” he says. In other words: growing a business step-by-step and ensuring you don’t lose your loyal customers along the way.

To do that Greenberger says he needs working relationships with suppliers who become long term partners, with similar goals and a matching culture.

“I’ve always been one who believes mature supply chain organisations play critical roles, not only driving efficiencies to the business through its supply base, but also becoming trusted advisors, operators and problem-solvers for our stakeholders.

“Most people know Lyft as a rideshare company. But, we are focused on a broader mission improving people's lives with the world's best transportation,” says Greenberger.

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When your usual course is blocked, how do you find new streams?

ey.com/tmt

HOW EY IS HELPING LYFT RAISE ITS POST IPO GAME

designing their internal controls, redesigning the chart of accounts to scale with their targeted growth, and supporting the company’s financial transformation.

Lyft raised more than two billion dollars in its 2019 IPO. Timing these events is often a hit or miss affair. Lyft nailed it with huge success. But keeping up that growth momentum and spending the money wisely while steering a route through the new regulatory constraints going public took serious teamwork.

‘Sanjay is spot on,’ says Greenberger.

EY brings a ton of expertise to support and augment our team and make sure we are building that proper foundation for long term success.’

And if that wasn’t enough, Lyft and EY had to exploit the benefits of a successful funding round just as the global pandemic took hold.

According to Khunti, with so many separate business lines and units being developed under the Lyft banner – from rideshare to scooter hire to product delivery to name just three – EY needed to take a holistic approach.

‘The IPO was a super exciting time for us,’ says Greenberger. ‘It necessitated a level of maturity and growth we needed to properly scale business operations.’

He says this is where Lyft’s relationship with EY became so critical.

Khunti agrees. ‘Absolutely. Lyft being in hyper-growth mode…but then having to face the requirements of being a public company meant it found itself in an interesting position. Working with EY at the Speed of Lyft, as we call it, meant they had a successful IPO and built a strong partnership.’

‘Operating in the public domain with a host of new regulations, laws and expectations from investors was just the tip of the iceberg.’

‘EY helped them through setting up their internal audit and SOX functions,

‘One major step was to implement Oracle Financial Accounting Hub (FAH)’, he says. This gave Lyft a more scalable accounting system which was auditable, traceable and provides a complete and accurate picture of their financials and the data they need to make the right business decisions.

‘That was really the first step in getting this transformation journey started and it’s providing successful outcomes for our ongoing work together,’ says Khunti.

Learn more

LYFT

How Lyft Is Raising The Stakes In The Supply Chain

Sounds good? But what does that mean?

“We are developing and innovating products that address the end-toend value chain of all of our customers' transportation needs. From our core rideshare business to micro-mobility, we offer everything from on-demand vehicles, bikes and scooter solutions, and even vehicle servicing and rentals.

Ultimately, our goal is to create products that effectively eliminate any barriers to transportation and make them accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

This may sound like a well-rehearsed mission statement, but behind these words is a culture where providing the best services is deeply engrained.

“At its core, we need a supply chain that delivers the best experience to our customers and stakeholders, so we are, in fact, able to focus on how we progress against our mission.”

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“ Mature supply chain organisations play a critical role, not only driving efficiencies to the business through a world class supply base but also becoming trusted advisors, operators and problem solvers for our stakeholders” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

LYFT

“This vision really ‘jives’ perfectly with Lyft’s mentality as a broader company. We have an exceptional culture that promotes healthy debate,” he says.

Greenberger expands on this and what he means when it comes to setting goals: “I take significant pride in the trust and reputation that we have built with our internal team members, and to me, that defines the power of our team's ability to deliver against super aggressive targets.”

“Super Aggressive Targets?” That sounds impressive but what does that mean?

Greenberger explains: “Data-driven decision making and focusing on our core competencies is priority thinking. It’s that mentality that is really a supply chain team’s dream, and helps us focus on hitting aggressive goals we set for ourselves.”

Greenberger is driven to ensure his teams at Lyft are undeniably ‘best in class’.

“They really differentiate themselves from other supply chain teams in the industry,” he says. “Not only does that play out in our results as a supply chain team, but I also see how we support our internal stakeholders has unlocked efficiencies for the business to deliver against the company’s core mission without distraction.”

The upshot of this, according to Greenberger, is allowing his people to ‘hyper focus’ on customers and make sure they are being delivered the best products day-to-day.

TITLE: H EAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY: TRANSPORTATION LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO Zach Greenberger is the Head of Strategic Business Development & Global Supply Management at Lyft, where he leads efforts on Lyft’s growth partnership strategies and delivering value to the end-to-end supply chain.

Zach has not only brought a strong procurement background to the role, but he’s also always had a passion for emerging technologies and prioritised a customer-centric approach. Prior to joining Lyft, Zach was integral to the Global Supply Management and Operations team at the Tesla Corporation and before that, he spent 3 years at IBM as a Strategic Sourcing Consultant. With an impressive list of over 20 technology patents under his belt, Zach stays committed to driving loyalty to Lyft's customer base while continuing the company’s mission to improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation.

EXECUTIVE BIO

2012

Year founded

ZACH GREENBERGER

LYFT

“ It was critical that we took every step we could to effectively run our business, while also building a foundation that would allow them to scale, and this is precisely where Oracle came in” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

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Consulting with Oracle Greenberger says he wants the driving force behind Lyft’s supply chain to always be its ability to influence decision making and truly partner with stakeholders to help drive the best results for Lyft. “Growing businesses survive and prosper by nurturing the right working culture and innovative thinking.”

At this point, it is clear Greenberger can’t take this narrative any further until he talks about Oracle. The two businesses ‘hitched a ride’ together some time ago and the journey has become more comfortable and successful with each passing year.

“Oracle was the foundational solution that was able to solve our end-to-end needs

LYFT

and really give us the tooling that we needed to scale business operations long term,” says Greenberger.

“So, one of the main things that we've really enjoyed by having a very strategic partnership is the ability to discuss and roadmap solutions that historically haven’t been offered in the market.”

“Oracle is very focused on helping unlock infrastructure efficiencies for Lyft every day.

The partnership overall has been fantastic and I do believe a lot of that is because we see so many similarities within our cultures.”

Greenberger says Oracle was a fundamental element of Lyft’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) journey. procurementmag.com

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“ Ultimately, I believe as IoT develops, we are going to see the offerings that we've built become crisper and easier to consume” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

“It was critical that we took every step we could to effectively run [the] business, while also building a foundation that would allow it to scale, and this is precisely where Oracle came in.”

“Implementing Oracle's ERP infrastructure really unlocked access to data that our finance and supply chain teams needed while simultaneously providing leadership a more holistic view of how we conduct resource planning and execute strategies through our evaluation of the market.’

Focus, focus, focus Zach Greenberger attributes Lyft’s ability to step up several gears to the company’s successful IPO just before the pandemic.

He also believes Lyft had a head start over its competitors by originating as a digital platform. procurementmag.com

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Oracle Native Applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Oracle’s cloud native services driven modern application development by using standards-based technologies giving developers a comprehensive, standards-based platform for a building, deploying, and managing applications.

CONSULTING THE ORACLE Lyft Reimagines the Future of Transportation with Oracle “Oracle’s culture is all about innovation - It has been from the beginning. Forty years on and it is still leading the way.” That’s according to Trey Parsons, Group VP at Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure Group.

“Our mission statement is to help people, our clients and partners, see data in new ways, gain valuable insights and discover endless possibilities” says Parsons.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has created a platform for companies to innovate and Oracle’s own culture of innovation translates to the accounts that our Cloud Venture team covers: ‘Unicorn’, cloud native, high growth accounts.

Oracle’s four-year relationship with the ride share business, Lyft Inc. is a

perfect example of how this brand of collaboration and partnership works.

“Lyft is a ‘cloud first’ company,” says Parsons. “Oracle’s Enterprise Fusion ERP application is one of the best in the business. It is an integrated, scalable suite. Lyft has gone from running hundreds of thousands of transactions to billions. Oracle’s scalable platform played a fundamental role in achieving this.”

Lyft’s first collaboration with Oracle was by adopting its Fusion Accounting Hub. This was implemented in a record 4 months.

They then successfully implemented Oracle Cloud Applications, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and Oracle Analytics Cloud.

When Lyft successfully implemented Oracle Cloud it had the capability to close its books in half the time and to significantly improve relevant processes.

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“ One of the unique things that Lyft provides is building is the fleet management capability to be able to maintain and operate autonomous vehicles in a way that most effectively utilises them, given the daily supply and demand signals in the marketplace” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

“The initial public offering has certainly benefited us,” he says. “One of our differentiators in the market is that we are hyper-focused on our mission. We don't get distracted with other things that aren't directly tied to that mission of improving people's lives with the world's best transportation. Every day, we are ruthlessly prioritising projects and products that continue to bring us closer to our goals.”

To infinity and beyond So, that was then. We’ve covered now what of the future?

No interview with a leading supply chain ‘guy’ is complete these days without drilling down where they see their business going in the future, especially in the Covid age. So, where does Zach Greenberger expect Lyft 108

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DID YOU KNOW...

LYFT

LYFT MARKET SHARE AND GROWTH SINCE IPO Ride-hailing startup Lyft Inc raised US$2.2bn in its initial public offering on T pricing 30.77 million shares at US$72, the top of its already elevated US$70 to US$72 per share target range.

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to lead the charge in innovation, particularly in the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) as driving forces?

Greenberger claims Lyft is uniquely placed to take the market into uncharted territory here and can overcome perhaps the biggest obstacle to the expansion of automated transportation: Economics, not technology which will hold the market back.

“We've seen a tonne of progress in the acceleration of autonomy within vehicles, right?” he says. “One of the unique things

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that Lyft provides is the fleet management capability to be able to maintain and operate autonomous vehicles in a way that most effectively utilises them, given the daily supply and demand signals in the marketplace.”

“We see that with the vehicles that are operated on the platform today. Even though the vehicles are progressing towards full autonomy, there is also a lingering question on how the economics will pencil out long term.”

This is where Greenberger thinks Lyft comes into its own. Creating demand is one

thing. Turning that demand into a viable business is another. The two don’t always travel together.

“Not only do we have millions of customers looking to connect to transportation needs daily, but we are also providing the necessary fleet management capabilities that are ultimately required for a vehicle to be able to operate at maximum efficiency in the marketplace.”

“This is probably one of the most interesting parts of where we're headed with autonomy, but of course, it's a long road to get there.”

Greenberger brings this narrative back down to earth at this point. He’s back to his key skills in supply chains.

“These are natural progressions of technologies [referring to AI and IoT] that are going to be incredibly critical to every business' strategy, but I think more specifically as it relates to supply chain,” he says.

“I have a very strong conviction that evolving tech such as IoT and AI will play a key role in upskilling supply chain professionals to be more strategic and less transactional than they've historically been. We've seen a transformation on the impact that supply chain organisations can drive to an enterprise over the past decade.”

“I believe IoT and AI in the supply chain can give businesses the tools they need to execute against transactional needs without too much intervention. They are critical factors in how we think about long term product offerings - whether that is simply through connectivity, or the role played in autonomous vehicles.”

“My mentality on these technologies is that, as they develop, they expand the art of the possible. We’re cultivating what can be offered both in the supply chain and from a broader business innovation perspective.

That includes embedded systems that are providing better telematics to our owned and operated fleet or IoT devices deep within the heart of our supply chain hardware – our vehicles – making it easier to assess and predict optimal vehicle positioning, asset utilisation, more accurate ETA estimates and so on.”

“Ultimately, I believe as IoT develops, we are going to see the innovative offerings that we've built, become crisper and easier to consume.”

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HOW TO

REDUCE CONTRACT L I FE C Y C L E MANAGEMENT R I S K JAGGAER’s Amen Reghimi, discusses the digital advancements improving contract lifecycle management and how to effectively manage potential security risks WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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undamental to the procurement process, contracts directly impact an organisation’s savings, supplier relationships, risk exposure and overall performance. Businesses use contract lifecycle management (CLM) to optimise value throughout a contract’s creation, review, approval, renewal, amendment or termination.

“Companies can have up to 40,000 active contracts at a time, meaning thousands of different buyersupplier relationships, rates and risks,” explains Amen Reghimi, VP of Product Management at global procurement technology company JAGGAER. Reghhimi adds that If contracts are not properly managed organisations run the risk of missing out on negotiations that can lead to savings, and the opportunity to prevent unnecessary maverick spend.

“With effective CLM organisations can ensure they remain on top of important dates, vendor compliance issues, or when a supplier isn’t sticking to the contract,” says Reghhimi.

TECHNOLOGY

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Join our grassroots initiative and community of more than 4,000 change agents who want to ensure that all supply chains across the world have embedded sustainable procurement practices by 2030.

Pledge now at spp.earth Sustainable Procurement Pledge Let‘s drive change together

“ I T’ S V I TA L L EA D ER S EN SU RE E ND - T O - END SE CU RI TY A C R O S S T HE PROC U RE M ENT P R OC ES S ” AMEN REGHIMI

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT VP, JAGGAER

“How effectively an organisation manages its contracts ultimately determines the effectiveness of their procurement strategy, risk management and revenue performance,” says Reghimi.

Digital advancements in contract management Manually managing a high volume of contracts is costly and time consuming, and can lead to errors, missed opportunities for savings, and substantial revenue loss.

But, says Reghimi, “AI is changing this, and helping organisations reclaim value.”

By automating demanding manual processes, procurement can help teams focus on key priorities. AI and machinelearning capabilities can now go beyond basic templating, and generate entire contracts. It can even integrate specific clauses based on supplier profiles, as well as details from the request for proposal (RFP).

“Smart approval-routing that identifies where team members need to sign-off, and which team members need to do this, significantly streamline the approval and renewal process,” says Reghimi.

With advanced CLM solutions, organisations can use spend analysis platforms to monitor a contract’s value over time, detect maverick spend and identify procurementmag.com

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“ C O M P A N I E S C A N H A V E UP TO 40 ,0 0 0 A CT IV E C O NT R A C T S AT A TI M E , M E A NING T HOUS A N D S OF DI FFE RENT BUYER SUP P LI E R R EL A T IONS HIP S , RAT E S A N D R IS K S ” AMEN REGHIMI

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT VP, JAGGAER

AMEN REGHIMI similar products, with a view to offering on-contract replacements.

“AI’s ability to quickly digest data, pick up on certain phrases within a contract and offer recommendations to edit certain terms and conditions are helping organisations proactively mitigate risk,” Rehhimi says.

He adds: “When procurement teams have tools that cut through the administrative work of contract creation, negotiation, reviewing and renewal, they can prioritise managing strategic relationships with suppliers. As AI becomes more powerful, we’ll see CLM tools save teams more time and also playing a larger role in procurement strategy.”

With digital advancement comes the risk of cyberthreat While digital advancement offers many positives it is not risk-free, particularly with regard to cybersecurity.

Contract management security can be a blind spot for organisations. “When it comes to cybersecurity, all data is valuable and every industry is a target,” warns Reghimi.

He adds: “It’s vital leaders ensure endto-end security across the procurement process. While tools such as AI and predictive analytics can help minimise financial and reputational risk, more digitalisation increases the likelihood of cyber risk.”

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TITLE: PRODUCT MANAGEMENT VP COMPANY: JAGGAER Reghimi’s role is to define and execute Jaggaer’s strategy. His focus is on building intelligent solutions that drive transformation, satisfaction and value for customers. “I’m passionate about solving market problems with technology and turning abstract ideas into reality,” he says.

For over a decade he has been focused on innovation and procurement. He is also an Advisory Council Member at The George Washington University School of Business, and a member of Forbes Technology Council and the Global Innovation Institute.

And because procurement teams increasingly have to deal with large amounts of sensitive corporate and supplier data, cyberthreats are becoming more common, and increasingly high-stake. Such as the 2020 SolarWinds breach, when a group of hackers thought to be backed by the Russian government penetrated thousands of organisations globally, including the United

TECHNOLOGY

States Federal Government. Attacks like this can disrupt multinational supply chains, and can have lingering effects.

With such vulnerabilities in mind, Reghimi says that it is up to procurement teams to implement security practises that protect confidential data and supply chains. Conducting detailed security reviews of each supplier’s security practices and

their technology vendors should be just as important as reviewing your own, he believes.

Addressing cybersecurity risks in contract management By using CLM solutions in a threat landscape, procurement faces challenges concerning the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. procurementmag.com

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“ B US INES S ES M US T EV ALU ATE B OT H T H EIR T EC H NIC AL AND S EC UR IT Y C APAB ILIT IES TO ENS UR E D AT A IS PR OT ECTED” AMEN REGHIMI

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT VP, JAGGAER

“Businesses must evaluate both their technical and security capabilities to ensure data is protected,” insists Reghimi.

He adds: “Maintaining a central, password-protected contract repository is a critical step toward keeping contracts safe. Rather than store them across separate folders, or in multiple formats, establish a protected digital repository. This reduces the risk of unauthorised individuals accessing information. A repository also offers greater visibility, which can prevent bottlenecks and missed deadlines,” he adds.

Another way in which procurement can make contract management more secure is through identity-based security and access.

“The ability to set role-based permissions around viewing or editing contracts prevents leaks, while also empowering teams to share data without violating privacy or sensitive information,” Reghimi says.

He adds that It’s also important to keep up to date, and compliant, with ISO security standards, in order to maintain system integrity.

“Procurement functions can also leverage e-signatures to create digital records, and ensure personal authorisation, as well as data encryptions to keep sensitive contract information secure,” he says.

On a final note of caution, Reghimi warns that “no application does it all,” and says vendors should follow stated security requirements “with no compromise.” procurementmag.com

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VISA – PAYMENTS, PROCUREMENT, AND THE GREAT PANDEMIC PIVOT WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

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PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

VISA

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Mano Manikkam , Senior Director, Head of Global Sourcing – APAC at VISA on the payment giant’s digital transformation and procurement pivot

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ew functions have received more recognition in global organisations since 2020 than procurement.

Alongside IT, procurement professionals have weathered the many storms produced by the pandemic and steered companies to safe harbours.

More than one leading executive has said that procurement has cemented its position and proven its importance, while making CPOs the “rock stars” of the C-suite.

Mano Manikkam is far too humble to describe himself in such terms. Like so many procurement leaders, he seems more comfortable quietly getting on with his job, ensuring that the function stays in the shadows for all the right reasons.

On a visit to the UK from his base in Singapore, the Senior Director of Global Sourcing, Asia Pacific, Visa, takes time from his busy schedule to visit BizClik’s HQ in Norwich. This is worth mentioning as it speaks volumes about his modus operandi – he is on leave yet still makes the time to share the Visa success story as they navigated the procurement challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated their digital transformation and all the while keeping a close eye on their suppliers and key partners.

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VISA

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MANO MANIKKAM TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING – ASIA PACIFIC COMPANY: VISA

“Digital transformation is not just a onetime initiative – it is a long-term investment”

INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES LOCATION: SINGAPORE

Mano Manikkam is a procurement leader with an extensive track record of building and transforming procurement teams into world-class functions for Corporates across US, Europe and Asia Pacific. He joined Visa in June 2014 and consistently leads and delivers high-value procurement services in Strategic Sourcing and Category Management – achieving significant ROI and generating sustainable cost savings through driving best practice and continuous improvements initiatives.

MANO MANIKKAM

EXECUTIVE BIO

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING – ASIA PACIFIC, VISA

Manikkam has many areas of expertise built in a 25-year career, enabling him to master complex and demanding procurement and program management activities. Specialities include Operational Transformation, Procurement Processes Modeling, Data Analysis & Reporting, Category Planning and Management, Vendor Relationship Management, and Change Management.

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VISA

He beams a warm smile as he reaches for his smartphone and shares photos of his recent visit to Anfield, home of his beloved Liverpool Football Club – football being a universal, global language and reference. Equally ubiquitous is Visa, or as their latest strapline puts it, “everywhere you want to be”.

The payments giant has faced unprecedented change, as the world transitioned to more digital payments, while also having to manage its own reaction to remote working, supply chain disruption and global shortages. All in a day’s work for a procurement leader?

“Over the 20-plus years of my career, I've seen procurement change vastly from initially just being a processing function for most companies,” says Manikkam.

“Now more of what we see in the industry is procurement functions being closer to the business, and even to the clients, to drive better business value to reach business goals.”

Manikkam’s scope covers the whole spectrum of procurement in 22 markets in Asia Pacific across all spend categories, working with diverse suppliers at a localised level.

Manikkam’s career started as a consultant and he worked his way towards middle management in consulting and then switched over to the corporate world on the client side. That has seen him work across multiple regions – in the US, in Europe and also in Asia – and in global companies across multiple industries and sectors.

It has been a solid career path, with foundations formed while performing military National Service duties in Singapore.

“I spent three years in the Singapore army as a commissioned army officer within the Ist 126

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Commando Battalion,” he recalls. “It taught me a lot of things, especially leadership skills, self-discipline and development in my mental and physical endurance. I was put in situations where I had to react quickly, thinking out of the box and also overcoming challenges to deliver outcomes. So now when I'm in the corporate world and face similar challenges – people challenges, organisational and transformational challenges, operational challenges – what I have gained from those learnings has been very helpful for me.”

1958

Year founded

20,500

Number of employees worldwide (2020)

On the subject of Singapore, a renowned hub for trade and financial services seen as the gateway to Asia for many Global and Western organisations, how important is it in a digital world to have a physical presence in market? As more organisations transition to remote and digital, does location even matter anymore or has that concept become redundant?

Manikkam admits that we live in a digital, borderless world today, but believes

certain businesses cannot be successful unless they are localised.

“Location is absolutely still important for physical impact on specific markets and industries, especially in a region like Asia Pacific,” he says. “It's a multicultural environment with fragmentation of rich culture and traditions and how business is done in those markets is unique compared to other regions. So companies with ambitions to grow in the region have to be present rather than work virtually.” procurementmag.com

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INSIGHT...

MANO ON PARTNERSHIP

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We have recently partnered with Simfoni and went Live with a new spend analytics tool.

This allows us to make necessary advancements in consolidated automated data feeds, enriched data and more user friendly data visualization capabilities. It also allows us to create comprehensive analysis of all main spend categories and sub-categories along with supplier fragmentation and the ability to generate reports on high-level overview of spend and volumetric profile by different parameters. The tool allows us as an organization to mature in our reporting capabilities with enriched data and help drive better informed category management and discussions with our business partners.

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VISA

“Our focus hasn't changed. We have learned a lot from this past 12-18 months and we are ready and prepared to apply those learnings as we move forward” MANO MANIKKAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING – ASIA PACIFIC, VISA

Meet Visa

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SEE SPEND DIFFERENTLY

See what better spend management can do for you.

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VISA DEVELOPS NEW, SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE SPEND DEPARTMENT WITH SIMFONI When Simfoni analyzes data for its clients, they leave nothing unchecked.

The Californian-based startup’s top priority is to provide “the complete picture” on how companies spend money, and how they can spend it more effectively, profitably, and responsibly.

Simfoni is designed to make the spending processes of the supply chain as efficient and effective as possible by bringing together all relevant data, no matter the type, size or source.

Jason Stern, CEO Simfoni Spend Intelligence, explains, “We provide a suite of applications with spend analytics at the core. Those applications help customers drive better cost savings, identify risks within their supply chain, and create greater procurement efficiencies.”

Stern continued, “But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What’s becoming increasingly important to our customers is focusing on CSR initiatives. They’re looking to use Simfoni to help customers find ways to ensure their spending is as socially responsible as possible,’ he says.

Simfoni’s four-year relationship with Visa is a prime example of this shift in the focus of organizations’ spend management.

“Visa wanted a clearer picture of its global spending, that’s why they came to us,” says Stern. “Initially, we were able to give Visa that detailed vision to enhance efficiencies and reduce risk.” But it was the next stage that took Visa to the next level.

“We were able to help Visa really step up in terms of its CSR,” says Stern. “Just by drilling down into their spend we were able to help them create a Supplier Diversity Department. With Simfoni, Visa can now calculate the impact they have across a multitude of communities through their supply chain. This data provides huge amounts of quantifiable and valuable Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG).”

VISA

Creating a Digital roadmap for Sourcing success Mannikam says that Visa has a road map for digital transformation that is part of their continuous improvement to benchmark themselves against the industry and where they should be heading.

The pandemic came along and, in an unexpected way, actually supported Visa’s transformation, as it did with many companies that were prepared for the move towards digitalisation of their operations.

Manikkam says the pandemic “almost enhanced the necessity of why we should be transforming digitally”.

Most communities transformed digitally in the last two years, certainly when it came to making payments. Visa already had multiple payment flows and the shift to more focus on digital and contactless

procurement? How is that impacted by this digital roadmap?

“We are looking at it right from the ground up – from the baseline P2P platform that will allow us to build on other modules beyond that,” says Manikkam.

“We're not just stopping with the initial requirements coming from the business but also handling category management activities on that platform, contractual authoring, and also review – all the way up to payments and settlement. That will be the foundation and eventually, it will grow to look at Supplier Risk review, Supplier Relationship Management, and Supplier Performance Management and possibly Supplier diversity too.

“We've tried to look at it from an end-toend process improvement standpoint, as an opportunity to bring it all together.”

was already part of the digitalisation of the payments industry. The pandemic actually encouraged Visa to drive its third-party supplier partnerships to enhance growth in digitalisation and digital payments.

But what about when it comes to

Importance of partnerships We discuss the topic that refuses to go away – the pandemic – and the inevitable digital transformation that it obviously accelerated.

Manikkam, like so many forward-thinking global executives, acknowledges that the terrible virus has also delivered some positive change. Not least, it has galvanised relationships with key partners.

“We work with a lot of key partners within our digital transformation initiatives,” he says. “The partners we work with are absolutely key because they provide us with a lot of knowledge, intelligence and more industry-standard ways of working and benchmarking ourselves to delivery our transformation goals successfully.

“Digital transformation is not just a onetime initiative – it is a long-term investment and it should be a way to build and grow the operations forward rather than a plug-the-gap kind of solution.

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INSIGHT...

MANO ON SUSTAINABILITY “Sustainability is a big topic that we are working with our businesses to get closer to and address. We have corporate goals on sustainability and we do see our clients asking for it too. When we work with our suppliers, they have to ensure they are also compliant and adhering to these sustainability goals.”

“In our procurement function, we focus on the partnership with third-party providers and vendors and they are the ones that provide the critical services that allow us to deliver value to our clients so we have to ensure that we select the right partners, we create the right relationship, capture the right delivery and commercial mechanisms and contractual structure so that they can deliver great value for Visa’s clients.”

The changes forced by the pandemic are not just limited to an increased reliance on digital solutions or new processes – there was also a significant shift in business procurementmag.com

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“ Supplier diversity enables and supports innovation” MANO MANIKKAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING – ASIA PACIFIC, VISA

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attitude and behaviour towards the procurement function.

Manikkam says procurement has traditionally been perceived in different ways by different companies but procurement is the “main artery to the financial spine of every company”.

“From being viewed as just processing backend operations, the procurement function is now elevated closer to the business, and they look at us as trusted advisers and enablers of driving the business forward rather than being a roadblock.

“That's a cultural change which a lot of companies struggled with. So when you're leading a procurement function you’ve got to also factor that in to ensure that it is a cultural change. It is not just about changing the procurement function, but also changing the behaviour of the entire company to accept that change.” procurementmag.com

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Payments, procurement, and the great pandemic pivot

“We shouldn't be shy of trying new ideas, new ways of doing things, new strategies – especially in regions like Asia Pacific” MANO MANIKKAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING – ASIA PACIFIC, VISA

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It has been a turbulent time for Visa, as it has for all global organisations, coping with an unexpected crisis and accelerated change, and Manikkam admits his team has learned a lot from the experience as they have adapted to a new way of working.

“Our focus hasn't changed,” says Manikkam. “We have learned a lot from

the past 12-18 months and we are ready and prepared to apply those learnings as we move forward”.

“We shouldn't be shy of trying new ideas, new ways of doing things, new strategies – especially in regions like Asia Pacific where it is very fragmented and government and regulatory guidances are changing on a regular basis. We need procurementmag.com

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INSIGHT...

MANO ON CATEGORY MANAGEMENT

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“Category management is absolutely a critical part of the procurement spectrum and some companies do not invest enough in it or do not understand the great value that they can deliver. Category management builds the relationship with the strategic end and also helps to drive the implementation, ensuring activities and initiatives are delivered to align with those sourcing strategies. Category management is also important to manage relationships – not only with our internal stakeholders but also with our supply market so it is an absolutely critical function.”

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VISA

to ensure that we stay close to our supply market, understand them, understand how they are impacted by regulatory changes and react accordingly to get the best for VISA.” Looking ahead, Manikkam says innovation is absolutely critical for VISA and being integrated into thought processes within the procurement function.

“Supplier diversity enables and supports innovation,” he says. “The key suppliers are always there but a lot of smaller suppliers are coming up with cutting-edge technology and ideas that take things further, and that's worth exploring.”

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IS ANYTHING

CHANGING

ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND

INCLUSION? Four procurement leaders share their views on the present state of diversity and inclusion across industry WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

A

ccording to recruitment experts, Hays, there is a lot of talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, but a lack of meaningful action. Hays’ research shows that while 62% of employers are actively discussing DEI issues just 48% of employees believe this is leading to positive action. There is particular concern that those who belong to an ethnic minority, and those who identify as LGBTQ+, are being overlooked. Mental health and neurodivergency are other area in which it seems there is much to be done.

Our experts share their views.

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DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

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Sara Harding (SH)

Angela Qu (AQ)

TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER (CPO)

TITLE: CPO,

COMPANY: AEGON

COMPANY: LUFTHANSA GROUP

I've been in procurement for over 15 years, starting out with buying coffee machines, and then moving into technology and other indirect spend, in a variety of category management and country leadership roles. Aegon is a global financial services company, which I joined in 2017 as its first CPO. My focus since joining has been on improving the profile of the procurement function, increasing the value delivered, maturing the approach to third-party risk management and improving operational excellence.

I have worked in large multinational companies, such as ABB and Siemens for over 25 years, in organisation transformation, people development, procurement and supply chain. I am currently the CPO of Lufthansa Group. I’m responsible for all strategic procurementrelated activities, managing US$22.1bn in spend (2019). We have roughly 40,000 suppliers, and my team manages more than 300 categories. My passion is to transform the procurement function into a strategic enabler of value creation for our customers, our employees and our societies in a sustainable way.

Vaishali Baid (VB) TITLE: SENIOR CONSULTANT COMPANY: ACTION SUSTAINABILITY Action Sustainability is a globally recognised leader in sustainable procurement and supply chain management. I’m its sustainable procurement and social value expert. I’m responsible for developing strategies for clients from both public and private sectors. We support them on integrating sustainability and social value into their procurement and supply chain processes. I often deliver social value training through the Supply Chain Sustainability School – a multi award-winning learning and development platform

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Molly Dobson (MD) TITLE: COUNTRY MANAGER COMPANY: AMAZON BUSINESS, UK & IRELAND Amazon Business is a global procurement solution that helps millions of organisations reshape their procurement. It helps them find cost and time savings, delivers increased productivity for their teams, and offers purchasing insight, and analytics.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

WHAT’S YOUR EXPERIENCE OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN PROCUREMENT? SH: One of the things I love about procurement is the opportunity to meet different people from a wide range of organisations from across the world, so in that sense I think it's incredibly diverse. I think the way people arrive in the function, from a broad range of prior careers, also creates diversity. Companies are also increasingly thoughtful about creating diverse teams.

Ultimately, it's the companies within which the procurement function operates that influence the diversity of its teams the most. Diversity and inclusion are key organisational values at Aegon, both as an employer and as the custodian of investments. Those values are also reflected in our procurement function.

VB: After 10 years in the procurement profession, I have witnessed first-hand the value of more diverse and inclusive corporate procurement. Diverse and inclusive supply chains have huge potential to unlock innovative solutions and deliver a positive impact in operating markets.

The procurement industry is getting there, slowly, but we must continue to deliver an inclusive culture and strategy.

MD: My personal experience has connected me with procurement professionals from all sorts of backgrounds. That said, I can see barriers in procurement that work against people from certain backgrounds. Take roles that require a degree. Gaining a degree is not something that everyone has the resources to pursue. It also applies to positions that are posted via channels that only a sub-segment of the population even sees. Business procurementmag.com

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DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Hays Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Report 2021

leaders have a responsibility to not only recognise these barriers, but also address the root causes.

AQ: Procurement has always been a frontrunner in terms of cross-functional collaboration with internal stakeholders, as well as with outside suppliers. But diversity and inclusion is not necessarily just about who people are, it’s also about what they know.

Procurement needs to strive to employ people from different professional backgrounds, who have diverse knowledge and expertise.

There’s a tendency to hire people who have only ever been in procurement - people who are facts-driven, who are good at negotiating and communicating. There is nothing wrong with that, but I feel it's important to open up to other functions, such as finance, project management, sales marketing, and product development. I think procurement can be much more diverse if we get these kinds of expertise in.

Having a diversified workforce makes it easier to implement procurement strategies. Having a professionally diverse team means we can speak the languages of our internal stakeholders, and create an environment to foster cross-functional collaborations.

ARE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION CONVERSATIONS LEADING TO MEANINGFUL CHANGE? SH: I think we're seeing meaningful change in terms of external diversity but the conversation around internal diversity and inclusion needs more attention. The focus is on creating environments in which every individual can be successful and reach their full potential. A good measure of progress is whether there is more diversity in the room you’re in than there is in the images in the slide-deck being presented. procurementmag.com

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DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

It's time to create teams that don’t only look diverse by sight, but to also ask ourselves whether, for example, neurodivergent people can also be successful in our organisations. We're still doing things like using PowerPoint templates that colour-blind people can't read, and creating office environments that are overwhelming to those with autism.

We're missing the point of inclusivity. I don't believe the onus should be on the individual to adapt, We should be creating environments that are inclusive.

AQ: As a senior leader in my organisation, I look at what I can do to create a positive environment for my employees, by making sure there is diversity and inclusiveness in my team setups. On purpose, I hire people from different nationalities, industry background, characters, age group, gender and functional competencies.

I publically appreciate different views, and try to create a safe environment for everybody to voice their concerns and to challenge the status quo. We celebrate success and enjoy learning from failures.

VB: The former CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi, said “diversity is a program, and that inclusion is a state of mind,” and I think that says a lot. We need inclusive cultures and that often means a swing in an organisation’s mind-set. An inclusive culture is a driving factor in higher performing organisations.

There is a welcome trend whereby organisations are focusing on creating a workplace culture in which equal opportunity prevails, but we need to be careful not just to listen to those with the loudest voices, but be proactive in exploring skills across the industry when the opportunity arises.

WHAT CAN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES DO TO DRIVE POSITIVE CHANGE?

MD: Our understanding of what diversity and inclusion means in our personal and professional lives continues to evolve, so we need to evolve with it. Meaningful change has already been made, but barriers still exist. Driving diversity and inclusion in the workplace is not a one-off exercise where you’re done after you’ve landed certain results. This kind of change is a living thing, a box-ticking exercise, so we need to continue having conversations, and acting on those conversations.

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SH: There’s a huge role for procurement in helping the business become more diverse and inclusive. Through its supply chain, a business should have access to a broad variety of external organisations from which it can also learn. An organisation’s supply chain should reflect its values, and employees can drive positive change through an understanding of allyship and the nature of privilege, and also by speaking up when change is required.

VB: We need to go beyond making diversity and inclusion merely a business case. It is a different journey for every organisation, based on their situation and industry. Business needs to form a conducive culture for individuals to be able to bring their best selves forward every day, and to create a sense of belonging within the system.

This culture should form an ecosystem in which employees respect, acknowledge and accept different perspectives. Inclusion is an ongoing change. It helps to build more empathetic, engaging, thriving and diverse teams, and these are the skills of a high-performing procurement industry.

MD: Change starts at the top and needs to be firmly embedded into an organisation’s ways of working for it to become a part of the business. Recruitment processes are key.

Think about how to get a range of candidates to apply for your roles. Think about how to make sure interviewers have a diverse range of experiences and perspectives. Think about how to develop talent with a one-size-doesn’tfit-all mentality.

Organisations such as Amazon have a responsibility to showcase opportunities to a wide variety of people, and to show them that they can belong. Positive role-models also make such a difference.

It isn’t just the responsibility of leaders, though. Every employee in an organisation contributes to the culture, and I’d challenge each individual to think about the role they

play, and how they can, and should, influence diversity and inclusion in procurement. Think about it, and then do something about it.

AQ: I see lot of positive changes happening in terms of setting up programmes and providing coaching and mentorship to women. Many organisations set up percentage targets for female employee and leadership. They need to find more female workforce from the market. My advice would be: before you look for talents outside, look carefully inside first. Each organisation have many women on board. How would you identify those female talents, and provide them the opportunity of growth and build up a strong talent pipeline. At the same time, enhance the culture of ED&I and become an attractive employer for women. procurementmag.com

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WHAT CHALLENGES DO THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS FACE? SH: When I was starting out, I was lucky enough to work for leaders who saw past my age and gave me challenging work in environments where my peers were much older than I was.

Providing equality of opportunity to everyone, regardless of youth or of retirement age, is fundamental to an inclusive environment.

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At Aegon, we’re thinking about what it means to have a long life, and how to ensure there’s challenge and opportunity at work for the duration of people’s time there.

As long as people are open to learning and to being challenged, then in an inclusive environment they can do anything. There is no need for them to be given age-specific roles. Young people starting work today will be faced with organisations that are

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

and the younger generation getting into this space are very vocal around diversity and inclusion. I hope this accelerates the transformation that the procurement industry very much needs. We need to bring a fresh perspective to the way we conduct negotiations, and have empathetic stakeholder engagements. We also need to use our position to encourage collaborative efforts.

MD: The younger generations seem much more aware of how diversity and inclusion can impact our personal and professional lives, so I’m looking forward to more of them entering the workforce.

The challenges may come with the pace of change in skills required, and the roles available. I think they need to be much more flexible and adaptable than the older generations, who might have worked for one or two companies, as opposed to the five or more you see among young people today.

going through transition towards diversity.

We need to hear their voices, because they have a more natural understanding of fairness and inclusivity.

VB: Unfortunately, the reality is that there is still a diversity gap in our industry, and we need to acknowledge that and work towards resolving it. It’s a fascinating time to be part of the procurement industry

AQ: In many organisations, procurement is not seen as an attractive place to be.

Younger generations tend to look for roles where they can make an impact, and enjoy a very good career path.

Unfortunately, procurement is not often seen as a stepping stone for career development.

As procurement leaders, we need to communicate how procurement professionals can make a positive impact on global value chain setup, integration of ecosystems and partners, driving innovation and sustainable agenda.

Procurement leaders need to be role models of leadership to attract, retain and further talent. procurementmag.com

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