Procurement Magazine - April 2021

April 2021 | procurementmag.com

Women in Procurement FIND OUT

TEALBOOK

Leveraging Tech for Supply Diversity and Agility READ NOW

FUTURE

“Predictive is kind of cool if we can get there”

Ninian Wilson, Group Procurement Director of Vodafone and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company, prepares for an exciting future fuelled by AI, ML and predictive analytics LEARN MORE

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The Procurement Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

LAURA V. GARCIA DEPUTY EDITOR

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

KIERAN WAITE

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE

PRODUCTION EDITOR

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

CREATIVE TEAM

JENNIFER SMITH

RHYS THOMAS GEORGIA WILSON SCOTT BIRCH

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

KAYLEIGH SHOOTER PROJECT DIRECTORS

TOM LIVERMORE JAMES RICHARDSON KARL GREEN

JAMES WHITE

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITORS LETTER

Supplier diversity and the power of woke consumerism The changing face of supplier diversity— Spurred by woken consumerism and the power of social media, procurement takes on a new task

“Urged by woke consumerism, supplier diversity now also refers to inclusive procurement best practices that ensure fair and equitable distribution of business to underrepresented groups” PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Supplier diversity has begun to take on a hybrid meaning.

As procurement is tasked with increasing agility and resilience, supplier diversity continues to represent risk mitigation tactics, moving from single-sourced to a more diverse and perhaps domestic supply strategy that allows less opportunity for risk exposure and a faster response in case of unforeseen disruptions.

However, as Environmental and Social Governance (ESG— yet another term that has taken on a new, more expanded meaning) initiatives continue to pickup stride, urged by woke consumerism, supplier diversity now also refers to inclusive procurement best practices that ensure fair and equitable distribution of business to underrepresented groups.

But just as consumers have learned to grow wary of greenwashing, PR stunts and marketing campaigns that aim to align with ‘woke’ values while corporate practices and business models remain unadjusted have the hollow ring of empty promises, or worse, read as performance activism and may only prove to increase brand risks.

So, just as procurement must lead the sustainability charge, so must it lead the way in diversity and inclusion— because it’s good for people and good for business.

LAURA V. GARCIA

laura.garcia@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

procurementmag.com

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 6

Big Picture

8

The Brief

10 Global News 12 People Moves 14 Timeline: The Suez blockage crisis 16 Legend:

Malcolm Harrison 18 Five Mins With:

Karim Shariff

44

Procurement Strategy

Procurement’s request for supplier collaboration and innovation

22

52

Ready for an exciting future

The four pillars to strategic procurement and a better CX

Vodafone Procurement Company

Comdata Group

78

Amcor

Smart, sustainable packaging

68

Digital Procurement

Breaking down silos in procurement with a BSM platform

92

Technology

Demystifying tech in procurement

100 ESG

Tealbook: Leveraging tech for supply diversity and agility

110 Top Ten

Women in procurement

BIG PICTURE

ESG Investing

Wall Street, New York, USA The term ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance ) was first coined in 2005 in a landmark study written by Ivo Knoepfel entitled “Who Cares Wins.” ESG investing saw accelerated growth around 2013- 2014 after studies were published showing that strong corporate sustainability performance is associated with strong financial results. Today, ESG investing is estimated at over $20 trillion in AUM. 6

April 2021

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THE BRIEF “YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE THE PERFECT RELATIONSHIP TO REAP CRUCIAL INNOVATIONS FROM THE SUPPLIER, JUST A SLIGHTLY BETTER RELATIONSHIP THAN THEIR OTHER CUSTOMERS” James Marland, Global Vice President, SAP Intelligent Spend & Business Network

BY THE NUMBERS

Procurement has a diversity issue

92%

Less than one in 10 procurement professionals identify as POC

No

8% Yes

READ MORE

“For those who are on their pre-transformation journey and are looking to have a datafirst transformation and want to deploy something fast and make an impact on driving ROI quickly, Tealbook provides a head start” Stephany Lapierre, Founder and CEO, Tealbook

READ MORE

“THERE'S REALLY A BROADER REMIT THAT PROCUREMENT HAS, BUT THERE'S NOT ALWAYS A BROAD UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IT IS THEY'RE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH BEYOND JUST SAVINGS” Michael Schanker

VP of Strategic Marketing, Coupa Software

READ MORE

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April 2021

EDITOR'S CHOICE DHL ACCELERATES DECARBONISATION <29m tonnes by 2030: science-based target for carbon reduction €7bn: invested in green technologies by 2030 30%: ESG-related targets in the Corporate Board’s annual bonus READ MORE

STARBUCKS GOES GREEN Starbucks has committed to conserve water usage in green coffee processing by 50% before 2030 READ MORE

$350 BILLION The figure Walmart plans to invest in sourcing goods grown, produced or finished in the US over the next decade READ MORE

 NORTHVOLT Selected as a strategic lead supplier by Volkswagen, Northvolt secures a US$14bn battery cell order, heping Volkswagen rapidly expand their fleet of electric vehicles.

AN INDUSTRY FIRST FOR PROCUREMENT SOLUTIONS Is B2B ecommerce the future for procurement?

US based Mirakl and PunchOut2Go certainly believe this to be the case. Marking an industry first for the sector, the two organisations have developed a comprehensive B2B enterprise marketplace solution for procurement.

 NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY Nationwide Building Society adopts EcoVadis’ sustainability rating system to further drive their commitment to human rights, the environment, and sustainable procurement.

What does the platform provide its users?

By seamlessly integrating eProcurement and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, Mirakl and PunchOut2Go can provide increased access to B2B digital buyers and improve purchase experiences.

 OFGEM Ofgem discovers 18 energy suppliers not adhering to price protection rules resulting in £10.4mn refunds and redress payments being issued.

What’s driving B2B ecommerce?

In 2020, B2B ecommerce adoption accelerated by 10 years in just a few months.

This acceleration has strengthened the expectation for a digital-first experience.

According to McKinsey, 90 per cent of B2B decision-makers expect the dominance of digital sales to continue post-COVID-19.

With this in mind, it is said that online marketplaces that can be easily integrated into eProcurement (like Mirakl and PunchOut2Go’s joint solution) will soon become the new leaders.

 RENESAS ELECTRONICS A blaze tore through a factory of the Japanese chip manufacturer just weeks after it was hit by an earthquake. It is one of the car industry’s biggest chip suppliers and will not reach full output again until June.

W A Y U P APR 21

W A Y D O W N

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GLOBAL NEWS 2

UNITED STATES

BCG reports profit and employee growth Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was able to maintain a healthy growth rate of 8% for full-year 2020, recording $8.6 billion in revenue. It also added a further 1000 employees globally. The firm invested $150m to help both public and private sector organisations respond to COVID19, plus $300m into its social impact and sustainability efforts.

1

UNITED STATES

Procurement to lead US cyber security efforts The US government will leverage procurement as a key element

3

UNITED STATES

official said the administration

Food Northwest joins PCC food waste efforts

would look to “procurement

Food Northwest has joined

of its cyber security startegy. An

to be a leader in this space” to address “both private-sector and government challenges in finding, buying, and using innovative, usable, and secure software and hardware — and systems”.

the Pacific Coast Collaborative in an effort to reduce the pernicious impact of food waste - highlighting the need for supply chain action. The trade association joins the West Coast Voluntary Agreement to Reduce Wasted Food, which aims to cut food waste in half by 2030.

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April 2021

5

INDONESIA

J&T Express’s first allcargo aircraft takes flight To ensure next-day delivery for local consumers and enable greater domestic connectivity, J&T Express launched its first dedicated cargo-only aircraft in

4

UK

Billions lost annually through poor spend control

Indonesia. The move is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to providing efficient, secure and quality express services.

A report by Soldo finds that European businesses lose £301 billion annually due to poor spending controls. Germany is worst affected, losing £54bn, while the UK and France both lose £37bn each year - that’s equivalent to 2% of all business revenue in the UK.

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PEOPLE MOVES MADISON L. MOBLEY FROM: FAIRMARKIT TO: FAIRMARKIT WAS: ENTERPRISE SALES DIRECTOR NOW: HEAD OF BELONGING, INCLUSION, & CULTURE

Madison L. Mobley (she/her/they/them) is a Columbia University Alum who, once upon a time, majored in Sociology and aspired to be a freelance journalist.

Fast forward 10+ years, and Mobley's career journey includes time at EMC Corporation, Dell EMC, & Procter & Gamble where she's held global leadership positions in sales, category management, customer advocacy, and HR strategy.

About her promotion to Head of Belonging, Inclusion, and Culture at Fairmarkit, a venture-backed Procurement Tech startup, she says, "In the same way we’ve been product visionaries and innovators in supply chain tech, we are uniquely positioned to be pioneers in the industry where social impact meets business impact."

Outside of Fairmarkit, she is an ambassador for The Sustainable Procurement Pledge and organizations including Sales 4 the Culture, RevGenius, and Sistas in Sales, and Revenue Collective of Color.

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April 2021

" In the same way we’ve been product visionaries and innovators in supply chain tech, we are uniquely positioned to be pioneers in the industry where social impact meets business impact."

KEN SUZUKI FROM: ZULILY TO: GAMESTOP WAS: VP, SUPPLY CHAIN TECHNOLOGY NOW: VP ,SUPPLY-CHAIN SYSTEMS Holding a BA in Information Systems, International Business (CISB) from Washington University, brings with him more than two decades of experience in the e-commerce, informational technology and software engineering areas. Prior to Zulily Suzuki spent time at Boeing, eProject and was CTO and cofounder of AMI. In his new role, Mr. Suzuki will be responsible for all systems and software related to GameStop’s supply chain.

TIM WILLIS FROM: WAYMO TO: AEVA INC WAS: CHIEF MANUFACTURING AND GLOBAL SUPPLY OFFICER, GM OF LASER BEAR LIDAR, WAYMO LLC NOW: VP OF GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MANUFACTURING AND STRATEGY After starting his career at For Motor Co. Willis moved on to 3Com and Motorola before spending six years at Apple as a Director and Sr. Director. Most recently, Willis oversaw manufacturing and supply chain operations at Waymo, Alphabet Inc’s autonomous driving unit. Willis holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Kettering University and a Masters Degree in Engineering/ Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Stanford University. procurementmag.com

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TIMELINE THE SUEZ BLOCKAGE CRISIS On March 29th the Ever Given was finally set free from the banks of the Suez Canal, allowing for the long tailback of ships to once again begin navigating through one of the world’s most important trade routes.

23.03

24.03

25.03

Cargo ship gets stuck in Suez Canal

Dozens of ships await, causing a traffic jam

Egypt suspends all traffic in Suez Cana

At 7:40 am (05:40 GMT) the 'Ever Given', a 200,000-tonne, 400-meter-long (1,312-foot) ship, ran aground in the southernly mouth of the Suez Canal, blocking other vessels on one of the most important maritime trade routes.

Despite efforts made to release the ship, the Suez Canal remained blocked, at least 100 vessels attempting to transit between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean piled up behind it.

Egypt suspends all traffic through the Suez Canal as they continue to face “extreme difficulty” in trying to refloat the ship. Container carriers and vessels start taking the costly long voyage around Africa instead.

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April 2021

26.03 White House raises alarm as Maritime traffic jam grows Realising the potential impacts on energy markets the US government offers Egypt assistance in removing the grounded ship.

Bloomberg reports almost 300 vessels queued up.

27.03

28.03

Authorities plan to use tidal movement to free ship

Additional tugboats deployed, excavators dig into the canal's eastern wall

After moving over 30,000 cubic meters of sand the Ever Given finally sets adrift

Satellite photos show excavators digging the eastern wall of the Suez Canal, hoping to free the bow of the Ever Given that ploughed into the embankment. Workers plan on two more attempts to free the vessel coinciding with high tides.

After salvage teams with tugs pull the ship free, at 3 pm local time, the manager of the Ever Given container ship confirms it has been refloated. To help clear the backlog, the number of vessels moving through is expected to increase.

As all earnest attempts to release the ship fail, a plan is made to refloat the vessel by taking advantage of tidal movements. Nevertheless, the ship remained stuck in the waterway while around 320 vessels lay waiting.

29.03

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LEGEND

Malcolm Harrison Joining the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Chain (CIPS) in 2018, Malcolm Harrion’s career has been intertwined with the procurement industry for over 30 years.

J

oining the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Chain (CIPS) in 2018, Malcolm Harrion’s career has been intertwined with the procurement industry for over 30 years.

Joining the profession in 1982 as a management trainee at Mars, the industry was centred around ensuring continuity and consistency of the supply chain and delivering value. Today procurement’s priorities have only grown to include sustainability, ethics and security of the supply chain.

However, one of the most important focuses for Harrison is ensuring procurement is as professional as it can be.

“Procurement teams are at the heart of the solutions to many of the issues that organisations have faced during the COVID-19 crisis and the capabilities of procurement professionals have been hugely valued,” says Harrison. “We must ensure that we continue to uphold the highest ethical standards and implement, and use, the most

16

April 2021

30

years of experience in the procurement industry

robust procurement processes along the way.”

With this belief in upholding the highest standards in procurement, Harrions values the importance of procurement professionals remaining current. “In a world where everything is connected, understanding the impact of our sourcing and buying decisions has never been so important,” says Harrison.

“CIPS Chartered Status is a way for members to show they are both relevant and responsible. It’s about staying on top of your game at a time when the game is changing at pace.”

When it comes to leading good procurement, Harrison believes that it’s not about whether you are at the top table or not, it’s about the ability to influence an organisation. “It’s about understanding the business and your priorities, as well as the skillset and that mixture of technical and soft skills,” said Harrison.

Prior to joining CIPS, Harrison has worked for the likes of Nestlé, Molson Coors, Britvič and AB-InBev.

“In a world where everything is connected, understanding the impact of our sourcing and buying decisions has never been so important”

FIVE MINS WITH...

KARIM SHARIFF KARIM SHARIFF, PARTNER AT BAIN & COMPANY MIDDLE EAST, DISCUSSES THE IMPORTANCE OF END-TO-END TRANSPARENCY IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN, THE BEST PRACTICES TO ACHIEVE TRANSPARENCY AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADOPTIONS TO GET YOU THERE.

Q. HOW IMPORTANT IS ENDTO-END SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY FOR THE INDUSTRY?

» Transparency, resilience and

sustainability of the supply chain are priorities that can’t be ignored. The pandemic highlighted the obvious dangers to any business with a supply chain that cannot operate in a crisis.

But resilience also comes with huge benefits for companies that are able to continue serving their customers and to meet their increasingly changeable demands. Similarly, companies that lack sustainability and transparency can find their products penalized by regulators and scorned by customers, while companies that can point to sustainable practices and products are rewarded.

Q. WHAT IS THE BEST STRATEGY FOR ORGANISATIONS TO ACHIEVE END TO END SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY?

» To achieve transparency, companies are adopting so-called “control towers,” with an ultimate goal of creating resilient, self-healing supply chains and seamless collaboration among the players along the chain.

Technical sophistication ranges widely today: Some control towers provide real-time data across the full supply chain and can predict suboptimal events or disruptions. Many focus on limited portions of the supply chain, with batched data and less ability to predict. None yet have the deep transparency that industry-wide data standards and sharing would make possible. But we predict that day is 18

April 2021

not far off. With the right data, control towers can provide much of the information needed to understand what’s happening within the supply chain—across supplier tiers, during the conversion process and all the way into the customers’ hands. Managing the operations and economics of supply chains with the same tool used to manage sustainability, which was often not the direct responsibility of supply chain organizations in the past, also makes sustainability and transparency an integral part of overall supply chain decision making—both at the input level and during the conversion processes.

The increasing push for circular supply chains that recapture and reuse raw materials at the end of a product’s life cycle depends heavily on traceability. Tracing materials is an integral part of transparency; being able to trace materials throughout the product life cycle is a prerequisite for feeding them back into the conversion process for reuse, recycling or remanufacturing. The benefits of having such transparency allows reduction in the consumption of raw input materials, and these circular supply chains are not limited to a single company’s value chain. Often, materials are recycled by third parties and later fed into another sector’s value chain as substitutes for virgin raw materials. To fully capture these opportunities, companies also need visibility into supply and demand – and not just into the supply chain.

Q. WHAT TECHNOLOGY CAN ORGANISATIONS ADOPT TO ACHIEVE END TO END TRANSPARENCY?

» Assembling a next-generation technology

stack is needed to facilitate end to end supply chain transparency especially when it comes to data collection, analysis and sharing.

Most companies lack a platform specifically

designed to provide visibility and traceability across the supply chain. Instead, they typically try to combine legacy ERP solutions with homegrown visualization and analysis. But these systems weren’t built for that purpose, and their ability to automate traceability and visibility with multiple ecosystem partners is limited. At the same time, making a big new technology investment in this rapidly evolving space carries risks of its own, with technology providers entering the supply chain market with solutions from many different angles.

Information led: Some solutions center on providing aggregated industry information, benchmarks and market intelligence to empower decision making.

Certification led: Other solutions provide environmental, social and governance ratings based on shared information.

Software led: Yet another set of solutions employ use cases and information sharing as enablers (for example, data analytics engines or cloud storage solutions), point solutions focused on one set of supply chain priorities, or end-to-end supply chain engines.

Service led: Consulting services provide strategic advice that builds on the insights delivered by software or data aggregation solutions.

“ TRANSPARENCY, RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN ARE PRIORITIES THAT CAN’T BE IGNORED.” procurementmag.com

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

22

April 2021

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT:

READY FOR AN EXCITING

FUTURE WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson, Group Procurement Director of Vodafone and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company, prepares for an exciting future fuelled

by AI, ML and predictive analytics

T

Ninian Wilson, CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company

here is nothing like chatting to a procurement leader with a 30-year career under his belt who still gets infectiously excited by the industry.

That’s Ninian Wilson, Group Procurement Director of Vodafone and CEO of its subsidiary, the Vodafone Procurement Company, who visibly lights up when talking about procurement being in the spotlight and the technology that is shaping its ongoing transformation. Or, maybe, he’s in a particularly good mood because his beloved Scotland just beat old rivals England at rugby – the first time that has happened in England for 38 years.

Of Scottish origin, Wilson is speaking to us from his home office in Luxembourg. Home working is just one aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic that has impacted Vodafone, from both a business and customer perspective. And where there is disruption, there is opportunity.

And when you’re Ninian Wilson with €24 billion to spend on behalf of Vodafone, and also responsible for all supply chain operations, opportunity is around every corner.

“I'm overall responsible for our procurement activity across four categories of spend,” says Wilson. “The total spend is about €24 billion euros and that's split across networks, indirect spend, content, and obviously devices.

“We always think about the cost savings we've made and, and the spend value coming down as we do more and more work with our internal clients, but also we've made a number of acquisitions. So that spend base has been broadly stable over the last few years, even with buying and selling of companies.” procurementmag.com

25

Start Today

SIRIONLABS, EMPOWERING TRUE COLLABORATION AND PARTNERSHIP Ajay Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of SirionLabs, discusses their fruitful partnership with Vodafone and how CLM enables smarter contracting enterprise-wide.

Ajay Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of SirionLabs, shares how the alignment of values and the power of CLM have made for an effective partnership with Vodafone. “We believe in the power of cost savings and superior customer experience, and therein lies the synergy between our organisations. What started out as a post-signature value realisation exercise back in 2016 has since grown into a full suite CLM solution encompassing customised pre-signature features to cater to local markets spread over more than 40 countries. Nothing gives me greater happiness than a customer who has been able to gain increased visibility and get a tighter grip over their contracts.”

“Vodafone has today around 2000 strategic supplier contracts managed through SirionLabs, which oversee a spend of close to 6 billion euros annually. Through our initial discussions, we saw great potential in addressing Vodafone’s commercial engagements, tracking and realising value at scale through a myriad of systems that were retrofitted to suit existing infrastructure.”

“Our four-way automated invoice matching solution has contributed to Vodafone’s bottom line, enabling them to save hundreds of millions of dollars. It has also reduced the friction in their supplier landscape,

ranging from missed commitments or complaints to disputes or disagreements. Automation also reaps many benefits and has enabled Vodafone to cut costs in contract management and supplier governance by more than 60%, reducing manual effort by almost 50% and generating further savings through reduced headcount cost. Post signature activities have also become smoother and a lot more efficient, with one enterprise contract repository across all suppliers and managing them according to their footprint.”

By leveraging AI and extracting valuable data, SirionLabs’ CLM solution empowers collaboration and continued cooperation and partnership long after contracts have been signed.

Agrawal explains, “Collaboration is essential to any partnership. That is really the heart and soul of any SirionLabs project. Unlike many conventional contract management systems that create, store, and maybe extract information from contracts, SirionLabs is unique because it allows both contracting parties to have continued access to the system, even after the contract is signed, while giving a single, consolidated view of data, further enhanced by rich dashboards and insights which help make quick business decisions. The purpose of that continued access is true collaboration across multiple business functions.”

Digitize Your Contracts Now

The spend may not have changed significantly in recent years – Wilson joined Vodafone 12 years ago – but the manner of the procurement process certainly has. That digital transformation story started around 5 years ago and, like many great developments, was born of frustration.

Wilson is the first to admit he was trying to get data and information which was not as simple then as it may now sound. kind of hard to get. Out to showcase the digital opportunity to his then boss Nick Reed (now the Group Chief Executive), Wilson and his team set about digitalising the supplier performance scorecard.

“From that initial scorecarding, we then worked really hard on some of our P2P processes and digitising all that work and creating scorecards and dashboards in near real time for all of that activity,” says Wilson.

“So we started around, strategically, how are we doing? And then we digitised the back 28

April 2021

and now our focus has shifted to what we call ‘autonomous sourcing’, which is going to be the next sort of quantum leap in procurement – procurement that runs itself with almost no human intervention.”

“ You've got to have a digital first mentality – you've got to really think about how you can digitise what we do” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

NINIAN WILSON TITLE: SUPPLY CHAIN DIRECTOR & CEO INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: LUXEMBOURG Ninian joined Vodafone in June 2009 as SCM IT Director, and was appointed to the board of Vodafone Procurement Company in November 2009.

From 2014–2016 Ninian held the role of SCM Technology Director, responsible for all Technology sourcing in Vodafone including Networks, IT and new product development.

March 2016 he was appointed Director of Group SCM and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company.

Prior to joining Vodafone, Ninian held the position of Operations Director for

Royal Mail, where he managed the largest workforce in the UK with full accountability for the delivery of its transformation programme. Previously Ninian held senior positions in Cable & Wireless, and was a member of the board of the Caribbean business unit and Trustee of the Pension Scheme.

Ninian is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply and a life member of the Institute of Directors.

He lives in Luxembourg with his wife, Philippa.

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

NINIAN WILSON CV

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April 2021

DID YOU KNOW...

“My name is Ninian Wilson, and I'm the CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company here in Luxembourg. I also run all supply chain operations for Vodafone. I started my career in a company called British Gas in 1990 in the department called supplies and transport. I worked in various roles in British Gas through the 1990s until 2000 and then I joined a telecommunications company called Cable & Wireless, becoming chief procurement officer, and chief property officer. In 2006, I joined Royal Mail as CPO then became Operation Director.

And then, in 2009, I joined Vodafone.”

Before any procurement professionals drop their mugs of coffee and reach for something a tad stronger, Wilson is not suggesting for one minute that the human role and input will become obsolete – far from it. However, what we will see is a streamlining of processes, leaning on data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate certain tasks to provide the best outcomes.

“Our jobs all change over time when we get new tools and it wouldn't apply to everything we do,” says Wilson. “But if we think of the vendor selection piece, a tool or a capability that looks at the internet can bring in some suppliers, probably picks a few common ones, create the tender document, send it out, do the balanced scorecard evaluation at the end.

“This'll be a cool bit if we get it to do the negotiation, then put it into a contract, and uploads pricing information into our ERP system. That's what we're calling autonomous sourcing. We're currently building that to go live with our POC at the end of April.”

It’s certainly an exciting time to be working in supply chain and procurement right now.

Can anyone remember a time when supply chain in particular may be leading the news agenda? And while nobody would have wished for the causes of this particular focus (the global shutdown and inevitable pivot caused by the pandemic), it’s good to see that the people responsible for ensuring that everything ran so magnificently for years are now being recognized. Just as scientists are once again trusted experts and key workers applauded from our doorsteps, supply chain specialists are here to solve our fundamental needs – from food to Pfizer-BioNTech.

Is 2021 procurement’s time to shine?

“It's probably the second S curve that we've been on as a function, with the first around e-procurement in the 2000s,” says Wilson. “I think we're genuinely on the second S curve

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson describes Vodafone Procurement's Digital Transformation

due to probably three drivers. We mentioned autonomous sourcing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence becoming real and deployable in business as usual activities.

“And yes, supply chains have come into very sharp relief through the pandemic because,

“ We will be making some more digital investments to make sure that we maintain that resilience NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

you know, does your supply chain work?

Does it work in a pandemic? Is it resilient?

Will it continue to be resilient? And I, for one, I've never had more airtime with the executive team here at Vodafone – you are high profile as a supply chain function right now. I think it’s a tremendously exciting time, a lot of risk to manage, but a lot of new things coming as well.”

The Vodafone Procurement Company -VPC - was well prepared for the pandemic when it really hit home. A lot of digitisation work had already been done. Within three weeks of the company experiencing its first case close to the business, they moved 98,000 working from home. So one of the big learnings was their investment in digital was how that helped them continue.

Wilson also recalls back in December 2019 that some Chinese partners mentioned, during a coffee break in London, that something ‘really bad was happening’ in a place called Wuhan. procurementmag.com

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Cyber Security & Technical Professional Service Global Field Engineering LEARN MORE

Sustainability / Green Credentials – Ricoh Company limited has received an “A” score rating for the Climate Change 2020 Programme – CDP*1 2020 Supplier Engagement Leaderboard

Ricoh: Empowering Vodafone’s digital capabilities

Watch Ricoh supporting Vodafone with their global services Joanna Parker, Business Development Director at Ricoh UK Ltd on delivering vital IT services directly into Vodafone UK & Group A global organisation historically known for its print services, Ricoh is also recognised today for IT services in its own right – empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services to enterprise organisations around the world.

Joanna Parker, Business Development Director at Ricoh UK Ltd, is responsible for delivering cyber security and field services into Vodafone.

“Ricoh has worked in partnership with Vodafone since 2004,” says Parker, “supporting their mobile and, more recently, their fixed network with solutions and professional services around security infrastructure, cyber security services, and cloud infrastructure.”

When it comes to cyber security, for instance, Ricoh has a dedicated engineering team working with Vodafone’s own highly skilled security engineers, providing design, implementation and support for Vodafone’s critical security infrastructure.

“We support implementation, rationalisation and consolidation, as well as specific programmes to manage increased demand and generate more efficiencies across the Vodafone cellular network,” says Parker.

Ricoh has over 90,000 employees, giving the company significant capability to support field services and field engineering globally.

Boosting their capabilities even further, Ricoh has also recently acquired MTI Technology – specialising in data and cyber security, data centre modernisation, IT managed services and IT transformation services. MTI provide a range of professional and managed services designed to help customers accelerate and de-risk their IT transformation projects.

Such capability allows Ricoh to not only support Vodafone but also Vodafone's customers who are looking at cloud-based and secure managed security infrastructures.

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VPC set up a crisis team in early January to start managing the supply chain, especially for consumer products.

“While we had a few blips in the supply chain, we've managed that as a company really well,” says Wilson. “One of the key learnings is really understanding your supply chain and how resilient your supply chain is.”

Which brings us around nicely to Procurement With A Purpose – an initiative introduced to place purpose at the centre of how Vodafone runs the business.

This means making it central to investment decisions, how they operate and how they engage with stakeholders, whether they're customers, NGOs, or governments.

“Our purpose strategy for the company is based on three pillars,” explains Wilson.

“One is helping society become more digital 34

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“ You should be doing machine learning, you should be doing artificial intelligence, but predictive is kind of cool if we can get there” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

“It's not a magic bullet, but our partners will learn that if they do more on these pillars, they will score higher and win more business. And that allows us to translate that purpose vision during the supply chain.”

– everybody can see during the pandemic that's a good thing to do. The second pillar is around diversity and inclusion, both in the workplace but also in our supply chain. And then the third pillar is around planning. And we think there's a fundamental opportunity for both our company Vodafone, but also for supply chains to really reinforce the point that we've only got one planet.

“I think if you're in supply chain and there's an opportunity to drive some real systematic change, then I think we should take it – and we've taken that opportunity.

Our tender documents now have 20% of the scoring based around purpose. So we're not just talking about it, we're actually putting it into tenders because we know if we do that then over time it will change behaviours.

Key Partners Being a global telecommunications giant means Vodafone inevitably works with householdnames from the consumer technology world.

That obviously means Google, Facebook, Apple, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle are “key partners for Vodafone”.

The company also works with infrastructure partners including Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and Cisco. On top of those, Wilson estimates Vodafone works with around 11,500 suppliers across the group. However, when considering organisations that are helping Vodafone to transform supply chain, then Wilson highlights some strategic partners that are of particular significance.

“There's probably four or five partners who are really important to us,” he says. “First of all, we have a real strategic relationship with SAP and SAP has become the backbone for a lot of our digital enablement within supply chain – whether it's inventory management, PO processing, or actually helping us work through awarding tenders. So SAP Ariba is there. Above that, we're using S/4HANA, which holds all of our data, but then what we've done is built niche products on top of that, to make sure that we could really capitalise on tools that help us visualise performance.

“We pull that data from S/4HANA and we then visualise it with a tool called Celonis – a German unicorn. It's a fantastic company to work with. And they've really helped us visualise all of our key metrics and scores, both on compliance and efficiency.

“The second to the company we've worked with is SirionLabs. They helped us with commercial contract management, capturing procurementmag.com

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

the KPIs and making sure those are presented in the correct way. And also that we actually do manage the contract after the award, which is sometimes a bit of an Achilles heel for procurement.

“We've also just resigned with Vizibl – an SRM tool. They provide information and data on your strategic relationships.

So if we have a strategic relationship say with Microsoft then all of the data – what we buy from Microsoft, what we sell to Microsoft, what we do together – will be hosted in that tool and made visible to all key stakeholders. One of the challenges in, in distributed companies is keeping everybody joined up with where you are on key relationships, so Vizibl keeps everybody joined up, but also tracks progress against some key initiatives which we've got with each of those partners.”

Smarter data analytics Vodafone uses a wealth of smart tools to provide unprecedented visibility, transparency and increased efficiencies based on data, but what if you could take that to the next level with predictive analytics? Having that historical database helps to look ahead to potential problems or to reduce inefficiencies.

Wilson talks about getting to a point where he may even be able to predict contract failure.

While admitting those advanced analytics are not quite there yet, disruption like Covid-19 highlighted the need to assess and mitigate risk in the supply chain. That not only means being wary of companies that may be at risk of failure, but also supporting those that need it most by perhaps purchasing more inventory or adjusting payment terms.

And you've got 12,000 vendors. It's moderately difficult to answer. So I'd like to have all of that analytics in place where I can know, see I'm touching a button.

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“I think that becomes the new frontier for procurement,” says Wilson. “You should be doing machine learning, you should be doing artificial intelligence, but predictive is kind of cool if we can get there. Some companies are doing the cool bits of predictive. We saw some great work by Bob Murphy from IBM. I think there's a huge opportunity for us in predictive analytics, especially when you get into physical supply chain operations.

“We will be making some more digital investments to make sure that we maintain that resilience and build upon it over the next two to three years.”

“ I think it’s a tremendously exciting time, a lot of risk to manage, but a lot of new things coming as well” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

All of this brings us nicely to Wilson’s ambition to make Vodafone the best procurement function in the world and create sustainable competitive advantage for the company.

Our aim is to be the best procurement function in the World and create sustainable competitive advantage for Vodafone. But the billion-euro question is, how do you achieve that? And what does it actually look like?

Wilson is modest in his assessment of current performance when it comes to where they ultimately want to be in terms of innovation. He says on a good day, his team are scoring 6.5 out of 10. On a bad day, that might be a straight 6.

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Adobe solutions empower Vodafone to digitally transform Geoff Pennells, Global Account Director at Adobe, on the collaborative relationship with Vodafone Procurement Company As the inventors of the PDF and pioneers of other smart technologies, Adobe empowers businesses to meet the challenges of digital transformation.

Like Vodafone Procurement Company (VPC). Adobe provides it with a wide range of solutions that provide detailed data and insight, asset management, personalisation and data management.

“Vodafone Procurement Company is a critical part of our global partnership with Vodafone which has been in place for over 10 years,” explains Geoff Pennells, Global Account Director at Adobe.

“VPC is crucial to our ability to understand global demands for Adobe and we are in constant contact to ensure that we are responding to the needs of the business as they evolve over time.”

VPC and Adobe are always on the lookout for ways to improve their working relationship. Through continual and open collaboration, both parties provoke their respective broader businesses with challenges on how they can achieve things never before thought possible.

“The mindset of never settling for second best, always challenging the status quo where it doesn’t make sense and continuing to evolve our capabilities and value we deliver to Vodafone

with ever more flexible agreements – this is key to how we continue to drive innovation across all levels of our partnership with VPC,” says Pennells.

Adobe prides itself on its ability to bring to market industry-leading products and services that can help its customers deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. VPC and Adobe work together to make sure they are sharing innovations and mapping those to better understand the requirements of Vodafone in their own transformation to becoming a digital-first business.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of digital solutions for businesses.

“Overnight, we have transitioned to a global digital economy. The pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation among businesses of all sizes,” says Pennells.

“As the world begins to reopen, digital businesses will be the winners and only companies that can understand their customers’ preferences and personalise experiences will survive and thrive.”

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“More than anything, it's a mindset around excellence and wanting to be the best at what you do,” he says. “We try and get everybody in the team to be at their best and we try and develop tools and technologies to help support them. Are we there at the moment?

No. Are there companies and sectors that are way ahead of us? Absolutely. So we've got a tremendous amount of work still to do.

“You've got to have a digital first mentality – you've got to really think about how you can digitise what we do. One of the other technologies we use to sign contracts is DocuSign. It's really simple.

You go in and you click it, you point and you put your signature right here. And I was sitting thinking this morning, we also have our compliance sheet on the front of it. So you look through the compliance sheet and see if you're happy. But I was thinking if I've got a compliance sheet and everything is positive, why am I actually spending time going and clicking and putting my signature on it and why isn't that completely AI and automated right through? And if that was automated and, given we sign off 3,500 contracts per annum at the Vodafone Procurement Company, how long does it take to do that?

“So I'm trying to think of the productivity gain. And then I'm trying to think if I got that extra time for me or my direct reports could be running more workshops with some of our key partners around how we can add more revenue together. So that's how I'm trying to think of the operational excellence question.

“I think you've got to be excellent in supply chain and you've got to have all of your processes really nailed because if you don't have that excellence at an operational level, how can you actually step up and add more value to the business?”

“If you think of what we spend to make Vodafone successful for both us and our customers, we have about €9 billion of spend in our network around about €3 billion of spend on IT, hardware, software and professional services.

What I'd call the indirect spend accounts for about €5 billion. So that's everything from property facilities to fleet. On content, which is a new category for us, which we're bringing into the Vodafone procurement company, we spend about a billion.

So that’s Spotify, Netflix, big deals with Discovery.

And then the final one is devices spend. With great companies such as Samsung and Apple, we spent about €6 billion a year. It gets you to roughly €24 billion, give a give or take a bit of loose change.”

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“ I think there's a huge opportunity for us in predictive analytics” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson describes Vodafone Procurement's Supply Chain

“So I think you'll never get me above 6.5 out of 10. The moment you think you're 8 or 9 is the moment you start going backwards.”

Future of Procurement Throughout our interview, Wilson comes across as amiable, energised and a man who has a clear vision of his global operations – both now and in the immediate future. If events of the last 12 months have taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen, and probably will at some stage. So how do you plan for the future and try to use predictive analytics in times like these? For Wilson, it’s about setting out clear priorities and ambitions.

“For us in supply chain for the next 12 to 18 months, there are three clear priorities,” he says. “Number one is the transformation of our physical logistics operation. So we're going to build a European platform, Sub-Saharan

platform and completely transform how we work with partners and how they supply product to us.

“Number two is autonomous sourcing.

We think that's coming, and we will have a POC up and running by the end of April and will invest in that. And then the third area for us is really thinking about how new buying models evolve. So I'm pretty convinced that the world's going to end up a number of different marketplaces and part of the CPO’s job or the category manager's job will be figuring out which marketplace they want to connect with to get best value, and then how their analytics platforms will help them actually make those decisions.”

“It's not easy to do, but it must be doable to actually get to that position.”

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

PROCUREMENT’S

REQUEST FOR

SUPPLIER

COLLABORATION AND INNOVATION 44

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

Procurement Magazine explores the potential profitability of close buyer and supplier collaboration – IF they can be achieved.

WRITTEN BY: OLIVER JAMES FREEMAN FRSA

Y

ou probably already know that procurement is a tough gig. In an ideal business world, wouldn’t it be great if a procurement professional could just focus on finding the best bargains on the market for the products and services that they purchase before handing over the reins to another department? Yes, I reckon so.

Procurement aficionados probably do too. Perhaps, once upon a time, that was the status quo; nowadays, though, there are limits to the value that somebody can generate by focusing solely on the final price on their shopping list.

These days, companies that feature advanced procurement functions know that they need to spice it up if they want to stay on top of the competition. These organisations know that if the company chooses to collaborate and cooperate with its suppliers, both parties can usually come out of the exchange with lucrative new sources of value.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Suppose a company’s customer base is calling out for a specific product, but it cannot provide exactly what they need. There’s scope for direct collaboration between buyers and suppliers to innovate the solution–profit for both the company and supplier and a happy consumer who will return for future business. procurementmag.com

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

In fact, buyers and suppliers can further this collaborative effort into a myriad of business factors; together, they can redesign and optimise their supply chain practices to ensure ESG compliance and reduce waste whilst increasing efficiency, or they can split the cost of new materials and resources, lessening the burden on each party. Both parties can even work together on forecasting for the coming quarters, planning, and longterm capacity management. By working together, companies open up a new style of complete transparency between buyers and suppliers, optimising service levels, mitigating potential risks, and creating a more agile but simultaneously robust supply chain operation.

This seems like common-sense. I know.

So it probably begs the question, ‘Why are you talking about it?’ Well, while it seems like an easy, incredibly profitable solution, the benefits of supply collaboration mostly remain locked behind a barrier. Companies the world over have excellent case studies on individual cases of successful collaboration with their suppliers, but that’s where the success tends to stop.

It turns out that it’s much harder to jointly integrate buyer and supplier approaches across the entire procurement and supply

“ In order to collaborate effectively, you need to treat suppliers as part of your organisation” JAMES MARLAND

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, SAP INTELLIGENT SPEND & BUSINESS NETWORK

James Marland, Global Vice President, SAP Intelligent Spend and Business Network James is a Global Vice President in the Centre of Excellence for Procurement at SAP. After being first exposed to procurement as a consultant at SAP he moved to the newly formed Ariba in 1998. With the acquisition of Ariba 2012 he ended up back at SAP as a Vice-President of Network Strategy, uniquely with experience of procurement from both companies.

In his current role he meets with procurement professionals to work with them on building the business case for SAP solutions.With the unofficial title of "Chief Storyteller" he tries to make a story-teller out of everyone through Social Media, new hire onboarding and mentoring. You'll see him passionately preaching the procurement story of SAP through his preferred medium of a whiteboard. He also contributes to the SAP story on social media, blogs and at events. Just don't expect to see him using PowerPoint.

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“ People only share with people they trust. And trust is built up between partners over a series of confidence-building measures” JAMES MARLAND

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, SAP INTELLIGENT SPEND & BUSINESS NETWORK

chain cycle. The value chain is big and broad, after all.

The Barriers to Collaboration Fortunately, James Marland, Global Vice President, SAP Intelligent Spend & Business Network, sat down with Procurement Magazine to share his thoughts on the barriers to successful buyer and supplier collaboration.

And in his opinion, “there are two main barriers to collaboration, trust and technology.”

“Let’s take technology first. In order to collaborate effectively, you need to treat suppliers as part of your organisation. I call this going from the world of ERP to NRP. From 48

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Enterprise Resource Planning to Networked Resource Planning. When MRP first morphed into ERP in the mid-1990s, Enterprise was aspirational; for the first time, your production lines could connect to your sales forecast and your finances. But now, in 2021, “Enterprise” is too limiting. If your span of control is limited to only your enterprise, then you will miss all of the signals from your suppliers and customers, signals about changing markets, buying behaviour and raw materials prices. It’s a big change: thinking not just being able to collaborate across the enterprise, but about collaboration across a complete value chain.

How to do this? A true business network.”

PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

“But technology only takes you so far.

People only share with people they trust.

And trust is built up between partners over a series of confidence-building measures. If my customers always pay me late or put me on a 90-day payment term when they know I am a self-financed start-up, then how likely am I to want to share my crown jewels. Likewise, if my suppliers don’t respect my IP and share my plans with potential competitors, how likely is it that I will want them co-designing the next version of my product. Relationships often deteriorate not due to sneaky or malicious acts, but just through miscommunication: in B2B, you have hundreds of suppliers, and they have

hundreds of customers, and the optimal way to measure this sentiment is with a tool like Qualtrics, which checks the pulse of suppliers in an unobtrusive way, to find out problems that might damage the relationship so you can sort them out before they blow up.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the old chestnut: Two hikers are walking through the forest when a great big bear suddenly appears on the path about 10 metres in front of them.

The bear sees them and starts to head towards them. The first one drops his rucksack, pulls out a pair of trainers, and frantically begins to put them on. The second one says, “What are you doing? Trainers won’t help you outrun that procurementmag.com

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PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

Examples of Supplier Innovation The Coke Bottle “In about 1915, Coca Cola needed to redesign their bottle. The standard straightsided bottle wasn’t distinctive enough. It was becoming easily confused with ‘copycat’ brands. Coca‑Cola ran a contest: Glass manufacturers were approached to come up with a unique bottle design.The Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, designed the famous contour shape.If this supplier had been unhappy, maybe this innovation would have gone to a competitor instead. 100 Billion bottles later, it’s still a good design. And coke only got it because they had got innovation from a supplier.”

Ford’s Window Trim Competition When Ford, the automobile behemoth, launched a project to reduce their vehicle window trims’ production cost, executives decided to turn to the suppliers for innovative new solutions. It turned out to be an ingenious move. Ford’s suppliers created a whole new resin that streamlined the manufacturing process and took 19,200 miles off the

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companies logistical trucking, resulting in a cut of 2,700 gallons of diesel and 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. This innovation saved the company money and positively affected the environment–a plus for the wallet and the global sustainability drive.

Walmart’s ‘Get on the Shelf’ Ever heard of Walmart’s ‘Get on the Shelf’ competition? It went viral almost a decade ago and offers inventors an opportunity to both get noticed and potentially sell their products on Walmart’s website and in selected stores. All the entrants had to do was submit a video of their product for a panel of judges at the corporate end, and the winner would reap the rewards. As Alex Short, Founder of Old St Labs, states: “Get on the Shelf is a shining example of how supplier innovation can be mutually beneficial for the supplier and the buyer: Walmart are able to tap into new ideas and processes from their supply base, while the supplier can road-test their ideas in a secure environment, with the potential for great success.”

PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

bear.” “I don’t need to outrun the bear,” the first one says. “I just need to outrun you.”

“The same is true for supplier collaboration.

You don’t have to have the perfect relationship to reap crucial innovations from the supplier, just a slightly better relationship than their other customers.”

Requesting for I P O No, not an initial public offering. You’re more likely to find mentions of those in our sister publication, FinTech Magazine.

What I’m talking about is the well-known – in the procurement and sourcing world, at least – RFx (Request for): RFI, RFP, and RFO. Marland recently told the world, via his personal channels, that innovative companies are looking at issuing: 1. Request for Innovation 2. Request for Partnership 3. Request for Outcome “In essence, companies are now asking suppliers to ‘Solve [this] problem for [us].”

That idea, in itself, is innovative. Have the suppliers innovate new solutions to old problems to demonstrate their capabilities and

“ You don’t have to have the perfect relationship to reap crucial innovations from the supplier, just a slightly better relationship than their other customers” JAMES MARLAND

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, SAP INTELLIGENT SPEND & BUSINESS NETWORK

earn a companies investment and partnership.

To help solidify the value of supplier innovation, I thought I’d take a look at a few excellent examples – the first provided by James Marland – of this, played out in the real world, to see if it worked out.

To conclude, we’re going to give you a quote that James often refers back to, by Visna Wightman, a former CPO of Woolworths: “There’s no such thing as an internal customer.”

And a final insight from the man himself: “The customer sits at the heart of every decision that we make. We in procurement get to work on initiatives that impact the customer, the customer who pushed the trolley, the customer who is in our store. Not an internal customer.’ So rather than satisfying our internal customer in engineering, marketing, and finance, we need to draw back and look at the one who actually pays the bills. The customers should be our customer in procurement.” procurementmag.com

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THE FOUR PILLARS TO STRATEGIC PROCUREMENT AND A BETTER CX WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

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PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

COMDATA

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COMDATA

1987 Year founded

€950mn Company revenue

50,000+ Number of employees in workforce

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COMDATA

Javier Baranda, Group Chief Procurement Officer at Comdata, shares his strategy on driving customer value through strategic procurement

C

JAVIER BARANDA TITLE: GROUP CPO COMPANY: COMDATA INDUSTRY: CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT BPO

EXECUTIVE BIO

omdata is a leading player in the customer journey, customer attention, and BPO services market with over thirty years in the industry. In the last five years, Comdata has experienced rapid growth through acquisitions in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. It now holds a presence in 21 countries across three different continents, with about 500 customers globally, 600 million customer interactions per year, and more than 50,000 employees.

Last year, for the first time, Comdata was included in the Gartner Quadrants as one of the top players in BPO services. I sat down with their Group Chief Procurement Officer, Javier Baranda, to discuss Comdata’s procurement transformation journey and how they drive customer value through strategic procurement.

“I started at Comdata about two years ago, after receiving an attractive project challenge. The CEO had a clear vision of how they wanted to leverage procurement to better support the business. And that, honestly, was music to my ears. I have seen in business units, companies, different organisations, different mindsets that believe procurement is purely an administrative function. After 20 years in procurement, I am convinced that procurement has much more to add than just placing orders.”

Javier Baranda leads Comdata’s procurement transformation since 2019 with the goal of implementing a strategic sourcing model globally that helps Comdata’s operations maximise the value obtained from its supply chain.

Prior to Comdata, Baranda spent 21 years at Telefonica, eight of them in international assignments across Asia and Europe, where he held various management roles covering all angles of the procurement function, from Category Management to Operations to Strategic Alliances. During his career, Baranda has focused strongly on value generation and stakeholder engagement, positioning Procurement as a strategic partner for the business.

Baranda holds a Master Degree in Business Administration from Instituto de Empresa Business School and a MSc in Telcommunications Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

COMDATA

The shift; from transactional to strategic procurement “This project allowed me to offer a model that could help combat costly transactional procurement habits and to leverage the strategic procurement concept. In the beginning, I saw that each region had a strong focus on administrative tasks. It was blended with facility services, but in the end, probably 80% of the time was dedicated to facilities and only maybe 20% to procurement. And at least 30%, the vast majority of which was spent placing orders, resolving incidents with suppliers, etcetera. There was, generally speaking, very little focus on the generation of efficiencies for the company.

“It was a very standard policy. You get three proposals, you choose the best one out of the three, and that's it. I wanted to 56

April 2021

implement a much more strategic ‘out of the box’ model in which procurement was leading innovation, heading discussions with stakeholders to present alternatives solutions, questioning things, and ensuring the right decisions were being made for the company and its customers.

“I also wanted to insert more knowledge about how to negotiate more strategically with our vendors. We started with our most critical contracts to see what we could do differently, such as aggregating and anticipating needs, improved planning and negotiation requirements. As soon as we were able to deliver tangible results with tangible savings, which is the most visible of procurement outcomes, the organisation realised that procurement could be a partner in not only executing

COMDATA

purchases but optimising the budget.

In the end, my objective was not to buy cheaper but to buy better and maximise the value of the business.”

The Four Pillars of Procurement The journey Baranda is implementing is based on four pillars. “The first pillar is the procurement role itself and how we demonstrate that we can contribute much more than simply placing orders. That means also gaining a seat at the table of key decisions, being very close to the executive committee and presenting

and even championing viable alternatives that can drive cost efficiencies. This redefinition of the role needs to be sustained on a new organisational model, including a talent upgrade “WE HOLD GREAT to become a reference for the business in the different PRIDE IN THE categories of spend.”

FACT THAT WE The second pillar is ARE HELPING TO governance. In order to BUILD A COMPANY effect change, people must understand when and how THAT EVERY YEAR to engage with procurement.

BRINGS INCREASED Setting clear policies and VALUE TO ITS procedures helps facilitate, CUSTOMERS” in the first instance, the communication with Procurement and, as a JAVIER BARANDA consequence, enables the GROUP CPO AT COMDATA procurementmag.com

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DESIGNING YOUR FUTURE In a world where everything is connected, where logic meets intuition, we generate great ideas to power the progress.

NETCOM GROUP/COMDATA: 12 YEARS OF INNOVATIVE COLLABORATION

Watch: NetCom Group and Comdata Report

Founded in 2006 by a group of engineers with specialties in the telecommunications and ICT sectors, NetCom Group over the last 15 years has grown significantly. Reaching international levels by having an innovative impact through its research and development (R&D) of automation systems.

Speaking with Founder and CEO of NetCom Group, Domenico Lanzo explains that “NetCom Group has always had the vocation for applied engineering, and in particular, automation systems. Our strong presence in strategic markets has called for a complete offer that included the improvement of remote technical support to our Customers. The acquisition of Core Informatica completed our previous Offer by providing technical support.”

Explaining that NetCom Group is a service and product company, Lanzo says: “we design and develop solutions for the players in the engineering and ICT fields, where embedded software is written to digitally control automation systems.”

NetCom Group’s Partnership with Comdata Beginning their collaborative relationship in 2009, Lanzo reflects that “the historical presence of Core Informatica among the major suppliers of Comdata gives us the honor of considering ourselves a partner rather than a supplier. Our knowledge of the needs of Comdata, during all these years, has made it possible to build, through loyalty policies, our work group which, due to their speed of response to requests, is able to offer quick access to instant technical support.”

Over the years Core Informatica and Comdata’s collaborative partnership has gone from strength to strength. “From the remote and on-site helpdesk services provided from 14 offices, it has now moved on to managing 25 offices in 2020. NetCom Group helps Comdata in managing not only workstations and user services, but also provides support in managing new orders, selling ICT devices, provisioning of licenses, as well as in Data Loss Prevention and Virtual Patching.”

DESIGN YOUR FUTURE

COMDATA

21

No. of countries served

3

No. of continents served

30+

Years of experience in the market

COMDATA

“AFTER 20 YEARS IN PROCUREMENT, I WAS CONVINCED THAT PROCUREMENT HAD MUCH MORE TO ADD THAN JUST PLACING ORDERS” JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

mindset change of the organisation towards cost efficiency and, generally speaking, “value for money”. This helps increase “spend under management, and thus the opportunities to generate value for the company, and the decision-making process.”

“Systems are paramount for an effective governance, providing visibility in the spend, transparency and traceability of the procurement management, but also an additional efficiency to the end to end process.”

Akin to internal PR, the third pillar is the alignment with the business and its goals, ensuring internal stakeholders see procurement as a true partner. They can effectively and easily engage with procurement beyond policy requirements.

“It’s important to avoid the perception that procurement will bog down the process or that it’s simply a box-ticking exercise.

Stakeholders shouldn’t feel they need to convince or mobilise procurement to get what they need. Procurement needs to be a willing, proactive partner who will help them in terms of agility and innovation. We will bring ideas from new suppliers, and we will optimise outcomes. My objective is not to lead their business but to help them run their business better. “ The fourth pillar is monitoring and reporting. “When I started in this project, procurementmag.com

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“THE CUSTOMER’S VOICE HAS BEEN AMPLIFIED, PRESENTING BOTH AN OPPORTUNITY AND A RISK. IF YOU PERFORM POORLY WITH A CUSTOMER, IT NO LONGER STAYS BETWEEN YOU JAVIER BARANDA AND THE CUSTOMER” GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

we weren’t yet monitoring savings or spend by supplier or category. So we are building that framework on how we report spend and performance. That also allows us to benchmark across different regions, see, for instance, who is investing more in IT versus services and identify potential opportunities.”

These four pillars, role, governance, alignment with the business and monitoring and reporting, are the foundation of Comdata’s procurement transformation.

Leveraging AI for a better CX “Today, one of the main challenges of any industry is customer loyalty. Society has evolved in how we interact with companies or suppliers, especially in industries like retail banking, telcos, insurance. All these companies are facing a situation in which their customers have access to social networks where they share their opinions and experiences.

The customer’s voice has been amplified, presenting both an opportunity and a risk.

If you perform poorly with a customer, it no longer stays between you and the customer.”

Baranda says cost also remains a constant challenge. With increased competition comes increased pressures to reduce costs, and so Comdata must assist their clients in finding efficiencies and improving internal processes. “We need to help our customers 62

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COMDATA

Javier Baranda from Comdata Group talks about cyber security

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COMDATA

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COMDATA

“AS SOON AS WE WERE ABLE TO DELIVER TANGIBLE RESULTS WITH TANGIBLE SAVINGS, WHICH IS THE MOST VISIBLE OF PROCUREMENT OUTCOMES, THE ORGANISATION REALISED THAT PROCUREMENT COULD BE A PARTNER IN NOT ONLY EXECUTING PURCHASES BUT OPTIMISING THE BUDGET” JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

enhance customer interactions, as well as improve the efficiency and cost. Comdata aims to achieve excellence in helping our customers to impart company values and improve customer retention. With the evolution of customer interactions through different channels, more and more, we are able to better serve our customers.”

AI is one of the technologies that Comdata is leveraging in this area, developing analytics to better understand the needs of customers and better manage perceptions.

“When a customer calls you, how is this customer feeling? How can I make them feel better? How can I help them better understand the situation? What previous interactions have we had with this customer, and how were those experiences? What procurementmag.com

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“WE HAVE SOME INITIATIVES WHERE WE CONTRIBUTE TO THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, AND WE SHARE AND CELEBRATE

THESE THINGS”

JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

600mn Customer interactions managed every year

500+ Number of customers globally

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are the customer’s interests? It’s that sort of analysis and modelling that AI can provide that is extremely helpful in ensuring our customers feel they are listened to and understood. We need to make our interactions more relevant, more efficient, more effective, and for that, artificial intelligence is massively important.”

A deeply embedded culture It may sound cliche, but Comdata’s values are excellence, a strong customer focus, and innovation. In truth, however, it is much more than a cliche and is deeply embedded in the way they work and is evident at every level of the organisation.

“We push ourselves not to take things for granted, to revisit old processes for potential improvement opportunities, to challenge mindsets and drive innovation.

Our CEO has a very entrepreneurial mindset and is always challenging us to bring innovation. We want to be bigger, but we want to be bigger together, and with the participation of everyone.”

“We also have some initiatives where we contribute to the social environment in different countries, and we share and celebrate these things. It's a culture that brings people together and creates a sense of belonging and a sense of pride for what we do. We hold great pride in the fact that we are helping to build a company that every year brings increased value to its customers. And I love that approach, and I am personally very aligned with working collaboratively, seeking excellence, listening to others and remaining focused on our ultimate goal of always finding better ways to service our customers, together.”

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BREAKING DOWN SILOS

IN PROCUREMENT

WITH A BSM PLATFORM Coupa Software’s Michael Schanker explains to Procurement Magazine how industry leaders can breakdown silos in procurement with a BSM platform WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

Michael Schanker, VP of Strategic Marketing, Coupa Software

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S

pending the early years of his career at Siebel Systems, Michael Schanker, VP of Strategic Marketing at Coupa Software likes to parallel Business Spend Management (BSM) to CRM. “It's something that I've lived and experienced,” he says.

“Siebel Systems was really the creator of the CRM category, there wasn’t one before.”

Instead companies operated with multiple organisational silos: “Now nobody questions the fact that you have to have a CRM strategy and platform.”

Being an enterprise software veteran, Schanker sees the same parallels happening in BSM. “This is why I like to use this parallel, it's the same sort of thing. I can see the same thing being created before my eyes.”

Continuing with the similarities between CRM and BSM, Schanker likes to use the analogy that “before CRM people had sales or service or marketing software and processes, but no one had thought to unify all that into a single platform.

Now it's something that people take for granted because it's all centered around the customer. Similarly, BSM platforms

DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

“ Any company's plan is only going to be as resilient and agile as their supplier network” MICHAEL SCHANKER

VP OF STRATEGIC MARKETING, COUPA SOFTWARE procurementmag.com

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DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

“ One of the biggest challenges is building awareness for it across the organisation” MICHAEL SCHANKER

VP OF STRATEGIC MARKETING, COUPA SOFTWARE

are centred around the idea of unifying spend in one place and all the information intelligence that you can harness from that.”

How can a BSM platform breakdown silos in procurement?

“So very often we see that technology can be a catalyst for change, but ultimately there's change management that has to happen in the organisation,” says Schanker. “A simple example is 10 years ago, maybe even five, procurement functions such as purchase

orders, invoicing, and accounts payable were conducted as different processes, by different groups of people, with different software technology supporting them. Today the idea of those functions being separate instead of together would have people scratching their heads because they've seen the benefits.”

As the benefits continue to grow, Schanker adds, “better cash forecasting has certainly become a lot more prominent of a process over the last year when cash really became king for a while. Understanding that a better cash forecast comes from what invoices might be coming in and what large purchase orders might be working through approvals; the idea that you can't work in silos in procurement or accounts payable or treasury, that if you have a system that procurementmag.com

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“ BSM platforms are centered around the idea of unifying spend in one place and all the information intelligence that you can harness from that” MICHAEL SCHANKER

VP OF STRATEGIC MARKETING, COUPA SOFTWARE

makes it easy to share data and easy to collaborate through your processes, that's the way that you're actually going to be able to accomplish individual and joint goals for the company.

“So I think that is the way you can break down those organisational silos by using technology as a catalyst to illustrate the ways that these different groups can get more value together than they could trying to work by themselves.”

What are the challenges when adopting a BSM platform?

“One of the biggest challenges is building 72

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awareness for it across the organisation,” says Schanker. “Procurement can't be as effective operating in a silo, they really need to orchestrate spend processes across the supply chain, across finance and really across employees in every department of the company, and sometimes there isn't broad awareness of why these decisions matter. They don't necessarily understand the big picture of how it’s going to help the business be more effective, more efficient, and mitigate the risks that are out there.”

Another big challenge Schanker identifies is ‘legacy views’ across a business of what procurement's mission is. “It's really so much

DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

The value of a BSM platform for procurement leaders 1. Greater effectiveness by optimising spend and liquidity 2. Greater efficiency by improving operational processes 3. The opportunity to increase agility and mitigate risk

more than cost savings. If you can control your spend the right way and think about it as reallocation and not just savings, you could be working on maximising revenue opportunities. There's really a broader remit that procurement has, but there's not always a broad understanding of what it is they're trying to accomplish beyond just savings.”

What are the best practices for adopting a BSM platform?

First things first, Schanker starts by highlighting the need to understand all internal stakeholders, and who will be impacted by a BSM platform. “Folks don't

“I think specifically in the moment that we have all found ourselves in over the last year, you've got CEOs and boards demanding more agility out of the business. In order to display agility as a procurement leader, a supply chain or a finance leader, you really have to have visibility and control and understand where the dollars are flowing, and how those decisions are being made so that if you need to re-allocate any of those funds or you need to stop spending or start spending in a new area, you have the ability to do it quickly. That's really what CEOs are asking for when they ask for more agility in the business,” says Schanker.

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always understand what the full charter and potential of the procurement organisation is. So I think, for procurement leaders, it's important to make sure all stakeholders understand the benefits and are prepared to start thinking about the change.

“The sooner you can have those conversations, the sooner you're going to be able to really think about what this project looks like, because it's never just about the technology, right? It's about people, process and technology, and it's an opportunity to drive processes that are more effective

because they're more connected; you use the technology as a catalyst for that.”

Next Schanker details the need to evaluate different technology platforms.

He explains that procurement leaders should not merely focus on the solutions completing individual functions as best as possible, but to “focus on integrated processes, collaboration capabilities, community intelligence and the aspects of the platform you choose that will actually help you collaborate within your organisation - and also collaborate

Fostering collaboration with a BSM platform “There are lots of ways that BSM can help foster collaboration,” says Schanker. “One is that you can build collaboration tools. People think of online communities, forums and information sharing as separate and distinct from the software platforms that they use. But some BSM platforms have started to integrate that collaboration directly into the platform.”

Giving an example of this Schanker reflects on the events of the past year.

“When someone was doing a supplier risk assessment and realised they had to come up with a totally new questionnaire to check on supplier risk and controls around the pandemic, there were companies within Coupa that were sharing the pandemic questionnaires that they had come up with and they posted to the community. So when other people were trying to create their own, they could look to the community to see what other folks were doing and use that collaboration as an opportunity to learn from their peers, not just within their 74

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company, but across companies, because everyone was trying to figure these things out at the same time.”

Schanker also identifies another important piece of collaboration – sharing anonymised, aggregated data across companies. “This is something that Coupa has really focused on for the entirety of its existence: the idea of being smarter together, and what could you do with this information in terms of benchmarks or in terms of prescriptive insights that would let you know what's happening?

“A simple example is as an individual company, my ability to assess the risk of my supplier base is limited to my interactions with those suppliers. But if you think about all the different companies that might be using Coupa, and that are all interacting with the same suppliers, that's a wealth of information that you could use to assess the risk and the performance of those suppliers if you could harness that in an anonymised and aggregated and safe way.”

DIGITAL PROCUREMENT

better with your suppliers and collaborate potentially with other customers across the community.”

What trends are emerging in the BSM market?

“Now, I will initially get eye-rolls when I say artificial intelligence because everyone is saying they're using artificial intelligence and machine learning and all these other fancy techniques on a big pool of data, and business spend management is no exception. But I think where it stands out is where the current innovations are really coming in terms of very practical, down to

earth applications of artificial intelligence,” says Schanker. “AI thrives on large data sets.

The more you can look at patterns of spend, not just within one company, but across a community of companies, the more you can understand what sort of patterns of spend look suspicious or which suppliers are the riskiest to work with, as well as benchmark your performance against other similar businesses. So I think that's really the most exciting innovation right now.”

Circling back to the way BSM is perceived, Schanker emphasises that BSM “used to be more narrow”. “People thought it was just procurement and invoicing and procurementmag.com

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“ BSM platforms are centered around the idea of unifying spend in one place and all the information intelligence that you can harness from that” MICHAEL SCHANKER

VP OF STRATEGIC MARKETING, COUPA SOFTWARE

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payments. But I think they've seen, with some of the recent innovations around bringing more supply chain processes and information into the fold, that the breadth of BSM and the value that they can get from it is actually broader than they had maybe previously realised.

“I think those are the two big areas of innovation that are stretching the boundaries of where BSM can add value.

And then applying artificial intelligence and other algorithms across very large data sets to drive more effectiveness, more efficiency and more risk mitigation,” adds Schanker.

What in store for BSM in the next 12 to 18 months?

“I think the biggest area of evolution and innovation is going to come in the connection point between the supply chain processes and the rest of business spend management,” says Schanker. “Currently there are a lot of organisational silos in supply chain. Leaders today are facing many challenges, including product innovation, geographical risk of suppliers, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion.

“All of these challenges require supply chain to collaborate across the organisation with procurement, with finance, with other areas in order to succeed in those initiatives,” continues Schanker, who believes that the realisation of “having technology that can pull those processes together, and then carrying that all the way through to the relationship with suppliers to make sure that they are resilient, has come to the forefront with supply chain executives. And I think we are going to see the connection between supply chain and procurement get closer and closer over the next 12 to 18 months.”

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AMCOR

Left to Right Rahul Chande, Ranga Mulabagula & William (Bill) Pfeiffer *Photo taken Example of before COVID-19 an image caption

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SMART, SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING FROM AMCOR Protect, preserve, promote – Amcor Vice President of Procurement and CPO, Ranga Mulabagula discusses the journey to ‘procurement excellence’ WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

P

rotect, preserve, promote has been the driving force of global packaging company Amcor for the past 160 years, but they are now heading for the next level of sustainability as they accelerate their digital journey towards procurement excellence.

Amcor is the world’s biggest packaging company – generating close to $12.5 billion in annual sales. Amcor Rigid Packaging (ARP), is the $3 billion business group focused on the rigid packaging market. Originally a beverage-centric packager, the global rigid packaging organisation has now extended its range to develop differentiated products and services to protect food, healthcare, wine and spirits, home care, personal care and technical applications.

PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE Amcor is now focusing on its green credentials following a pledge three years ago to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that its packaging will be reusable or recyclable by 2025. This includes their polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles which could be a game-changer due to their recyclable credentials, current health crisis and concerns over hygiene. Each PET bottle is capped and sealed to keep beverages protected from pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

But this is just part of the sustainability story for the Australian-American company – which puts customer centricity at its heart – as we learn from Ranga Mulabagula, Vice President of Global Procurement, ARP from their offices in Ann Arbor, US. procurementmag.com

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AMCOR

Ranga Mulabagula at Amcor talks about smart, sustainable packaging

“ We are making a distinct difference in a positive way.

Our goal is to make 100 per cent of our products, recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025” RANGA MULABAGULA

VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

The journey to procurement excellence started for Mulabagula in 2013 when he was approached by Amcor, who were impressed by the work he was doing at General Motors (GM) managing global commodity purchasing and supply chain teams by leveraging GM scale, scope and using first-time analytical modelling and forecast capabilities to predict supply chain bottlenecks.

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Mulabagula, points out Amcor deploys its expertise and knowledge of customer products and value chains to produce packaging that is more functional, appealing and cost effective for customers and their consumers, and ultimately more sustainable for the environment.

“We are making a distinct difference in a positive way. Our goal is to make 100 per cent of our products, recyclable, reusable, or compostable,” said Mulabagula who pointed out it is Amcor’s aim to drive at least 10 per cent of recycled content across the product portfolio by 2025 along with eliminating all plastics like PVC and PVDC as they are more difficult to recycle.”

As head of global procurement in ARP, Mulabagula is leading the organisation to the next level of procurement excellence, managing six global category directors and 43 co-worker strong global procurement teams with responsibility for a $2+ billion spend.

AMCOR

Mulabagula collaborates with his global teams to define and drive the current (FY20-22) and next Horizon (FY23-FY25) procurement objectives, strategy, priorities, metrics, policies, processes, systems and talent for accelerating the ARP "procurement excellence" journey through collaboration, technology enabled sourcing, master data governance (MDG) and procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions for a sustainable performance and “indirects category” transformation.

“ARP is a major converter in the North American packaging industry,” said Mulabagula. “We convert raw materials into the containers and provide services that brand owners (like Pepsi and CocaCola) want and aspire based on their market segment preferences, technical and functional requirements.

“Our geographical reach is global, being the biggest packaging company in the world. And the biggest converter, not just from a size point of view, but the technical know-how, innovation and value we bring to the table. We deliver through a customer centric approach coupled with excellence in operational, technical and value performance, which is why our customers keep coming back to Amcor.”

RANGA MULABAGULA TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS LOCATION: UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Ranga Mulabagula has been with Amcor for nearly eight years driving the global packaging company’s sustainable procurement-to-pay excellence.

As Vice President of Procurement in Amcor Rigid Packaging (ARP) he is leading the organisation to the next level of procurement excellence. He manages six global category directors, 43 global procurement teams and is responsible for a $2+ billion spend.

“I'm currently leading Amcor’s global rigid packaging procurement excellence journey while striving to meet aspirational sustainability objectives – that is what’s driving me – I have been part of four acquisitions in the last seven years, which has been a fantastic learning and growth opportunity” said Mulabagula – a results driven supply chain and operations leader.

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AMCOR

OAKWOOD PACKAGING COMPANY

The Way Forward in Sustainable Packaging At Oakwood Packaging Company, we are passionate about sustainable pharmaceutical, food, and industrial packaging that helps drive your business forward.

What does OPC provide?

• Protective Packaging from Production Through Distribution • Custom Printed Finished Goods Packaging • Compliance Experts • Award Winning Customer Service Team • Poly and laminated bags, liners, and film Make OPC your trusted partner, allowing your business to continue to focus on your industry while we ensure the best packaging products at the most competitive prices.

What do our customers say about us?

“Our team and I wanted to thank you for all of your help in our immediate need to get bags. You went above and beyond trying to help so early in the morning…”

“Awesome! Always able to depend on your team!”

LEARN MORE

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201.836.0372

AMCOR

BOTTLE WITH LOW CARBON FOOTPRINT

Drive to sustainability Amcor invests $100 million every year in research and development (R&D) to ensure a top-notch pipeline of innovations to tackle the biggest technical and practical barriers to sustainable packaging as the world moves towards the goal of Net Zero by 2050.

PET bottles often have the lowest carbon footprint and according to Amcor their production results in up to 70 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than packaging materials like aluminum and glass. “The problem lies in plastic recycling. So, I think once we accurately define and align on the problem, it's not the plastics packaging per se, but the lack of recycling infrastructure, incentivising and educating the end user where the challenges reside and the solutions exist,” comments Mulabagula.

DID YOU KNOW...

*Photo taken before COVID-19

Amcor is the industry leader in the use of post-consumer recycled (PCR) PET with over 15 years of experience.

PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate, is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family. It is extruded or moulded into plastic bottles and containers for packaging many different product categories including foods, beverages, personal care, dairy and spirits and wine products.

PET bottles are lightweight, shatterproof, re-closable, resealable, reusable and infinitely recyclable (with existing technologies including chemical recycling).

PET bottles often have the lowest carbon footprint and according to Amcor their production results in up to 70 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than packaging materials like aluminum and glass.

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AMCOR

*Photo taken before COVID-19

1860 Year Founded

$12.5bn Revenue in US Dollars

47,000 Number of Employees

10% Target for PCR across its portfolio by 2025

230 Global presence in 40 countries with 230 sites

$100m Invested every year in research and development (R&D)

1,000+ Packaging assessments are carried out each year

83,917 Tonnes last year tonnes of recycled plastic resin (PCR)

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“The basic needs of packaging have not gone away, which is to protect, preserve, promote but sustainability and end of life requirements are added and enhanced” RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

AmLite HeatFlex Recyclable | Recyclable flexible retort packaging

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AMCOR

*Photo taken before COVID-19

“One example, US recycling rates of highvolume plastic bottles are still in the lower thirties, meaning, we are talking significant amounts of waste going to landfills that should not be there. And our challenge as a packaging industry is to accurately define the problem, align with key stakeholders in the value chain and take a leadership position across a multipronged solutions approach to address this issue,” he said.

One example of Amcor’s sustainable products is the ESL (aseptic/extended shelf life) plastic bottles which are revolutionising the packaging of dairy and juice. Amcor’s barrier technology protects against ultraviolet light, maximises the product’s flavour and provides up to a year of shelf life.

Master Data Governance Amcor’s digital transformation is being accelerated with the Master Data Governance (MDG) process along with a P2P solution 86

April 2021

through SAP Ariba. “The biggest opportunity for any P2P program resides where the fragmentation or non-standard materials or services is the maximum – if you do it right that’s where the biggest value is,” said Mulabagula.

“The journey started in 2015 with MDG, a process through which we can standardise our materials and services. For example, a product specific application – if we talk about green colored bottles, well, define green? Green can come in different shades and different tones. So, classification and standardisation of that SKU is very important.

And what MDG enables us to do – through the SAP platform – is to standardise material groups to define what the classification criteria is and applies them consistently across the spend.”

“Once the standardisation was in place, we then launched a P2P Ariba program, initially starting off with a high value, high

AMCOR

“ The biggest opportunity for any P2P program resides where the fragmentation or non-standard materials or services is maximum - if you do it right that’s where the biggest value is” RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

RAHUL CHANDE TITLE: DIRECTOR, PROCUREMENT SYSTEMS AND TACTICAL EXECUTION INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Rahul Chande is an executive member of Amcor Rigid Packaging procurement leadership team (PLT) and a champion for digital procurement transformation.

Since September 2015, he has led a global team of 14 professionals to successfully manage a portfolio comprising of digital transformation, global master data and analytics and tactical procurement operations.

He brings more than 20 years of industry and big four consulting leadership experience; in creating business cases for change and leading executive mandates for digital supply chain and procurement transformation.

Previously, as Associate Partner with Deloitte Consulting, Chande successfully

problem areas in “Indirect Categories”; maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) management and then scaling to secondary packaging, professional services,” said Mulabagula who points out ARP is coming to the end of their first leg of the journey to digital procurement excellence.

“Once you have that visibility and transparency, then everything else comes into play in terms of putting in processes, operational resources and dash boards for compliance, consolidation and making sure we deploy back end robust procurement commodity strategies and processes to maximise the value return for our spend,” he said.

implemented 12+ full lifecycle, technology enabled, global supply chain and procurement transformation programs at leading consumer and industrial products organisations. He helped his Fortune 100 clients achieve up to 200 per cent ROI leveraging digital technologies and deployment of center led governance and managed services models; with robotic process automation, advanced analytics, visualisation.

A “published” playbook of business processes, rules books, policies, standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities, training guides and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress was critical to Amcor’s MDM/ P2P journey.

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“ Our geographical reach is global, being the biggest packaging company in the world. And the biggest converter, not just from a size point of view, but the technical know-how, innovation and the value we bring to the table”

WILLIAM PFEIFFER TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR, PROCUREMENT AND LOGISTICS INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS LOCATION: UNITED STATES

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RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

For example, given this unprecedented visibility and transparency, ARP streamlined and consolidated the supply base by 75 per cent during this transformational journey, while deploying robust supplier onboarding processes across it’s spend.

ARP digital procurement transformation journey has reached the “advanced basecamp” stage in its roadmap. ARP has achieved 70 per cent automation of indirect procure to pay processes, significantly improved indirect spend under management to 95 per cent, adherence to negotiated contracts with

EXECUTIVE BIO

William Pfeiffer is a performancedriven senior leader with more than 20 years of comprehensive experience and recognised success in all areas of Supply Chain Management including Procurement, Transportation, Logistics, Customs, Material Planning and Plant Operations.

Pfeiffer is an innovative, ambitious change agent with a demonstrated track record in the development and execution of business strategies to improve productivity and profitability. Proven ability to develop accountable, collaborative, engaged, result driven teams focused on continuous improvement.

He is highly effective and skilled in strategic sourcing, negotiations, contract management, supplier development/ quality, packaging, demand forecasting, production planning, inventory control, physical distribution, data mining/analysis, cost reduction, cash flow improvement, program/ project management, process and system/ technology deployment and improvement.

*Photo taken before COVID-19

AMCOR

“Ensuring sustainability throughout the entire life cycle and end of use of product is equally as important, hence these requirements are accelerating the sustainability journey in the industry and driving unique business and technology partnerships with strategic vendors.”

*Photo taken before COVID-19

preferred suppliers and sourcing improved to over 75 per cent.

Commenting on how Amcor has risen to the challenges of providing packaging during the pandemic, Mulabagula said: “The basic needs of packaging have not gone away, which is to protect, preserve and promote but sustainability is being added and enhanced even prior to the pandemic”.

DID YOU KNOW...

AGILE IN THE FACE OF COVID-19 “It's been a challenging, but at the same time, very rewarding experience given the paramount importance of safety and health of our co-workers,” said Mulabagula.

“We started off importing PPE and masks from China. And we were the first organisation in Amcor to import and manage this complex supply chain to keep our plants and facilities running. So, we didn't miss a beat from a business continuity point of view, but we realised this was not a sustainable solution in the long term.”

Asset lifecycle assessment Asset is an Amcor tool that helps brand owners assess and accurately communicate their carbon footprint of their packaging products backed by independent verification and labelling from the renowned “Carbon Trust”.

Amcor is driving awareness in sustainability packaging with their Asset lifecycle assessment tool. Detailed packaging lifecycle reports provide fact-based criteria to identify lower environmental footprint options, enabling brand owners to make informed packaging decisions. The company conducts on average 850 packaging assessments for its customers each year.

“So, in collaboration with a strategic vendor we started our own new product line at our New Jersey facility, where we now make our own face masks that we commissioned in 12 weeks. And that was a record by itself.

“I'm really proud of what the team has accomplished, working tirelessly and seamlessly with stakeholders to rapidly install a new manufacturing line. We are now self-sufficient in our face masks and have started charitable donations to local nonprofitable organisations in communities we serve and operate. So that's been a fantastic and rewarding journey and a new experience for all of us at ARP.”

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AMCOR

*Photo taken before COVID-19

DID YOU KNOW...

GLOBAL ORIGINS MAPPED OUT FUTURE FOR AMCOR

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Amcor’s 160-year history touches almost every corner of the world as the founder Samuel Ramsden, a stone mason from Yorkshire, travelled to Australia in the 1860s to make his fortune by opening a paper mill in Melbourne.

Around the same time, in St Louis, Missouri, Judson Moss Bemis founded bag manufacturing J M Bemis & Company, which by the end of the 19th century was among the largest enterprises of its kind in the world.

April 2021

Amcor was historically known as APM, or Australian Paper Manufacturers, for more than a century, and in 2019 it acquired the Bemis & Company.

These two complementary companies have gone on to create the global leader in consumer packaging, with the footprint, scale and capabilities to drive significant value for shareholders and deliver the most sustainable innovations for the environment.

AMCOR

“I'm currently leading Amcor’s global rigid packaging procurement excellence journey while striving to meet aspirational sustainability objectives – that is what’s driving me – I have been part of four acquisitions in the last seven years, which has been a fantastic learning and growth opportunity” RANGA MULABAGULA VP OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, AMCOR

“This is a unique service from Amcor and important to our customers, who can be assured their product assessment is verified and validated by Amcor and Carbon Trust,” said Mulabagula.

Competitive advantage But what other factors are giving Amcor the competitive advantage? “We continue to focus on value creation for customers and markets – developing unique technologies to serve customer needs, pursuing acquisitions that expand our presence in emerging markets, and help improve the industry structure so we can enhance the value delivery across the packaging value stream.”

“We work closely with brand owners to make sure we are aligned with their corporate sustainability goals and promote our capabilities to accelerate their journey towards this important objective. So that collaboration, innovation, consolidation and communication leads to significant opportunities for customers and Amcor,” he said.

Alliance with Oakwood packaging Amcor works with many vendor partners but the partnership with Oakwood Packaging

is a unique one. “We buy secondary packaging but the relationship is broader than a typical “buy-sell” arrangement. We provide strong value for one another through collaboration in catering to markets we operate and customers we serve.”

“We are also embarking on a journey to make these products more sustainable – how can we drive more recycled content in the bags? Can we collaborate and standardise end of use solutions after consumption of these bags?

“So, there is significant opportunity in terms of re-using the products and also making sure we are putting sustainable materials in these products to start with,” said Mulabagula.

Another partner crucial for Amcor’s digital procurement initiative is Grainger who provides MRO parts and services through P2P enabled Ariba catalogs.

“I believe our ongoing digital procurement journey has set us up beautifully to take the next logical step in deploying future ROI driven solutions (ex: robotics process automation, machine learning, AI tools) in alignment with both internal and external stakeholder needs,” said Mulabagula.

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TECHNOLOGY

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TECHNOLOGY

DEMYSTIFYING TECH IN

PROCUREMENT With the help of Roland Simon and Hugh Simpson, Procurement Magazine takes a look at the trendiest tech and it’s growing influence on procurement WRITTEN BY: OLIVER JAMES FREEMAN FRSA

S

ince the turn of the century, technology has, for better or worse, truly revolutionised the way that we live and the way that businesses operate.

The rate of development and subsequent advancement has been so fast that in many cases if you didn’t check the news one day, you may well have missed something.

But it has to be said that, while technology was disrupting almost every aspect of life, procurement processes were mostly left in the dark ages until very recently. As a result, companies are starting to notice that their old, slightly tired-looking legacy systems are well and truly showing their age; legacy systems and manual tools are a thing of the past that lack ease and efficiency.

So for companies that feature dated legacy systems, we’ve compiled a shortlist of the top four disruptive, arguably interdependent, technologies – often shaded under the umbrella of ‘Industry 4.0’ –taking the procurement process industry by storm right now and into the ‘20s.

With the help of Roland Simon, former Senior Vice President and Procurement Subject Matter Expert for ElectrifAi, and Hugh Simpson, the CEO of LQD Technology and former Global Lead in Data & Analytics and AI at EY Data & Analytics UK and Australia, we aim to demystify some of today’s trendiest technologies, their current role in procurement and the opportunities they offer.

Roland Simon on AI & Machine Learning “The vast majority of business financial data is generated out of individual transactions.

Those transactions are normally either sales or purchases. Depending on the nature of the transaction, i.e. type of industry or nature of the relationship, the individual points of data collected will be different and likely organised differently. Assume then that within the same enterprise, one may have a wide variety of types of transactions, and these transactions would take place across an entire enterprise footprint. Those geographic footprints can range from very local and concentrated to international, global and extremely complex. It is not particularly common for businesses to maintain standardised purchase orders and invoices across their business entities.

“There are a number of reasons for nonstandard PO’s and invoices, not least of which might be differences in accounting rules and cost calculations that vary between procurementmag.com

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TECHNOLOGY

“ To date, the process of normalisation, clustering, and classification of data have been the heavy lifters in the realm of data analytics in the procurement suite of software solutions” ROLAND SIMON

FORMER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND PROCUREMENT SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT ELECTRIFAI

business segments and geographies. This means that most procurement organisations interested in spend visibility begin with disparate data from multiple data sources.

“To date, the process of normalisation, clustering, and classification of data have been the heavy lifters in the realm of data analytics in the procurement suite of software solutions. Although many spend analytics service providers claim to employ Machine Learning (ML) and artificial intelligence in the process, the reality is that

the software content of this process for most is still limited and requires heavy human input and quality control. The challenge with regard to this cleansing process is that in order to teach algorithms to recognise correct patterns and place data in the proper fields, massive amounts of clean data and human inputs are required. Most service providers are not necessarily incentivised to make these efforts. As a result, spend analytics software solutions are typically extremely time-consuming and labourintensive and thus expensive. For those interested in automating this process, technology is available today. However, the returns on this investment are not certain.

“What is the future of ML and AI in the procurement function? Where is the genuine opportunity to bring value and advance the function? In recent years, procurement leaders and their organisations have sought more access to integrate their activities procurementmag.com

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TECHNOLOGY

“ The future of ML and AI in procurement will most likely be in facilitating the integration of procurement activity and strategy with the commercial end of businesses that are materials market dependent” ROLAND SIMON

FORMER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND PROCUREMENT SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT ELECTRIFAI

internally with the rest of the business.

Ideally, as a function, effectiveness is improved dramatically as a business thought partner – a common aspiration these days for procurement leaders seeking performance at a world-class level.

The challenge lies in translating market trends and data together with spend analytics through to their impacts on the costs of finished goods at a granular level.

Therefore, understanding real competitive position, starting at the procurement end of the business through to the sales side of the business, is currently nearly impossible in real-time for many industries. The solution is ML and AI algorithms that process significantly higher volumes of data than humanly possible to connect dots from the front of the operation to the back.

“Software solutions in the future will be able to connect third-party material indices and economic trends and telegraph that data through company costing processes to enable real-time margin management for industries that thus far have had to react to volatile market changes. Predicting the future based on history has never been sound science.

However, for any industry segment, key leading indicators can be assembled, and 96

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with comprehensive analysis, it is possible to predict likely directions in trends. The future of ML and AI in procurement will most likely be in facilitating the integration of procurement activity and strategy with the commercial end of businesses that are materials market dependent.”

Hugh Simpson on Big Data and IoT “Implementing a Big Data capability in supply-chain organisations will enable them to unlock the true value of data, improve customer service and optimise operations.

“Smart supplier selection with Big Data and AI recommendations increase procurement staff utilisation by 20-30% and improve internal customer service.”

Internet of Things “When combined with Big Data and AI, IoT is a great enabler for predictive procurement

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY

as it enables near-real-time visibility of demand and supply needs.

“Imagine the opex improvements and more efficient resource allocation from a smart factory that is able to reorder key inputs automatically with AI-driven supplier selection and approval processes.”

The Corporeal Cloud Cloud services have been one of the most revolutionary tech developments ever; companies are now able to get rid of data server rooms and in-house systems in 98

April 2021

favour of subscription services for storage space in, what I call, a “metaphysical cloud”. Many organisations and industryleaders have stated that the cloud has been incredibly helpful in determining a myriad of services, including process to pay, purchasing, and supply chain – amongst others.

According to Simpson, “Cloud-based procurement solutions enable the costeffective automation, integration and simplification of the procure-to-pay process. Cloud offers organisations

TECHNOLOGY

the ability to scale up and down data processing power more efficiently for growing businesses whilst allowing them to also leverage emerging AI and Big Data technologies.”

Technology is proving itself as a major player in all aspects of life today.

It’s clearly a godsend for a myriad of procurement and supply chain functions, where it allows companies – new and old – to analyse spend for greater visibility, drive exponential improvements in operational performance, enforce

compliance through policy, leverage increasingly valuable data, and track detailed analytics.

It’s no longer a case of if a company adopts a contemporary suite of technological capabilities but when.

And, for the C-Suite executives who decide to neglect the power of tech, don’t be surprised if you see your market share drop and your business operations flop – for there’s far more growth in adoption and far more stagnation in fearing development. procurementmag.com

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LEVERAGING TECH FOR

SUPPLY DIVERSITY AND AGILITY One year later; We speak to Stephany Lapierre, Founder and CEO of Tealbook, and dig into supplier diversity, the need for agility, and how tech can help WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

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idening the pool of potential suppliers and establishing best practices for inclusive procurement builds agility and promotes a healthy competitive environment for strategic procurement, all while improving quality and innovation and introducing further opportunities to reduce costs.

Yes, ethical procurement makes for a good look, but if done right, it can also be a competitive advantage that benefits society and generates economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities.

And yet, a year after the global pandemic brought to light the ubiquitous problems supply chains face due to lack of supplier information and an inability to react swiftly to supply chain interruptions, leaders the world over continue to spout the need for increased resiliency while seemingly doing little to affect change.

The breaking point Conducted by Wakefield Research, the Tealbook Survey “On Solid Ground: Building the Data Foundation for Agile Procurement”

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ESG

73%

report having not yet made the necessary improvements to future-proof supply chains

96%

“ Tealbook can help improve supplier diversity and increase agility, easing the way companies obtain supplier data and empowering speedy informed decision making” STEPHANY LAPIERRE FOUNDER AND CEO, TEALBOOK

warns that without immediate foundational improvements, further disruptions to supply chains may push them to their breaking point.

Supporting their fears, the survey found that 72% of procurement leaders are very concerned that their supplier intelligence has still not improved to crisis-proof supply chains and 73% report having not yet made the necessary improvements to future-proof supply chains.

of procurement professionals believe agility is even more important than cost savings for their companies’ bottom line

Even more interestingly, however, the survey also found that 96% of procurement professionals believe agility is even more important than cost savings for their companies’ bottom line.

The numbers are, quite frankly, shocking.

So I was anxious to sit down with Stephany Lapierre, the Founder and CEO of Tealbook, to talk it out and learn more about the power of supplier data and how Tealbook can help support supplier diversity. But first, let’s take a deeper look.

What exactly is supplier diversity?

In order to be considered a diverse supplier, a business must be at least 51% owned and operated by an individual or group that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or underserved group. Commonly used procurementmag.com

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classifications include small-business enterprises (SBEs), woman-owned enterprises (WBEs) and minority-owned enterprises (MBEs). However, today the definition of diversity also encompasses businesses owned by other minority groups such as LGBTQ. According to the US Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, “over the last ten years, minority business enterprises accounted for more than 50 per cent of the two million new businesses started in the United States and created 4.7 million jobs. There are now more than four million minority-owned companies in the 104

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United States, with annual sales totalling close to $700 billion.

“Yet, despite that growth, there is still a disparity when it comes to access to capital, contracting opportunities and other entrepreneurial development opportunities for minority-owned firms.” Although minorities make up 32 per cent of the US population, minority business ownership represents only 18 per cent.

Supplier diversity, it’s good for business Now, more than ever, people (and not just millennials) are aligning their actions with their values and are looking to buy from

ESG

and work for companies whose values align with theirs. When looking to attract top talent, supplier diversity programs speak to your corporate ethics and make for a good selling point.

According to a UPS survey conducted by Hootology (itself a diverse supplier), 52% of respondents said they want to work for a company that has a supplier diversity and inclusion program. In 2019 another study performed by Hootology for Coca-Cola showed that 25% of respondents were more likely to think favourably about the brand, and 49% were more likely to use Coca-Cola products. So, if diversity is good for business, then what’s the problem?

Virtue signalling Although supplier diversity programs can and should be authentically initiated out of an honest desire to establish a high moral and ethical standard, or even because it makes good business sense, that’s not always the case. Much like greenwashing, they are often created reactively to mitigate brand risk and tend to be more about virtue signalling and brand building than a valued initiative to drive business improvements and align the business with corporate values.

As Kris Oswald, supplier diversity expert for UPS, said, “To truly drive toward economic equality, supplier diversity can’t feel like a secret tucked away in the procurement function; it has to hit the main stage.” It must be taken seriously and influence procurement decisions.

Critically, the pandemic both highlighted and exasperated the need for improved supply chain practices in ESG —yet, according to the survey, 63% still lack full visibility into supplier data to be able to do so.

Stephany Lapierre CEO at Tealbook Stephany Lapierre is the Founder and CEO of Tealbook. A highly coveted supply chain thought leader, and one of the most influential minds in emerging data technologies, her mission is to deliver a ‘Trusted Source of Supplier Data’ to anever-growing eProcurement space. Prior to Tealbook, Stephany spent 10 years building a successful strategic sourcing andprocurement consulting firm focusing on large scale sourcing optimization projects. Given her experience and visibility into the data issues crippling procurement, she built an impressive technology, data team, and launched Tealbook. It is the only Big Data company that provides a self-enriching and self-maintaining mechanism that connects to all procurement software critical to the success of a digital procurement transformation. Tealbook has been adopted by Fortune 100 companies across multiple sectors and has won prestigious awards including Spend Matter 50 Vendors to Watch, Gartner’s Cool Vendor, CIX Most Innovative Company and Most Upside Potential by C100.

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“For those who are on their pre-transformation journey and are looking to have a data-first transformation and want to deploy something fast and make an impact on driving ROI quickly, Tealbook provides a head start” STEPHANY LAPIERRE FOUNDER AND CEO, TEALBOOK

One of the biggest obstacles procurement leaders face is finding minority-owned vendors is ensuring they are compliant and meet all buyer and customer requirements.

Luckily, Tealbook can help with that.

Tealbook; Easing supplier diversity and agility “By leveraging AI and machine learning, Tealbook created a supplier intelligence platform that brings transparency to the supply chain ecosystem. Tealbook can help improve supplier diversity and increase agility, easing the way companies obtain supplier data and empowering speedy informed decision making,” says Lapierre.

She further explains that when it comes to supplier diversity and sourcing compliant suppliers quickly, Tealbook’s supplier intelligence platform is a powerful aid, allowing you to search for suppliers based on your requirements.

“We built a beautiful, easy to use interface that allows our customers visibility into the vendor master and to gain transparency and visibility across all their suppliers.

Reporting, supplier searches and other lightweight functionalities give employees the information they need to better manage things like supplier diversity and react more swiftly to changing conditions, increasing agility.”

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Allowing buyers to interact with the data efficiently and on a large scale, affords stronger outcomes. LaPierre offers Tealbook’s work in the UK as an example. In an effort to provide the UK with comprehensive supplier resources of PPE during the Covid-19 outbreak, working with the UK government, Tealbook added 56,000 new suppliers (mainly in India, UK and the US), 22,000 Good Manufacturing Practices for health care certificates and over 250,000 additional ISO certificates.

“We are so honoured to be working with the U.K. government to help them provide for the essential workers and others that are in desperate need of personal protective equipment,” said LaPierre regarding the partnership. “We are here for them now and in the future, as the U.K government expands the search for suppliers in areas beyond PPE.” Tealbook, giving you a head start on ROI Tealbook delivers a trusted source of supplier data, providing a data foundation that can be leveraged to optimise other eProcurement solutions and ensure these larger investments are successful.

“For those who are on their pretransformation journey and are looking to have a data-first transformation and want to deploy something fast and make an impact

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on driving ROI quickly, Tealbook provides a head start,” says LaPierre.

Using an AI and Machine Learning technology, Tealbook crawls over 400M websites and aggregates the data onto their platform and creates what they call a dynamic universal supplier profile for every B2B company in the world. Tealbook continually gathers fragmented information from disparate and sometimes hidden sources and pulls it all together into a complete and accurate data picture.

LaPierre further explains, "Then, through APIs, we feed that data to any of the systems that our customers have invested in. By doing that, we improve the quality of the data on those systems across a hundred per cent of the suppliers, ensuring that their 108

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large software investments are successful.

“This also leads to a more interchangeable and agile technology stack. The analogy I often give is that of losing a phone. There was a time not that long ago when you lost your phone, there was a lot of friction because all the data lived on the phone. So you lost your pictures and all your contacts. But now, if you lose your phone, all of your data remains connected to your watch, your iPad or your computer via the cloud. A phone upgrade now takes seconds. It’s frictionless.”

Tealbook gives organisations that same sort of flexibility, so you can change or upgrade software as you wish without having to concern yourself with supplier data.

“Ultimately, you're getting more out of the systems you've invested in because

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you now have clean, complete, reliable data, and you no longer have to overcome limitations faced by inaccurate or incomplete supplier data.

“With many procurement systems like source-to-pay or spend analytics, the promise of the investment in that software requires having good data upfront.

Tealbook provides that, giving you the freedom to choose technologies that best meet the digital requirement of each function. You can upgrade to the newest, coolest digital solution without having to live with that decision forever, and you can implement it faster and get more out of it.“ And so, it seems, the problem of bad or inadequate supplier data has been fixed. We have the technology

available to create more diverse and agile supply chains.

To that point, LaPierre shares an analogy, “The obvious analogy here is Covid. We worked so hard in the US to bring the vaccine to fruition. A year later, after all the angst in the supply chain, organisations are saying that if another incident like this happens again, they're not any further along, and they're not prepared. I think that's the huge takeaway here. Why aren't they? It's ready. It's here.

This is not a technology that they need to wait on like we needed to wait on the vaccine.”

Perhaps it’s time supply chain leaders take supplier diversity and agility seriously and leverage tech that’s fit-for-purpose. procurementmag.com

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TOP TEN

WOMEN IN PROCUREMENT

It’s an outdated stereotype that women love to shop. These Top 100 women in procurement take that idea and run straight through the glass ceiling with it WRITTEN BY: HELEN SYDNEY ADAMS

T

here are many valiant efforts to encourage women and girls to consider careers in STEM, but another genderimbalanced industry, procurement, is often overlooked.

Working in procurement involves researching products or services for a business from an independent party (not to be confused with purchasing, which is facilitating the payments).

Yet in a report by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, Women in procurement: Gender parity is a key to better performance, results showed that out of the Chief Procurement Officers questioned, 60% agree that there has been an increase in the number of women in procurement over the past three years.

From Aboriginal networks to Unilever, here are our top 10 women in procurement from across the globe…

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TOP TEN

10

Ampy Cheung Aswin

Global Vice President Supply Chain

Unilever

Each day, 2.5 billion people use Unilever products, from Dove deodorant to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream - and it’s Aswin who gets products from their conception to those customers. Since graduating from De La Salle University in 1997, the Philippino business woman has worked for Unilever, where nearly half of all managers are women. Aswin has held several Unilever Vice President positions, before landing the role of Unilever Global Vice President Supply Chain in 2019.

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09

Brigitte Michaud

Senior VP Global Supply Chain

STADA

After studying her Masters degree in Business Administration at IAE Bordeaux, Michaud worked for L’Oreal and Danone, then took the logical step to STADA. The pharmaceutical giant has always prioritised customers’ health. In 2020, the company led the fight against Covid-19 with Michaud managing the supply chain the highest production output in STADA’s 125-year history. In addition, STADA had proudly put its employees uniqueness at the front of the STADA empire.

TOP TEN

08

Lizeth Cardenas Guzman

Deputy Supply Chain Director Peru

Huawei

When Guzman makes a phonecall using one of the Huawei products she helped create, she could be speaking to Spanish, English or Chinese colleagues in their native language. The Peruvian Deputy Supply Chain Director is determined to uplift her colleagues: “I’m a leader who inspires people to be leaders,” said Guzman. With 12 years in Supply Chain Business, she has a degree in International Business Management and is a certified Professional Business Coach.

07

Sapna Alva Tariyal CPO Asia Pacific

Capgemini

Tariyal has 23 years of experience across supplier management, but she is a people management pro first. She believes having the right attitude and embracing learning opportunities have helped her on her professional journey. Tariyal leads her team by example - from the office to the army. “I followed my dream,” Tariyal says of her career in the Indian Armed Forces, before moving on to procurement - an industry where she hopes to encourage diversity. procurementmag.com

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Listen Now

TOP TEN

“ It creates role modelling, it creates jobs”

05

Virginie Vast

06

Debbie Barwick

Chairperson and Executive Officer

NSW Indigenous Chamber of Commerce First Australian Berwick established the Indigenous Chamber of Commerce in addition to the National Network of Indigenous Chambers of Commerce, to bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders together. The Chamber represents 4,500 indigenous businesses and the network has 5,500 members. “It creates role modelling, it creates jobs,” Barwick said of the launch of the Chamber.

Barwick is an experienced trainer on procurement and a respected advisor to state and federal governments on economic policy.

Head of Country Procurement Europe Region

Amazon

Is there is a household in Europe which the hand of Amazon has not reached? Thanks to Virginie Vast, Amazon’s Head of Country Procurement in Europe, probably not. The University of Connecticut School of Business graduate worked for Vodaphone and Siemens before moving to Amazon in 2020, with the desire to look at sustainable procurement - the business of meeting a businesses needs while minimising environmental damage. Vast is a strong believer in “creation that goes beyond traditional procurement”.

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04

Linda Chuan

Head of Strategic Sourcing & Procurement Ops

Box

The Stanford University graduate has been nicknamed “procurement royalty” for her holistic problem solving skills. Chuan worked across Yahoo! and Thomson Reuters, before moving to Box (cloud content management). When the pandemic hit, Chuan didn’t flinch. “Being street smart versus book smart,” Chuan explained in a 2020 webinar, “There are things that we’ve learned as CPOs working through the ranks or if you received your Masters degree from supply chain institutions you have to balance.”

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03

Lisa Martin CPO

GSK At the pharmaceutical company GSK, Chief Procurement Officer Martin works to bring talented people together to create outstanding results. “My personal belief is in building a blended team,” Martin explains. “Blended with the very best talent that GSK has internally and with key external recruits, that have diversity in their career experience.”A winner of the J. Shipman Gold Medal Award for her services to supply management, Martin lives in New Jersey with her family.

02

TOP TEN

Angela Qu CPO

Lufthansa

Qu has worked hard over 25 years to force strong partnerships with internal stakeholders and service providers, maintaining that her leadership principle is to empower her teams for them to perform at their best. Over the past year, Qu has not allowed the devastating impact the Covid-19 crisis has had on the aviation industry to disturb her calm. Lufthansa is Germany’s biggest airline, whose revenue dropped 90% folowing the pandemic. “When Covid arrived, we were not prepared,” Qu admitted to the CPO Content Hub. “It became an urgent issue for procurement to act; to be calm and deal with things professionally.” Lufthansa rescued passengers stuck abroad and transported medical equipment to Europe. In 2020, Qu was included in the Procurement Power List 2020.

“ Andrew oversea 2,000+ professio with annual spe exceeds £20bn”

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“To make the changes needed in the world, from both a people and planet perspective, it’s all in the supply chain”

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TOP TEN

Divya Demato CEO

GoodOps Multilingual Demato did not start small when she founded GoodOps, the sustainable supply chain consultancy. “To make the changes needed in the world, from both a people and planet perspective, it’s all in the supply chain,” she told Digital Trends Live. “Consumers are beginning to accelerate their needs and desires in terms of what brands are responsible for.”The company has worked with Walmart, Danone and other businesses who want to make planet-positive changes to their company. Dedicated to supporting the Human Rights of labour workers from the factory floor up, Demato also works towards uplifting the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Last year, she won the Women in Supply Chain Award 2020 and is a Mentor for Unreasonable Group, which supports entrepreneurs.

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