Supply Chain - November 2021

November 2021 | supplychaindigital.com

Post Covid Events

Exclusive Review: Procurement & Supply Chain Live 2021

Speaker: Ninian Wilson, Vodafone Procurement Company

A new venture for BizClik Media Group, the Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE show brings global Procurement leaders together for a hybrid digital event

Procurement & Supply Chain

LIVE

Go Ahead: The Journey to Sustainable Transport Microsoft: Global Action, Local Results Home Trust: Procuring Diversity: The Benefits of Balance

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SirionLabs’ smart contract lifecycle management technology and expertise are a powerful tool in supporting Vodafone’s business objectives Vodafone first engaged with SirionLabs when the US-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) company was still in the startup stage.

The telecoms giant was reshaping its CLM throughout the business. “We had a blueprint about what we wanted to achieve,” says Reinhard Plaza-Bartsch, Global Head of SCM Development, Operations & Digital, Vodafone.

“And SirionLabs came incredibly close to matching that blueprint with technology.”

Since the implementation of SirionLabs’ technology, Vodafone has on-boarded more than one thousand contracts to the platform enabling them to improve contract compliance and performance.

Plaza-Bartsch says: “We have also expanded the end-to-end process from post right to pre-signature. We’re now able to see the endto-end process, and therefore that made us more effective and efficient in terms of how we operate.”

The platform has given Vodafone enhanced abilities to monitor performance and compliance within the business, and take action where necessary. “As a result, there has been quite a significant benefit in terms of time freed up and given back to the business to focus on more value-add activities,” PlazaBartsch says.

That platform integrates with the suite of in-house and managed digital solutions already in use across Vodafone’s supply

chain organisation. “When we make these technologies available to our user base, it is crucial to us that they see it as one simple user journey. The degree to which Sirion integrates into our wider landscape is so important to provide that simple user experience across the board.”

It has been an evolving success story for both parties, and Plaza-Bartsch says the collaboration goes far beyond just the technology, important as it is. “One critical aspect for us in working with Sirion was the contract management expertise in the contract management space that resided within the organisation. They understood what we were after, and that was crucial in helping us build the capability much faster.

“We really value to work with companies that beyond their technology, have a sound understanding of our business and priorities, and take a further step to incorporate these into the plans and roadmaps.”

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The SupplyChain Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

GEROGIA WILSON EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JACK THOMPSON JANE ARNETA

PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE CREATIVE TEAM

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

KIERAN WAITE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG HABBIE AMOS JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE MARKETING MANAGER

KAYLEIGH SHOOTER PROJECT DIRECTORS

TOM LIVERMORE MIKE SADR

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Live for the Moment Amidst acute supply chain disruption in the UK, the first Procurement and Supply Chain Live drew industry leaders together in London for invaluable in-person networking

“It’s great to meet real people, in 3D, and to be able to have that exchange of ideas” NINIAN WILSON, GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN DIRECTOR & CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

SUPPLYCHAIN DIGITAL MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

The past month has seen the UK become a microcosm of global supply chain disruption, with intermittent fuel shortages, a lack of HGV drivers to ferry goods about, and bottlenecked ports compounding prevailing pressures of COVID-19 and Brexit. It was a timely reminder of why the industry is vital to the global economy, as Procurement and Supply Chain Live, our first hybrid physical-digital event, drew industry leaders to London.

Across three days, four stages and dozens of panels, keynotes and sessions, attendees gained exclusive insights from the industry's leading voices. They were even able to ask questions, catch up over lunch, and make new connections - a luxury in an era of hasty video calls. But the event was also an opportunity to celebrate the incredible, tireless work of supply chain and procurement leaders and executives at all levels.

Hailed a success by attendees in London, and those joining virtually from around the world, Procurement and Supply Chain Live is set to become a tentpole in the industry’s calendar. As keynote speaker Ninian Wilson, Global Supply Chain Director & CEO, Vodafone Procurement Company said: “It’s great to meet real people, in 3D, and to be able to have that exchange of ideas”. Let’s not forget it.

GEROGIA WILSON

Gerogia.Wilson@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 8

Big Picture

10 The Brief 12 Timeline:

How is the Food Industry

Affected by Global Disruptions?

14 TrailBlazer:

Susan Johnson 18 Five Mins With:

Sandeep Sakharkar

46

Procurement

Effective SRM: Communication, Innovation and Value

24

54

UMass: Unifying Procurement to Drive Change

The Journey to Sustainable Transport

University of Massachusetts

Go Ahead

76

Microsoft

Microsoft Israel: Global action, local results

66

Live Review

BMG Hosting Procurement & Supply Chain

90

Top10

Building the First Autonomous Digital Supply Chain

102

110

Rises to medical challenges in central Asia

Procuring diversity: The benefits of balance

BI Group

Home Trust

BIG PICTURE

8

November 2021

Sustainable Fashion Global

With 4% of global carbon emissions, and 20% of water pollution coming from the fashion supply chain, the industry is one of the top contributors to global pollution. “[The fashion industry] is one of the biggest global polluters and one of the greatest producers of waste, while issues around unsafe workplaces, labour abuses and low wages continue,” said IBM.

A significant obstacle in preventing the industry from becoming more sustainable is the lack of transparency and visibility across different stages in the supply chain.

“Data in silo systems tend to operate in isolation and parties have had little to no incentive to share data with the rest of the ecosystem due to the significant manual effort,” added IBM. This is where organisations such as Avery Dennison and IBM are stepping in to break down these silos.

IBM In collaboration with the UK Fashion & Textile Association (UKFT), Tech Data, and the Future Fashion Factory, IBM is designing, prototyping and piloting a new technology platform based on its own technologies to drive sustainability, profitability and transparency in the UK fashion and textile supply chain.

Avery Dennison In partnership with Ambercycle, Avery Dennison has launched its digital care label providing a digital experience that details how each garment is produced and how it should be looked after, providing greater traceability and transparency across the supply chain.

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THE BRIEF “Cybersecurity and information security is one of the most important risks that we continuously look to improve” Sanja Cancar-Todorovic

Enterprise Procurement, Outsourcing & Vendor Management Leader, Home Trust  READ MORE

“The fastest way to warm up the economy is construction and there will be huge demand for resources and procurement” Darkhan Shildebayev CPO, BI Group 

READ MORE

“We're capturing this low hanging fruit, but once we realise those recurring savings, we need to continue to optimise and extract costs” David Cho

Chief Procurement Officer and Managing Director, University of Massachusetts  READ MORE

10

November 2021

BY THE NUMBERS Are Supply Chain Disruptions Spurring Changing Consumer Habits?

44%

Are starting their holiday shopping before November to combat supply chain disruption

IBM study of 13,000+ adults across 9 countries

54%

Considering sustainability in their purchase decisions will be avoiding single-use plastics

4 in 5

Will be considering sustainability when they purchase their holiday shopping

Did you know? Supply Chain Digital and Procurement Magazine held the debut Procurement & Supply Chain Live event, with keynote speakers from NHS Test & Trace, SAP, G4S, JAGGAER and more!

Find out more 

READ MORE

Breaking Glasses in Logistics: As 1 of 4 female CEOs in Fortune 50 companies, find out how Carol Tomé is positively disrupting the logistics industry.

Find out more 

READ MORE

Could Christmas be Cancelled?

‘Supply Chain Disruptions’ - a common phrase in today’s post-COVID-19 world. Consumers around the globe have begun to understand the impact a break in the chain can have on purchasing goods.

But is it Christmas’s turn to face the fatal effects of the growing global supply chain challenges?

From Christmas trees to turkeys and toys, supply chain disruptions are being felt.

Even the giants such as Amazon, Nestlé, National Tree Company, Maersk, FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Samsung, and Target are facing the crunch of supply chain constraints, issuing warnings in the last month for its customers.

In a recent announcement from Amazon, the multinational technology company is urging its customers to buy their Christmas Presents four weeks early, expecting supply chain disruptions to continue until at least Spring 2022.

Nestlé’s Chief Executive Officer, Mark Schneider commented: "Like other businesses, we are seeing some labour shortages and some transportation issues.”

National Tree Company’s CEO Chris Butler also commented: “We’re fighting against toy manufacturers, electronics manufacturers, other manufacturers to get the containers, and we’re having to pay a lot more for those containers.”

Issues faced by these organisations range from, backlogs and materials shortages, to a lack of HGV drivers, but only time will tell as to whether these challenges will have a detrimental impact on Christmas.

 DPDHL DPDHL tripled its API transaction volume in the past year, with the help of Google Cloud’s API management platform.  ACCENTURE Accenture further increases its portfolio with its acquisition of Xoomworks Group; the company specialises in procurement technology, digital innovation, and software solutions development.

W I N N E R S NOV21

 BELLWAY Despite doubling its annual profits (£479mn pretax), Bellway warns supply chain issues are holding back its construction activity.  PIZZA EXPRESS Pizza Express reduces its menu following import issues from Italy as a result of the shortage of HGV drivers. The company faced a shortage of bolognese sauce.

L O S E R S

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TIMELINE HOW IS THE

FOOD INDUSTRY AFFECTED BY GLOBAL DISRUPTIONS? Supply Chain Digital walks through the events of 2020 and 2021 that have contributed to the perfect storm of disruptions to the food supply chain and what they mean

12

March 2020

July 2021

Aug 2021

COVID-19

Extreme Weather

Skill Shortage

Despite many countries returning to ‘normal’, the effects of COVID19 can still be felt throughout the supply chain. A cornucopia of backlogs, diversions, delays, and shortages emerged from the pandemic as operations ground to a halt. The supply chain hangover is likely to continue well into 2022.

Sunny California, grower of 90% of America’s canned tomatoes and a third of the world’s supply, faced ongoing droughts in July. The tomato joined its fellow fruit and vegetables that began to rise in price as demand outstripped supply.

From McDonald’s milkshakes to Domino’s Pizzas, from turkey to tomatoes, the shortage of skilled workers is affecting the supply of food.

“Like most retailers, we are currently experiencing some supply chain issues, impacting the availability of a small number of products,” said a spokesperson for McDonald’s.

Currently the UK has an estimated shortage of 100,000 HGV drivers.

Other countries in Europe range from 124,000 in Poland to 10,000 in Scandinavia.

November 2021

Sept 2021

Oct 2021

Cyber Attacks

Industrial Action

Towards the end of September, the US New Cooperative was attacked

by BlackMatter demanding a US$5.9 million ransom.

Threatening to release proprietary business data, the New Cooperative went offline. Farmers dropping off grain logged their hauls with traditional paper methods.

Recent strikes at 14 John Deere Manufacturing sites have farmers concerned with the growing shortage of quality farm equipment.

Second hand tractors in the US are selling for 30-50% more than they did two years ago.

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Trailblazer

SUSAN

JOHNSON Executive VP - Global Connections & Supply Chain, AT&T

D

edicating 17 years of her career to AT&T, Susan Johnson is the current Executive Vice President of Global Connections and Supply Chain; but this is not where she began.

Three years after graduating from Northwestern University with a BA in Economics, Johnson joined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as an Investment Banking Associate. After three years of working at the company, Johnson moved from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joining SBC in 1995 as Chief Financial Officer, Long Distance until 1998.

In 2004, Johnson began her career at AT&T one year prior to the acquisition of AT&T by SBC. She joined as the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, holding three more positions at the company before taking on the role that she holds today.

In her current role, Johnson is responsible for the international and domestic strategy and partnership development for the company’s

14

November 2021

Trailblazer

network connections. She also leads the supply chain functions at AT&T Communications supporting the entertainment group, business services, and technology and operations.

With the help of her team, Joshon manages the strategic sourcing, purchasing, supplier diversity, sustainability and supply chain logistics at AT&T. #BetterFuture In 2019, marking its 50th anniversary, AT&T refreshed its supplier diversity program under the watchful and inspirational eye of Johnson.

Expanding its definition of success, AT&T’s committed that for 2020 and beyond the organisation would aim to “stimulate diversity job growth, improve opportunities for diversity 16

Novmeber 2021

technical development and further foster the growth of the diverse supplier community.”

Commenting on this commitment Johnson said: “Earlier this year we made a commitment to drive US$3bn in spending with black suppliers in the US by the end of 2020. We've established an Executive Advisory Council made up of prominent black business leaders to assist us in reaching this goal. With our renewed supplier diversity 2020 commitment, we will continue to develop creative solutions and work closely with all suppliers to foster economic growth and innovation within the communities we serve."

Proudly, Johnson stated in a LinkedIn post that AT&T, in 2020, spent US$13.2bn (24.5% of its spend) with certified diverse

Position in Supply Chain Digital’s Top 100 Leaders: #6 Joined AT&T: 2004 Became Executive VP Global Connections & Supply Chain: 2018 businesses, exceeding its goal of at least 21.5% of its spend.

“We absolutely believe that our supplier base should be as diverse as our employee base and the customers we serve. We will maintain our focus on an inclusive supply chain that recognises the value Black-owned and other diverse suppliers bring to AT&T. That means continuing and deepening current relationships while seeking new suppliers with unique, innovative, costefficient capabilities that align with our business priorities,” said Johnson.

In 2019, Johnson was honoured with a Distinguished Service Award by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) for her dedication to diversity and inclusion, and the education of younger generations.

“WE ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE THAT OUR SUPPLIER BASE SHOULD BE AS DIVERSE AS OUR EMPLOYEE BASE AND THE CUSTOMERS WE SERVE” “With her vision, AT&T has led efforts to expand diversity and inclusion as well as to educate the next generation of wireless workers. Her focus on STEM education, especially for underrepresented segments of the population such as young women and minorities, is making a big difference.

Everyone who has seen Susan’s passion about expanding the wireless industry’s diversity and educational outreach understands why she has had such a huge impact on people and businesses that support the wireless economy.

There is no better person to honor with the Distinguished Service Award than Susan Johnson,” said Jonathan Adelstein, President and CEO of WIA. supplychaindigital.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Sandeep

SAKHARKAR CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) AT GXO LOGISTICS Q. COULD YOU START BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF AND DETAILING YOUR ROLE AT GXO LOGISTICS?

» My name is Sandeep Sakharkar,

I am the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at GXO Logistics.

I am responsible for all aspects of technology, both customer facing as well as internal technologies that run the corporation.

From a customer technology perspective we broadly look at three areas: physical technology that drives the supply chain, differentiated software integrations, and data related technologies (advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning).

So my role really encompasses leading our teams, engaging with our customers and ultimately developing, delivering and progressing our technology agenda both external customer facing as well as driving the work and processes within.

18

November 2021

Q. YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF AN EXCITING NEW CHAPTER AFTER SPINNING OFF FROM XPO - HOW HAS THAT TRANSITION BEEN AND WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME EARLY SUCCESSES / WINS?

» XPO Logistics spun off GXO

Logistics from the supply chain part of the original company. It came into existence on the 2nd of August 2021, becoming the largest peerto-peer contract logistics company globally. So that in itself is quite an achievement.

The formation process itself, and its execution has been a very purposeful and efficiently executed exercise.

What I mean by that is from the day we were listed on the NYC this would probably be one of the fastest executed spin-offs in the industry, all done within eight months, starting in January and culminating in December.

So a lot of work was involved in the splitting of systems, carving out our

teams from within the existing talent, and most importantly, all of this was done ensuring operational excellence for our customers.

This is a business in flight and I would say the biggest success was standing up and forming this organisation with absolutely no issues and having 100% commitment from our customers.

Q. WHAT TECHNOLOGY DO YOU THINK WILL BE THE WILD CARD FOR 2022?

» I wish we always had a crysta

ball, the technology trends that have evolved by the week, and by the month are fascinating.

I'd probably pick up on two or three things that'll be the game changers in our business, as the secret sauce to success is in the orchestration of different technologies to achieve value.

So for me, one will be a more purposeful use of data using advanced analytics in optimising supply chains. This is fundamental.

The second is the use of very specific laws about information technologies to drive productivity, gain efficiencies, and the last one I would say is the use of machine learning and AI to improve and optimise processes by driving automation.

Q. WHAT DOES SUSTAINABILITY MEAN TO YOU?

» Sustainability is becoming very

important in all aspects of life.

We see humanity generally being more and more conscious of living a sustainable lifestyle. supplychaindigital.com

19

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

At GXO Logistics we are committed to achieving very bold environmental targets. We are focused on reducing greehouse gas emissions by 30%, and by 2024 we aim tohave 80% of our global operations using LED lighting.

We are very committed to these targets, which drive our passion in being a sustainable organisation.

One thing has dominated as a piece of advice throughout my career is to never stop learning.

The way I see it, especially in the business I am in, things change very quickly and especially when it comes to technology, so one has to be always looking for the latest innovations possibilities.

Q. WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU HAVE RECEIVED SO FAR IN YOUR CAREER?

Q. WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

» I've been very fortunate to work

for various organisations, being led and mentored by amazing managers and leaders; and not just in the organisations I work with, but the ecosystem and the network I am connected with.

20

November 2021

» There are endless and ever evolving

possibilities that technology brings to better lives. That is what inspires me. I mentioned earlier about how technology keeps evolving, you never stop learning, but ultimately, the inspiration you take is from what technology can do in real life.

Technology doesn't really mean

anything until it solves problems and creates value. So for me the inspiration comes from this possibility.

Q. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE THINGS TO DO OUTSIDE OF WORK?

» We all need breaks away from work to recharge our batteries, and for me outside of work, there are two things which I do a lot. I like to do quite a bit of scuba diving. I also liked tinkering with things. My background is mechanical engineering. In particular, I tinker with motorcycles.

supplychaindigital.com

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Get contract management expertise that you can bank on Digitization of contract management enabled Raiffeisen Bank International to work seamlessly on contracts with both external and internal business partners. Rich insights and robust regulatory compliance solutions from SirionLabs helped the bank further extract maximum business benefits.

Learn more

Raiffeisen Bank: Smarter Contracts, Better Banking with SirionLabs Founded in 1886, Raiffeisen became a pioneering financial force in Austria before expanding its horizons beyond the country’s borders a century later into Central and Eastern Europe. Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) today has 45,000 employees servicing 17.7 million customers. By partnering with SirionLabs, the bank has rolled out a 36,000-contract system across 14 countries in 18 months.

Better Banking: SirionLabs will allow the bank to refocus on more complex, forward-looking challenges. “Now, we have all the documents we need in that system,” Janssen explains. “We have a single source of truth for all of our contractual information. We have all relevant metadata including the complete relevant regulatory information stored in the system and we have the flexibility to add metadata if it is required.”

Smarter Contracts with SirionLabs: As Edzard Janssen, RBI’s Chief Procurement Officer, explains it, regulation in banking is ever strengthening and bringing more complexity also in the areas relevant to outsourcing risk management. This meant RBI needed a way to store its contracts and prove to Austrian and European regulators that it met the irrequirements by a) having complete visibility of contractual landscape, b) identifying and managing outsourcing relationship, c) ensuring ease of reporting. This may seem straightforward, but it’s slightly more difficult than it sounds. European regulators, after all, don’t differentiate between internal and external suppliers when checking for banking risks and compliance.

In this regard, SirionLabs enabled RBI to track more than 1,000 internal suppliers in addition to its 36,000 external contracts. “In other words, SirionLabs provided RBI with a fully-fledged contract management system,” says Janssen.

“With their Smarter Contracting Platform, we can report to all authorities in real-time – on whichever dimensions they decide to track. SirionLabs’ system is compliant by default.”

So far, Janssen has been highly pleased with how the contract management platform has unfolded.

After all, SirionLabs excels at what it does. The company was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for CLM, Q1 2021, a Visionary in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant, and a Value Leader in the Spend Matters CLM Solution Map. But RBI and SirionLabs are good partners not only because they lead their respective industries but also because they’re aligned on final outcomes.

“There are many contract management systems out there. The technology itself is not a differentiator. What is important to us is how much flexibility we have to adapt to changes in our banking environment. And here, SirionLabs helps us to solve specific banking challenges, specially in regard to compliance,” says Janssen.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

24

November 2021

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

UMASS: Unifying Procurement to Drive Change WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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David Cho, Chief Procurement Officer and Managing Director, UMass

26

November 2021

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

CPO David Cho on transforming the University of Massachusetts’ procurement functions, and the ‘better, faster, cheaper’ philosophy to deliver value

T

1863

Year Founded

24,163

Employees including students

18,615

Employees excluding students

$3.4bn Revenue

he University of Massachusetts is a world-class public research university committed to advancing knowledge and transforming lives. Through its world-class educational programmes, groundbreaking research enterprise, and its impactful community service and industry engagement activities, UMass harnesses the revolutionary spirit of Massachusetts to deliver an unparalleled student experience.

With four comprehensive campuses, a top-ranked medical school and a missiondriven law school, each campus offers a dynamic educational experience in a uniquely Massachusetts location, from the coastal town of Dartmouth to the international hub of Boston, from the vibrant mill cities of Lowell and Worcester to the bucolic hills of Amherst. Though separated geographically, the campuses are unified through a central goal of preparing students to contribute to their communities, thrive in a new economy and change the world by providing a broad range of rigorous academic programs and opportunities.

However, not everything shared this central spirit. Until 18 months ago, the university’s procurement function was fragmented, with each campus responsible for its own procurement, accounts payable, sourcing, and contract management activities. That began changing in fall 2019, when David Cho, who was the CPO of BlackRock, was recruited through a national search to join UMass as the first-ever system-wide Chief Procurement Officer.

Hiring a CPO followed the recommendation supplychaindigital.com

27

WEI is an innovative, full service, customer centric IT solution provider.

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WEI: Value Added at Every Step of the Procurement Process Value-added reseller WEI strengthens its partnership with UMass and how it is empowering procurement organizations to unlock value beyond just price More than an IT solution supplier, WEI is a valuable problem solver and key supplier to the University of Massachusetts’ procurement organization. WEI has worked on several projects with the university’s newly appointed CPO David Cho. “I met David close to 18 months ago when he started,” says Greg LaBrie, VP of Technology Solutions, WEI. “The pandemic slowed that project down, but fortunately we were invited to participate in the UMass procurement process that we’re now involved in.”

Cho unified the university’s procurement function and processes under the Unified Procurement Services Team (UPST), and enacted a new strategy to work more closely with suppliers to extract more value - a philosophy wholly aligned with that of WEI. “When organizations that we work with open up and collaborate with us, that’s when we’re at our best,” says WEI COO Todd Grubbs. “Now

we’ve created a regular cadence to meet with the UPST, and have a vision going forward that is not a hunt-and-peck type of model, but has a cohesive strategy. Our pre-sales group and our architects will meet with them frequently to discuss price, lead times, strategy and vision all at the same time. And that’s how UMass is going to get the technology solutions they’re looking for.”

Together, WEI and the UMass procurement organization are unlocking value that goes beyond price, LaBrie adds: “UMass’ new vision, to standardize the procurement process, and standardize technology and procedures across the campuses, allows students and faculty to go from campus to campus and benefit from the same technology. That makes a big difference to their people, and it also provides all that data back to the procurement organization about the devices, people and how they’re leveraging the environment.”

The partnership between WEI and UMass has also been an emphatic win for promoting spend with diverse suppliers, says Grubbs.

“When UMass supports someone like us, who are a minority business enterprise, that helps us scale, that helps us hire from the minority community, and that helps us support minority suppliers ourselves,” he adds. “The effect of UMass making that commitment is exponential in the diversity community.”

Learn more

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

of a comprehensive shared services plan, a collaborative, system-wide, cross-functional project that was released in April 2019 and endorsed by the UMass Board of Trustees.

“The outcome was very similar for each of these separate functions at the campus level, but business was conducted in six different ways, with different operating procedures, and even the same technologies were configured differently,” Cho says. His first challenge was to unify these disparate organisations and harmonise a “patchwork” of policies, procedures and technologies into a standardised system for conducting business. The new centralised organisation driving procurement efficiency for UMass is known as the Unified Procurement Services Team (UPST).

“The premise of this was to create a shared services environment to support the campuses,” says Cho, whose newly unified team now manages close to $1 billion in annual spend and more than 17,000 active suppliers. “The good thing is we had the opportunity to deepen the

procurement competencies of the folks in these legacy organisations, who can now go deeper, instead of being generalists,” he says. The team reduced in scope from 70+ to 50 specialists, but “we built competency frameworks specific to the function, and we can plan training paths for each individual and role to build more domain expertise”.

With the mandate to create a functioning shared services organisation while still maintaining business-as-usual support for campus procurement activities, the UPST had their work cut out for them.

Unfortunately, within three months of becoming operational they had to face the COVID-19 pandemic and its ripple effects on the system. UMass experienced a $240m revenue shortfall. They shifted their focus to supporting UMass in meeting specific short-term objectives, such as health and safety goods and services, and remote learning equipment, that needed to be addressed instantly. But when the initial dust of the pandemic had settled, so too did Cho’s focus.

“Better, Faster, Cheaper” The procurement harmonisation project is underpinned by a philosophy to derive more value at every point, something Cho characterises as “Better, Faster, Cheaper.”

“It’s about ensuring that we have more strategic partnerships, and that we're getting the best value in reducing operational risks,” Cho says. “We’re faster by using catalogues, for example, and pre-negotiating a lot of framework agreements so that people can point, click, and buy, just like we do every day in our personal lives. To be cheaper, we’re using market intelligence benchmarks that come not only in the form of price points, but operating procedures, best practices, and really using that market intel to its full extent.”

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

“ We are now closer to being a datafirst organisation”

David Cho

DAVID CHO

TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: UMASS Cho is the Chief Procurement Officer for the University of Massachusetts, Unified Procurement Services Team (UPST) that provides strategic sourcing, contracts, supplier management, procurement operations, accounts payable, travel services, and customer services to the various campuses within the UMass system.

Before joining the UMass System, he was the former Global Head of Sourcing and Vendor Management at BlackRock where he led Sourcing and Vendor Management (SVM) for the World’s largest Asset Management firm. SVM covers all third-party sourcing for technology, HR, marketing, L&C, professional services, and corporate services.

Over Cho’s 25+ years of work experience, he has maintained COO roles for emerging alternative asset management companies, and also provided strategy and operations management consulting services to regional, national, and global companies during his stint at KPMG, Archstone Consulting, IBM, Deloitte Consulting and JP Morgan Chase.

Cho is a graduate of Boston College and completed the MIT Sloan Executive Program in Technology, Operations and Value Chain Management.

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

UMass: Unifying Procurement to Drive Change

“ We're capturing this low hanging fruit, but once we realise those recurring savings, we need to continue to optimise and extract costs and inefficiencies out of the system so that it's something that we can confidently harvest year over year” DAVID CHO

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

The results of Cho’s and the USPT’s efforts have been immediate. An initial target of achieving $16.5m in annual cost reduction was eclipsed within the first 18 months of operation. The UPST delivered $33.9m in savings through 100+ initiatives, within those 18 months, across each of the five UMass campuses.

“The key to that is data, and we are now much closer to being a data-first organisation,” Cho says. “We are utilising techniques that private equity firms might use for optimising their portfolio companies. We're factoring in methods that you would use for mergers and divestitures, and all these different tools and approaches.”

Cho expects to see twice the amount of financial benefits in the next year, but the ultimate goal of his initial five-year plan will not necessarily follow a linear path. “It doesn't mean we have to continue to double the output that we're getting from supplychaindigital.com

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

a cost reduction standpoint,” he says. “We're capturing this low hanging fruit, but once we realise those recurring savings, we need to continue to optimise and extract costs and inefficiencies out of the system so that it's something that we can confidently harvest year over year. We may not necessarily maintain that growth trajectory annually, but I am confident that it's something that we're going to be able to benefit from on an ongoing basis.”

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November 2021

Procurement with Purpose Beyond the mechanics of cost-saving, Cho and his team are driven by their contributions towards the UMass mission of providing affordable and accessible world-class education. This is procurement with purpose. “That’s why I think many of the leaders who joined us, particularly from the non-higher-education verticals, are so excited about this, because the mission really resonates,” Cho explains.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

MICHAEL E. DURKIN TITLE: DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PROCUREMENT Michael describes himself as a “dynamic procurement leader, educator, manager and coalition builder”.

These attributes have helped him establish and grow the capabilities of the UPST strategic sourcing team which handles, category management, strategic sourcing, contracts and supplier management needs.

He is passionate about adding value to people and processes through efficiency, effectiveness, and driving best business practices.

Prior to rejoining the UMass System as a part of the UPST Leadership Team, he held a variety of leadership positions with the University System of New Hampshire, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Merrimack College, Stonehill College and with the National Association of Educational Procurement (NAEP) of New England.

BRIAN L. GIRARD

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT OPERATIONS Brian is a leader known to have the proven ability to influence and manage stakeholders, innovate and drive process improvements throughout the supply chain to capture optimised cost benefits and budgetary control. Brian continues to leverage his over 25 years of experience in Procurement and Supply Chain within both the public and private sectors, to lead harmonisation of UMass procurement operational processes.

He currently oversees the Procurement Operations function which encompasses Accounts Payable, Bank Card (Procurement Card Operations), Travel and Expense, Process Improvement, and Procurement Compliance teams. With his team, he continues to focus on streamlining internal business practices to ensure operational process efficiency and effectiveness.

AMANDA ONWUKA TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SERVICE & QUALITY Amanda’s focus is to ensure that UPST continues to put its best foot forward as it progresses in its maturity journey as the harmonised procurement services centre for the University of Massachusetts system.

Within her UPST portfolio are the Customer Services, Procurement Technology, Data Analytics, and Training & Communications teams. They support the operationalisation of the harmonised processes while ensuring resources are available to support enhanced change and communications management.

Prior to joining UMass system, Amanda worked as a management consultant with KPMG leading and providing strategy and business transformation services to global and national companies.

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

“ We are utilising techniques that private equity firms might use for optimising their portfolio companies” DAVID CHO

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

Technology adoption and an overarching digital transformation have been crucial to UPST’s results. The organisation leverages tools like Jaggaer for daily procurement activities, Salesforce for case management,

and Tableau for business intelligence, among others. But in Cho’s mind, technology alone will only get you so far.

More important is to prioritise, harmonise, and modernise policies and targets, upgrade procedures and processes to align with the policies, and ensure the team has the core competencies to operate within them.

“When you have all those pieces together, the rollout of technology enablement becomes much more elegant, and it gets you to the outcomes and the output that you're looking for,” Cho says, pointing to ensuring applications are uniform across both desktop and mobile devices to enable flexible work, as an example. “The more important thing is being able to leverage your suppliers’ technologies, as well. We can't be

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

“ The good thing is we had the opportunity to deepen the procurement competencies of the folks in these legacy organisations, who can now go deeper, instead of being generalists” DAVID CHO

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

everything to everyone. It’s not just about building the catalogue, for instance, but how do we leverage their platform? Some of our partners’ data on the things we buy is better than the data we have in-house. So we can leverage that kind of intelligence.”

The Power of Partnerships A good example, Cho says, is the partnership with Huron, with which UMass’ investment has risen over the past 18 months. “They've been terrific in looking at where we are today and where we want to be tomorrow,” Cho says. “What’s really vital is that it's not just what they know, it's how they deploy. It's how the team we work with at Huron take in that input from us and understand the particular outcomes that we're looking for.

To be able to factor in change management, very gracefully as part of the underlying sense of processes and services that they're delivering, has been tremendous.”

Another key supplier, SupplyLogic, provides “intelligence that we can't build,” Cho says, which is helping the organisation towards its supplier diversity objectives.

Taking print services as an example, the UPST can leverage SupplyLogic’s platform to discover veteran-owned suppliers, supplychaindigital.com

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

CONGRATULATIONS David Cho & The UMASS Procurement Team Thank you for your business over the last 35 years!

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UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

“ We're also incorporating inclusion and equity into all of our competitive processes” DAVID CHO

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

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minority-owned businesses, womanowned businesses, and other diverse partners in the local community. “This is really valuable to us,” Cho says. “That's an area where we can leverage our partners’ technologies to get that visibility, and to make those kinds of important decisions.”

Enhancing the diversity of suppliers is a key objective of the University of Massachusetts, and by extension the UPST, and although the central procurement organisation is barely 18 months old, Cho is happy with the progress it’s already made.

The university’s spending with diverse suppliers is “trending in the right direction,”

LISA A. CALISE TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADMINISTRATION & FINANCE AND TREASURER

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: UMASS Lisa A. Calise is the Senior Vice President for Administration & Finance and Treasurer for the University of Massachusetts. She has been with UMass since February 2017. In her role, Lisa oversees the University’s financial and operational departments including Treasury, Insurance and Operations, Budget and Planning, Enterprise Risk Management, Human Resources, Controller’s Office and the University-wide Unified Procurement Services Team (UPST).

Lisa was most recently the Chief Financial Officer at Watertown-based Perkins School for the Blind, focusing on global services and education for those living with blindness and deaf blindness.

Before joining Perkins in 2010, Lisa served the City of Boston for over a decade, most recently as the Director of Administration

with both a short and long-term plan to build a more robust diverse supplier base.

“We're also incorporating inclusion and equity into all of our competitive processes,” Cho adds. “That’s not something that was mandated by any government programme.

We have imposed those requirements on ourselves to build accountability. We're also pushing strategic providers that act as primes to provide more visibility into their second-tier level spend, so that as dollars flow to them, they also make their way to diverse suppliers. That is very impactful.”

The UPST has performed above expectations throughout its first 18 months,

and Finance, and previously as Chief Financial Officer and CollectorTreasurer and Budget Director, implementing efficiency improvements and managing the City’s finances through challenging economic times.

Prior to coming to Boston, Lisa served in the White House Office of Management and Budget as a budget examiner.

A Massachusetts native, Lisa obtained her B.A. from Boston College and a Master's Degree in Public Management from the University of Maryland. She recently served as a member of both the MBTA Finance and Management Control Board and MassDOT Board.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

“ We're also incorporating inclusion and equity into all of our competitive processes” DAVID CHO

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, UMASS

and as it matures further, Cho is confident that procurement will provide further savings, and reroute vital value and resources into the university’s educational programs.

But Cho is quick to highlight that the work of UPST, its future ambitions, and its ability to deliver transformational results is a holistic effort, achieved through collaboration with various UMass stakeholders.

“Being able to promote this level of change in coordination with the campuses couldn’t have been done without leadership sponsorship,” Cho says. “We've been 44

November 2021

empowered. We have UMass President Marty Meehan's backing, the support of all the campus chancellors, the campus Administration & Finance (A&F) Vice Chancellors and the UMass Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance (CFO) and Treasurer, Lisa Calise.”

“I’m so proud of all that we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time, and under such challenging and unprecedented circumstances,” says Calise.

“The collaborative approach between the system and campuses, especially between

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

the A&F leadership, has been paradigmshifting for the university, and enabled us to leverage the university’s buying power to benefit the campuses. Our team – driven by exceptional leaders like David – will continue to experiment, innovate and push the organisation to realise every efficiency and ensure that we are delivering on our mission in the most competitive manner possible.”

According to Cho, the UMass campus leaders are “encouraging us to do more and continue to move the agenda forward. With 75,000 students and

24,000 employees, UMass is the largest university and third-largest employer in the state of Massachusetts. So there are many priorities, and being able to have that one vision that leadership endorses, is just tremendous. What really makes this incredibly powerful is that egos are checked at the door and it's all about just doing the right thing.”

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PROCUREMENT

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PROCUREMENT

EFFECTIVE SRM: COMMUNICATION, INNOVATION AND VALUE Procurement professionals must move beyond one-way transactional sourcing to deliver the necessary value to emerge stronger from unprecedented disruption WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS

T

here is a natural knee-jerk reaction to undervalue the importance of soft skills in technical fields like procurement and supply chain management. It’s an understandable position to take: why prioritise communication or the ability to build relationships when in practice contracts are often contingent upon cost, balance sheets and KPIs? But the days of one-way, transactional supplier relationships are numbered.

Modern, successful procurement functions live or die by the strengths of their relationships, both with internal stakeholders and, most importantly, their ecosystem of external suppliers. Organisations have been made actually aware of that fact during the COVID-19 pandemic, when shortages, bottlenecks and fluctuating prices have become business as usual.

“If the last year has taught us anything, it is the need to manage disruptions and build resilience with agility across our supply

chains,” says Ambeshwar Nath, VP & Regional Head, Consumer, Retail & Logistics – Europe, Infosys. “This cannot be done alone considering the myriad of suppliers across the value chain that we need to work with in order to deliver goods to their doorsteps.”

Perhaps more than any other supply chain function, Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) has become a core competency in ensuring procurement organisations remain effective. Duncan Brock, Group Director, Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS), believes it is now more important than ever that organisations build strong relationships with suppliers, not only to ensure they fulfil contractual obligations, but to understand and support them through disruption.

“If your suppliers fail, you fail, it’s as simple as that,” says Brock. “As businesses found during the pandemic, finding alternative sources for goods that failed to show up wasn’t easy. If you’re sourcing halfway across the world and expect to find sources closer to home, that is not always possible.”

What is Effective SRM in Procurement?

Effective SRM must follow four key principles: effective communication, fairness, transparency and respect, says Nath. Ultimately, it must be equitable and two-way.

“An effective supplier relationship management is one that is bi-directional and supplychaindigital.com

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“ If your suppliers fail, you fail, it’s as simple as that” DUNCAN BROCK

GROUP DIRECTOR, CIPS

mutually beneficial to both parties, where the focus goes beyond traditional purchasing arrangements and extends to driving innovation and collaboration,” says Nath. “A good supplier relationship is a partnership that needs to be nurtured and invested in – for long-term benefits. It is managed through a two-way balanced scorecard where you give feedback to your partners but are also open to receiving feedback on what you can do better.”

For Brock, “it’s about open, transparent and honest communications and a willingness to collaborate in good times and bad. Having regular catch-ups ensures suppliers can share any difficulties they are having which could impact on you further down the line”.

Sometimes, this is as simple as renegotiating payment terms. During the pandemic, thousands of SMEs went under as cash flow became tight and supply chains halted. “Some businesses saw the writing on the wall for their essential suppliers last year and paid them earlier to prevent any issues during these disruptive times,” Brock says.

And it is those organisations that supported their suppliers who will come out stronger as the global economy reopens in earnest. With no end to disruption in sight, suppliers have more bargaining power than

ever before. “During disruptive times, a supplier can hold just as much power if the one essential component they are supplying but not delivering holds up your production line,” Brock explains. “The times of ‘beating down the supplier’ is gone, not just because it’s an unethical approach anyway, but because the next disruption is just around the corner.”

Digitalisation and Supply Chain Management Digitalisation of procurement has been revolutionary for SRM. Platform technologies make the value chain more transparent, while robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation further free up procurement professionals to engage with suppliers and drive further value.

Jaggaer is a leading provider of procurement technology, offering a suite of solutions that bridge the gap between organisations and their supplier ecosystem. Jim Bureau, Jaggaer’s CEO, says that leveraging this type of technology “drives further efficiencies”.

“Procurement can build stronger relationships with suppliers instead of relying on spreadsheets, phone calls and other outdated communications methods that are error-prone and inhibit agility and innovation,” he says.

PROCUREMENT

“ Embedded intelligence helps people to predict and mitigate risk, share skills and knowledge, and collaborate better with suppliers and stakeholders” JIM BUREAU CEO, JAGGAER

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Bureau signals a rise in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), predictive analytics, and natural language processing (NLP), which will further connect suppliers and help procurement professionals manage and develop their partnerships.

“This embedded intelligence helps people to predict and mitigate risk, share skills and knowledge, and collaborate better with suppliers and stakeholders,” he says.

Other emerging technologies, including blockchain, will open up further opportunities. Some of the world’s largest organisations are already piloting the technology. “As an example, Walmart Canada has already begun using blockchain with the logistics companies that transport its goods,” says Nath. “A shared blockchain makes it possible to synchronise logistics data, track shipments and automate

PROCUREMENT

JIM BUREAU TITLE: CEO, JAGGAER Bureau leads the company’s strategic vision and organisational culture. His main goal is to transcend the customer experience, delivering intuitive and intelligent procurement and spend management solutions that allow customers to achieve their objectives, from improved financial performance to better supplier diversity and sustainability.

AMBESHWAR NATH TITLE: VP & REGIONAL HEAD, CONSUMER, RETAIL & LOGISTICS – EUROPE, INFOSYS

payments without requiring significant changes to the logistics companies’ legacy technology systems.”

The Value of Proactive SRM Beyond risk mitigation and the near-term navigation of global shortages, SRM must be seen as an opportunity to drive innovation, work collaboratively towards critical ESG targets, and in the era of building back better, support and strengthen the entire value chain.

“There are benefits for both sides,” says Brock. “Buyers can learn from their suppliers and consider innovative approaches - and this also broadens their outlook in their particular market. Suppliers can benefit through support from their customer when times are difficult, especially if it’s a David and Goliath situation, with a large corporate working with a small business.”

Nath is an avid technologist and supply chain expert who is excited by the adoption of new technologies and digital transformation across supply chains. Within Infosys, he helps senior business leaders transform their value chain through the latest process innovations and digital capabilities, delivering practical, strategy-driven value that optimises and reinvents the entire supply chain ecosystem.

DUNCAN BROCK TITLE: GROUP DIRECTOR, CIPS As Group Director at CIPS, Brock heads up the CIPS for business team, supporting corporates in a range of services to make improvements to their teams and operations in procurement and supply. CIPS exists for the public good and is a non-profit, supporting buyers and professionals at all levels and across many roles.

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PROCUREMENT

Five Key Benefits of Effective SRM Duncan Brock, Group Director, CIPS says effective SRM provides: • Cost efficiencies: By working closely together, cost forecasts are more accurate and there can be honest decisions around how to improve on efficiencies in production and procurement processes – on both sides.

• Technological advances: Suppliers and buyers can advise each other on the latest developments in their sector. A sharing of ideas can result in new markets both businesses can benefit from.

• Customer of choice: As the pandemic has shown us, sometimes the customers of choice ie. those with a close mutuallybeneficial working relationship, managed to receive their supplies where other customers further down the list did not.

• Reduce risk: By understanding your suppliers and all the tiers down the supply chain, there are fewer risks of fraud or modern slavery sometimes hidden in the depths of multiple supplier layers.

• Sustainability: Any ethical initiatives such as sustainability programmes can be shared with suppliers and they can be encouraged to develop their own actions.

The good management of supply chains can contribute a great deal in reducing waste and carbon emissions so offering support to suppliers is a value buyers can bring to the debate.

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November 2021

PROCUREMENT

“ An effective supplier relationship management is one that is bi-directional and mutually beneficial to both parties” AMBESHWAR NATH

VP & REGIONAL HEAD, CONSUMER, RETAIL & LOGISTICS – EUROPE, INFOSYS

Nath says that business often “underestimate the power” of their vendors, and their abilities the help an organisation.

“Toyota is one of the pioneers in driving collaboration between vendors,” he adds.

"They have maintained close relationships with their key suppliers for over decades reaping significant benefits,” he says.

“Establishing a long-term culture with topto-top, regular ,two-way communication has ensured that Toyota has reaped continuous benefits on both cost-savings and product innovations.”

“A healthy relationship with suppliers also has an added advantage that it lets you increase the value of your business,” Nath adds. “The better the bond between you and your supplier, the more benefits, preferential pricing and dedicated treatment you can get from them. This allows the supply chain of your business to become more efficient, cost effective and dynamic.” supplychaindigital.com

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GO - AHEAD

THE JOURNEY TO

SUSTAINABLE

TRANSPORT

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COMPANY NAME

WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS

PRODUCED BY: TOM LIVERMORE

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GO - AHEAD

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GO - AHEAD

Go-Ahead Group is leveraging the power of its procurement function to spearhead a new sustainable future for passenger transport

G

o-Ahead’s passenger transport services play a vital role in connecting communities via road and rail. It is the largest bus operator in London and its regional bus services account for 11% of the wider UK market. It operates the busiest rail franchise in the UK – GTR – as well as holding international rail contracts in Norway and Germany.

But Go-Ahead’s commitments extend far beyond delivering efficient, safe and affordable public transport. Sustainability has risen to the top of the agenda. In 2019 the group released its Sustainable Procurement Charter, a list of measures to make impactful contributions to climate change and to deliver greater value to all of its stakeholders.

“That charter was our first deep dive into the sustainability agenda,” says Glyn Watts, Group Head of Procurement at Go-Ahead.

“We recognised that, whilst we thought we were good at sustainability in the past, we actually weren’t that mature in our approach.”

Despite the added pressures and challenges brought on by the COVID19 pandemic, Go-Ahead’s ambitions in sustainability and diversity have developed further in the intervening two years, with a target to be a net zero business by 2045.

“Since the sustainability charter we have released the climate change strategy, which directs us in where we are heading as a business,” Watts says. “And this has been followed more recently by our SME strategy.” supplychaindigital.com

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GO - AHEAD

The Journey to Sustainable Transport

Though a group-wide effort, the procurement function is a key enabler in these initiatives. Take, for instance, Go-Ahead’s most prominent asset: vehicles.

In one regional transport service, the function procured a new type of bus with a specialised filter that cleans the air as it drives around the city. The company is in discussions for what has the potential to be the largest hydrogen bus order in the UK. These are the nascent stages of an overhaul of the auxiliary fleet as it moves towards sustainable fuels or electrification, and a vital step for the transport operator. However, procurement’s role goes beyond the directly passenger-facing facets of the business.

“Every new tender is an opportunity to reconsider how we do that business,” says Watts. "So even the routine and the mundane, we’ll ask if there is a new way of doing it, or whether we even need that requirement anymore. Our ethos is to invite 58

November 2021

market entrants in for a discussion before we run a tender. It’s so important to do early market engagement, discover who else is out there, who's doing things differently, who’s innovative and, ultimately, who could bring some value to our operation.”

The results have been surprising but enormously impactful. The first tender Go-Ahead ran under the new sustainability charter was for new ticket vending machines for one of its rail operations. Whilst the tender was ultimately cancelled due to a change in circumstances, it was worth noting that the supplier that came out on top commercially required the largest initial outlay and some of the more expensive service costs, which seems counterintuitive. But this assessment belied the long-term value.

“If we'd run that tender several years ago, the supplier with the lowest up front and long-term service cost would have won the commercial section,” Watts says. "However,

GO - AHEAD

GLYN WATTS TITLE: GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT INDUSTRY: TRANSPORTATION LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Glyn Watts leads Go-Ahead’s procurement function. Glyn developed and implemented the supply chain charter and SME strategy.

He has brought a value driven and commercial approach to procurement, ensuring the business objectives are clearly understood and processes designed to meet them.

Prior to Go-Ahead, Glyn held senior commercial positions within the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence. He led the Southeastern rail franchise procurement and was the lead negotiator for on-train wi-fi. At the MoD, he led large procurements for military equipment and services.

Glyn holds MCIPs, a Business Degree from Nottingham Trent University and a post Graduate Diploma in Acquisition from Cranfield University.

“ Every new tender is an opportunity to reconsider how we do that business” GLYN WATTS

this time around we took into account energy consumption, and actually the supplier with the highest initial outlay but the lowest energy costs nudged ahead as a result of their energy efficiency. It is really great when that happens.

It shows suppliers the value of investing in energy efficiency and demonstrates the value procurement can have in understanding the true financial and environmental cost of a product or service.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT THE GO-AHEAD GROUP

GO - AHEAD

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APCOA Urban Hubs provides new opportunities to commercialise under-utilised parking spaces

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GO - AHEAD

It is a marriage of both commercial and sustainable capability - and a positive trend illustrating how Go-Ahead is rethinking its relationships with suppliers to deliver greater value. A further example Watts highlights is APCOA Parking, a key supplier for Go-Ahead’s car parking provisions. Watts places the annual income from parking at between £40-50m, a substantial contract by any measure. But the use of car parks has changed. More passengers cycle as part of their commute, they require lockers, or they may benefit from a car washing service. In addition, the company wanted to think of ways to incentivise electric or hybrid vehicles through the charging structure over more polluting alternatives.

“ The supplier with the highest initial outlay but the lowest energy costs nudged ahead as a result of their energy efficiency” GLYN WATTS

GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT THE GO-AHEAD GROUP supplychaindigital.com

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GO - AHEAD

“ If we're going to develop for the future of transport, we need to be looking at innovative step-change technologies” GLYN WATTS

GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT THE GO-AHEAD GROUP

“APCOA was bristling with these sorts of ideas, and ways to make these spaces more sustainable. And with that in mind, we were no longer looking for a good debt collection company, or even a supplier primarily focused on parking,” Watts says. “The result is we now have a partner in APCOA with which we can develop those ideas over a number of years.

They were successful largely because of the amount of ideas they had, and how well they can develop those, particularly in the sustainability space where they have strong partners in electrical vehicle charging.”

This mindset to balance innovation and cost has been codified in Go-Ahead’s recently published SME Strategy. With a roadmap of tenders published well in advance, Watts aims to give resourcelimited SMEs the time they need to prepare and meet Go-Ahead’s requirements, rather than being muscled out by market leading competitors that have the ability to throw resources at an issue at short notice.

“Secondly, and probably more importantly, we're identifying SME-spendonly categories,” Watts says. “These are 62

November 2021

smaller categories of spend where we may currently use a big provider, but if there's a quality market there for SMEs, we're going to commit 100% of the time to using SMEs. As long as the safety risks are understood, we’re going to get the quality we need, and there are no other issues, we're going to have a blanket policy that they have to be SMEs. There’s still work to do there, but we think it could have a big impact.”

Beyond Watts’ 17-strong centralised procurement team, a further 30 procurement professionals operate from

GO - AHEAD

Go-Ahead’s operating companies. Across the whole business Watts and his teams manages over 3,500 suppliers, covering nearly £2bn in annual spend.

This is not “spend for the sake of it”, however, says Watts. “We're not just doing it for reputation; we strongly believe it supports our corporate strategy. If we're going to develop for the future of transport, we need to be looking at innovative stepchange technologies, which often come out of left field and sometimes not from our industry.”

Watts admits that these ambitions require dedication and hard work. Transformation at this scale is difficult, but Watts says the support from stakeholders is making the process a success.

“I think everyone enjoys having an impact beyond cost and time,” adds Watts. "They are essential to the business of course, but it’s rewarding for procurement professionals and our stakeholders to think about other factors and drive positive change through elevating our sustainability priorities in the procurement process.” supplychaindigital.com

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GO - AHEAD

“ It’s so important to do early market engagement, discover who else is out there, who's doing things differently, who’s innovative” GLYN WATTS

GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT THE GO-AHEAD GROUP

Go-Ahead has come a long way in just a short period of time, but Watts believes the rate of change will accelerate even faster in the coming 12 to 18 months.

“I like to think we would be much further along the road in our climate change strategy.

One of the key pillars there is waste reduction and recycling targets. We’re currently running trials at Brighton Station and bus depots to find out the best way to achieve 90%+ recycling on a small scale, and then how to expand in a way that is commercially viable.

“I'd also like to think we will be pulling more innovation from our supply chain. We're running a bus supply chain challenge across all of our existing suppliers. We’re asking, ‘What can you do for us?’ It could be on cost operations. It could be customer experience.

It could be to do with the environment and climate change. I like to think that asking these questions will provide us with some strong results, but at the very least put our suppliers on notice that we are listening and we have an appetite for experimentation and change.”

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EVENT REVIEW

Speaker: Ninian Wilson, Vodafone Procurement Company

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BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP:

Hosting Procurement & Supply Chain

LIVE

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

A new venture for BizClik Media Group, the Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE show brings global Procurement leaders together for a hybrid digital event

F

ollowing one of the most difficult periods the world has encountered, with heightened health risks and disruption to our supply chains and technologies, many lessons have been learnt during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the effects remain visible today, such as further shortages of labour, a global shortage of food supply, and risks to businesses that make a tremendous difference to the daily lives of consumers around the world.

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EVENT REVIEW

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EVENT PREVIEW

“ Having been part of the NHS vaccine rollout, it’s been fantastic to see what’s been enabled and opened up” JOHN CALDER

PARTNER, BARINGA PARTNERS

Throughout the pandemic, we saw many supply chain organisations come together to support those in need of precious resources, personal protective equipment and medical equipment, to cope with the dramatic increase in hospitalisations over the most traumatic period of the outbreak. The pandemic also put procurement in the spotlight as a fundamental function of the supply chain. But each company had its role to play, whether it involved investment in medical care and providing aid or physically delivering the goods—as they were doing so previously.

Only now that restrictions ease across most countries can we see the long-lasting effects of Covid-19.

It’s time for businesses to prepare for inevitable changes. Technology has played a significant role in saving lives over the past

couple of years and will continue to do so.

With the digital era now upon us, it’s imperative for businesses to adopt a technological change to manage supplier relationships, mitigate risks of cyber attack, encourage seamless and lucrative procurement processes, and ensure that commerce continues in a sustainable manner.

DAY ONE Communications, artificial intelligence and women in technology Many of the discussions on day one of Procurement & Supply Chain Live were centred around sustainability, improving ESG visibility and managing carbon emissions in Scopes one, two and three, while developing more efficient procurement practices. supplychaindigital.com

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In Association With:

SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

2022

February 23rd-24th

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EVENT PREVIEW

“ It’s been a great audience and there have been some really fantastic speakers” ROBERT COPELAND CPO, G4S

Accelerating the digital journey As the Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Procurement Company, Ninian Wilson has spent more than 12 years with the group, working in procurement. Wilson explained how Vodafone has benefitted from digitisation to improve the contractual process and has sparked visibility across the business. Vodafone has also noticed the importance of bringing sustainability indicators into procurement processes.

“If digitisation is the trend of our times, the second one is around sustainability. In the second half of last, we announced that we would be incorporating sustainability targets into all our tender options. Our sustainability comes under three pillars, and those are digitising society, inclusion, and the planet.

If you look at a tender document from Vodafone, if it’s a high risk of health safety, it’s 10% of the tender weighting, around inclusion it’s 5% and around the planet, it’s 5%. So, around 20% of the weighting is around sustainability.”

Driving procurement change with ESG investment Robert Copeland talks about the six areas in which he has worked to improve procurement, highlighting that organisations are capable of managing ESG practices for a minute percentage of their budgets—with G4S spending around 0.001% of its procurement budget on solutions for ESG transparency. Also, on the subject of sustainability, Copeland explains the reason behind the company’s widespread support of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) as the firm takes pride in its reliability and innovative capabilities.“SMEs are fantastic incubators of innovation. They’re agile, they’re creative,” says Copeland.

“Oftentimes they are lacking funding.

But, the majority of companies we have signed up with are SMEs. They are also far more willing to work with us, far more willing to adapt and modify the systems and the tools that become relevant to us.” supplychaindigital.com

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EVENT REVIEW

“ The interaction, the networking, the relationships you can build has been phenomenal. And through Test and Trace we can carry on doing more of this” JACQUI ROCK

CCO, UK GOVERNMENT

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Heightened work-fromhome procurement risks One of the major digital risks that procurement leaders have encountered over the past 18 months is cybersecurity.

Particularly, the security of devices during the pandemic as the majority of businesses were forced to adapt to remote working. Charlotte DeBrandt, Global Head of Procurement for Amazon, provided valuable insights into potential criminal entry points, which became more exposed as workforces were dispersed.

“It has opened up doors. Everyone had to go digital over a short amount of time and not many organisations were prepared. Not many even had a risk organisation within their companies and not many even knew what to do or how to go about, especially if they didn’t have the budget available. I think it has opened up a lot of doors for criminals to enter, to try and get data in an illegal way. It has increased the creativity of criminals,” DeBrandt says.

DAY TWO Technology and AI applications The second day of Procurement & Supply Chain Live was centred around technology and the implications of using artificial intelligence and machine learning in procurement. David Loseby, Chief Procurement Officer at Barkers held a talk about the fascinating topic of cognitive diversity, which is the inclusion of various working individuals who have varying styles of observation and problem-solving. Loseby illustrated that cognitive diversity within a procurement organisation is capable of reducing risk by 30% and providing 20% more innovation within teams. supplychaindigital.com

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EVENT REVIEW

“ It’s amazing. I’ve met some quite influential people in procurement, I’ve networked with them, and it’s really good to be able to share that knowledge within the industry” KUDA KADUNGURE

HEAD OF PROCUREMENT - WORKS CONSULTANT, UK PARLIAMENT

Procurement decisions through digital ecosystems Digital ecosystems can be found in most areas of business, as well as our daily lives, but there are still companies that remain very much in the manual era of working. Carl Thompson, Senior Source to Pay Presales Consultant at Medius—a sponsor of the event, brought this up as an important area of innovation, highlighting some of the key stages of digital transformation, where things can go wrong, and how these lessons can be applied to procurement and supply chain.

Before the session, Thompson spoke about the importance of face-to-face events and how in-person networking has been very beneficial. “I’ve only recently just started 74

November 2021

Global Disruption Panel: David Wylie (Thames Water), Ruji Mahmud (Johnson Matthey), Sheldon Mydat (Suppeco)

going to see clients on-site and have faceto-face meetings. You don’t realise until it’s gone what benefit that has,” says Thompson.

“The level of engagement that you get when you see people’s eyes and responses, the body language signals that people give you, that you just miss or don’t see because people switch their cameras off or they go on mute. All those little audio queues you just miss. So for me, this is brilliant and so is going back to face-to-face.”

Global Disruption Panel On the agenda for the Global Disruption Panel was a high-level discussion about risk and resilience in the supply chain industry.

Previous speakers, David Wylie, Chief

Procurement Officer at Thames Water, and Ruji Mahmud, Head of Procurement at Johnson Matthey, joined Scott Birch on stage, along with Sheldon Mydat, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Suppeco. The talk took a deep dive into the risks within the supply chain, the issues that businesses are currently faced with, and how these translate down the value chain.

To find out how to register for the Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE recording and watch the complete three-day event on-demand, go to www.supplychaindigital.com.

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Microsoft Israel:

GLOBAL ACTION, LOCAL RESULTS

WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Moving procurement beyond a bureaucratic function delivers true value, says Eyal Nuhamovici, Sr. Procurement Engagement Manager, Microsoft in Israel

H

armony may not be the first word that springs to mind when describing the procurement organisation of a company employing hundreds of thousands of people and operating globally. With businesses of such scale and breadth, procurement leaders often face challenges like siloed information, global versus local objectives, and a variety of other issues to overcome.

But Eyal Nuhamovici says Microsoft is different. As the Israel Procurement Engagement Manager at Microsoft, his tasks range from hyper-local to global, and often somewhere in between.

“Even though our procurement organisation is spread out across the entire globe, we act as a harmonious team,” he says. “We complement each other.”

Like many in procurement, Nuhamovici fell somewhat accidentally into his career.

Fresh from military service, a mandatory first step into adulthood and independence for Israeli citizens, he took a buying position at a local SME. But it wasn’t long before Nuhamovici says he began to understand exactly what procurement was, and the impact of being able to “connect the dots' ' between departments to help them further their goals.

“Procurement sees the organisation through a very wide angle, across HR, finance, the legal team, any manufacturing or development departments,” he says.

“And when you begin to connect the dots

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“ Even though our procurement organization is spread out across the entire globe, we act as a harmonious team” EYAL NUHAMOVICI

SR. PROCUREMENT ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ISRAEL

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between departments, that’s when you can think about how to leverage procurement to bring the company to a better position.”

This perspective is echoed in the procurement culture at Microsoft. Even in a company this large, Nuhamovici says he is able to make a difference. At the fundamental level, procurement of major categories, such as software, are centralised through Microsoft’s Redmond campus and headquarters in the USA. On the other hand, sourcing local development tools, local communications

MICROSOFT

EYAL NUHAMOVICI TITLE: SR. PROCUREMENT ENGAGEMENT MANAGER

contracts and other supporting services are handled by regional procurement experts on the ground. But even here, Nuhamovici says, there is always an opportunity to benefit from global insights.

“If we are buying something for the company locally, why not benefit from the RFP and the activities we are doing to derive some more value for the wider company and the employees? You should always strive to secure global contracts, and then complement or supplement those with local services. It is a very balanced situation where

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: MICROSOFT ISRAEL Experienced procurement manager with vast experience from different organisations - large and small, local and global, large scope budgets and deals, team and matrix management.

A proactive and creative person, with excellent negotiation skills, very organised and with high work ethics.

Broad commercial perspective that exceeds the area in charge of, hence, bring managerial, economic, commercial and procedural advantages to the company.

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Microsoft in Israel: Global action, local results

I can be part of the activities that are led by headquarters’ procurement managers, while they might join and aid me in my activities.”

To reconcile this approach to local and global sourcing, Microsoft employs the latest digital tools - unsurprising given the company’s leading position in both enterprise and consumer technology.

“There is a huge emphasis on the topic of digital transformation in procurement at Microsoft, because we really understand the importance of innovation. We use our own technology and approach everything with a growth mindset, considering how to do things better, how to improve the dayto-day.”

The earliest objective of Microsoft procurement’s digitalisation journey was to simplify and consolidate buying channels and promote procurement as a seamless experience for stakeholders.

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“The innovation comes in technology, by leveraging systems, but it also has to come from new ideas” EYAL NUHAMOVICI

SR. PROCUREMENT ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ISRAEL supplychaindigital.com

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Nuhamovici recognises that procurement is often considered as a function that people must engage with, not want to engage with, and we strive to change that.

“So we minimise the pain points for shareholders, reduce the amount of buying channels and always think about how to do more with less. It’s about getting to the core of what is really needed. You also want them to spend less time on technical actions; even simple things like streamlining the process of entering a purchase order can improve the perspective of procurement in our stakeholders’ eyes.

“They just want to get the work done.

So by supporting them with the right tools, we’re accomplishing a lot. We can empower employees to do more by themselves, optimising the process for them, and fixing areas where they may encounter challenges or make mistakes.

That’s where engagement is so important.”

Better digitalisation both yields and requires more data. In analysing and leveraging that data, Nuhamovici sees the future of procurement moving from a costsaving, streamlining function into a position of predictive and anticipatory power: “To understand, according to what they did already, what they will need in the future.”

But there are issues with becoming too reliant on the facts and figures directly in front of you.

“If the information or data exists, it’s because something’s already been done, and procurement is always looking ahead at what should be done next, because otherwise there is no real impact,” Nuhamovici says. "Planning ahead is definitely one of the most important things that I spend a lot of time on, whether that’s 84

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MICROSOFT

HALO BENEFITS FOR SUPPLIERS Monetary gain isn’t the only benefit of working with a market-leader, says Nuhamovici. Suppliers stand to learn and improve their business in the long-term by working in true partnership with Microsoft.

“One of the biggest benefits suppliers gain by working with us is learning from the Microsoft culture,” says Nuhamovici. “It can help businesses to modify the way that they think about a certain product or service, and then they can provide a better and improved service, not only to us, but in the wider market.

“We really believe that we're adding an additional layer. We’re not changing every business fundamentally, of course, but if we add just one additional layer in the way that things are being done, we can help improve the way that certain businesses operate.

When you do business with Microsoft, you can learn from us. We always come with a very innovative way of solving a certain need, and when we achieve that, it can be very important for the market - not just for ourselves.”

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MICROSOFT

understanding opportunities, looking for new directions, hearing from other peers within the organisation or externally, I’m looking around, and ahead, all the time.

“One thing that I think that is underestimated, and not a lot of people are looking at, is trends,” he adds. “They tell you a lot about what is, what was, and what the thoughts of people are at each step. It's like personalising the data, because otherwise data is just data. Looking at a trend, you can now understand what happened with a certain supplier, a certain market, a certain category, or a certain country. I'm really a believer that trends can bring you important insights about the business.

“ When you begin to connect the dots between departments, that’s when you can think about how to leverage procurement to bring the company to a better position” EYAL NUHAMOVICI

SR. PROCUREMENT ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ISRAEL

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“You should always strive to secure global contracts, and then complement or supplement those with local services” EYAL NUHAMOVICI

SR. PROCUREMENT ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, MICROSOFT ISRAEL

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“To give you an example, when it comes to engaging with a stakeholder, if you come informed by a trend, you understand their previous actions, in that way, understand what might be interesting for them in the future. If they have $100 and our procurement position can help save them $20, for example, that’s extra money that can be spent on additional services or saved. Those sorts of insights lead to more commercial value than simply handing back some money.”

This, Nuhamovici says, will be the biggest challenge for procurement in the years ahead, not just for Microsoft, but in the sector at large. “Innovation comes in technology, by leveraging systems, but it also has to come from new ideas,” Nuhamovici says.

“That comes from partnerships and pooling those ideas to pull the market ahead,” he says. “Once you sign an innovative contract with a supplier, it becomes the common practice for the supplier because they learned how to do it. Now they can copy or adjust this idea with future contracts in the market. This is a good example of how you eventually lead and develop procurement to be better positioned and create a larger impact not only on the company you work with, but on other markets as well.

“It's a challenge, and that’s a good thing, because when you're being challenged, that is how you improve your ideas. If everything goes smoothly, you never improve, and that to me is quite a beautiful thing.”

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TOP 10 TEN

POST COVID

EVENTS

Discover our list of 10 top supply chain events post covid 90

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TOP TOPTEN 10

F

rom virtual webinars, to in person conferences and events, Supply Chain Digital lists its 10 top industry events that, as the world emerges from the pandemic and begins the return to normal, executives should keep their eye on to appear in 2022.

WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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TOP 10

10

International Materials Handling Exhibition September 6 - 8, 2022

Promising to be the largest virtual gathering for UK logistics professionals in September 6-8 2022, International Materials Handling Exhibition (IMHX) 2022 offers attendees the opportunity to explore thousands of cuttingedge intralogistics solutions, evaluate and assess products in real-time, stay ahead of industry developments, grow your business, and network with main players in the industry.

“IMHX attracts thousands of senior logistics and supply chain professionals responsible for planning, specifying, installing, maintaining and operating distribution centres, warehouses and storage facilities throughout the UK's supply chains.”

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09

Digital Procurement World (DPW

September 15 - 16, 2021 Growing from a 500-person conference in 2019 to a global network, Digital Procurement World (DPW) is a diverse network with a shared mission ‘to unlock the true power of procurement through excellence in digital’.

This year’s conference was held over two days, September 15 - 16, showcasing cutting-edge innovations paving the way for the future of procurement.

“I founded DPW in the belief that the procurement industry today is too siloed and requires a broader group effort and more diversity of thought,” said Matthias Gutzmann, Founder of DPW.

TOP 10

08

CSCMP Edge

September 19 - 22, 2021 Held for four days on September 19 - 22 attendees of CSCMP Edge could make an appearance virtually or in-person in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference offers the opportunity to connect with the global supply chain community to discover the latest innovations, strategies, and best practices.

Why Atlanta?

“Atlanta is the #2 metro area for digital supply chain and thrives as a centre for logistics and supply chain recognised as the #SupplyChainCity.

Built for what’s now and what’s next, [...] Atlanta is uniquely positioned for supply chain technology innovation and talent acquisition.”

Speakers: C.H. Robinson, Ricoh Electronics, GEODIS, IBM, JAGGAER.

07

ASCM Connect

October 25 - 27, 2021 ASCM Connect is an annual conference, offering worldclass education and expert insight on supply chain trends and technology. This year, the conference was held virtually between October 25-27 offering attendees the opportunity to gain insight from its lineup of speakers, network with peers, and drive their professional growth in the apply chain industry.

This year's topics covered sustainability, dynamic fulfillment, intelligent supply, synchronised planning, resilience, digital supply chains, S&OP and more.

Speakers: Coca Cola Beverages Africa, University of Lausanne, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Heinz Company. supplychaindigital.com

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06

CIPS Global Conference June 8 - 9, 2021

This year the CIPS Global Conference 2021 took place across two days on June 8 - 9.

The conference looked at how the industry post-COVID-19 can rebuild and reshape the profession through strengthening leadership, driving responsible procurement and championing innovation.

The new event from CIPS allows its attendees to enhance knowledge with live content sessions from international speakers, networking opportunities with peers, and discover new solutions at the exhibition hall.

Speakers: Co-Op, Nationwide Building Society, Avetta, Unilever, GSK.

05

ProcureCon CPO Connect

November 16 - 17, 2021 Invite-only, this year’s ProcureCon CPO Connect will take place on November 16 - 17. Each year, 80 senior-level decision makers attend ProcureCon CPO Connect, a productive learning and networking experience.

ProcureCon CPO Connect allows executives to benchmark digital transformation strategies, respond to unique opportunities, and create a sustainable, competitive advantage.

Speakers: Sanofi, Siemens Mobility, Bayer, Thales, Air France-KLM, Nestlé. supplychaindigital.com

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04

Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ October 25 – 27, 2021

Delivered annually, Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ 2021 was held as a virtual three day event between October 25 – 27.

The focal topic for 2021 was ‘People, Planet, Profit: PurposeDriven Supply Chains- Take Centre Stage’. At the event, Gartner discussed how the global landscape has fundamentally changed, accelerating the need and desire for supply chains to broaden their mission and drive a competitive advantage.

At Gartner’s annual event, the leading consultant provides must-have insights, strategies and frameworks for CSCOs and other supply chain leaders to build sustainable, societal and profitable supply chains.

Exhibitors: Kinaxis, Project44, Google Cloud, Infor, Redwood.

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03 Manifest

January 25 - 27, 2022 Bringing together a comprehensive ecosystem of innovation and transformation in logistics and endto-end supply chains, Manifest 2022 will premiere in Las Vegas, January 25 - 27, 2022 gathering industry leaders, innovators, and investors showcasing cutting edge technologies that are changing the world.

Manifest provides attendees with the opportunity to get ‘hands-on’ with the opportunity to test drive autonomous vehicles, take a look at warehouse automation technologies, try out wearables, and watch delivery bots, with an added bonus of playing with puppies in the break, courtesy of GEODIS Puppy Lounge.

Manifest 2022 also offers attendees networking opportunities and insights from over 200 industry leaders and pioneers.

Speakers: LEGO Group, IKEA, Kroger, CVS Health, E2open, Walmart Canada.

02

TOP 10

World Procurement Congress October 12 - 14, 2021

Held this year for three days, October 12 14, 2021, the World Procurement Congress (WPC) is an annual gathering for leaders to boost collaboration and innovation within their sectors, as well as creating a space for intriguing conversations.

At the latest event, WPC took a look at how the pandemic has propelled procurement’s contribution to growth, innovation and transformation like never before, while answering the question: ‘how do leaders maintain the momentum and make strategic decisions that deliver sustainable and resilient growth?’

Topics discussed included: postpandemic leadership, supply chains of the future, ESG, emerging technology, future workplaces, and nurturing ecosystems and collaboration.

Providing a hybrid-event experience, WPC provides attendees with actionable insights, inspiration, meaningful content, global connections, and the opportunity to network.

Speakers: Accenture, British American Tobacco (BAT), Scottish government, stc.

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“ The must-attend hybrid event for today’s procurement/supply chain leaders and leaders of the future” Procurement & Supply Chain Live

September 28 - 29, 2021 Procurement & Supply Chain Live is a three day event, showcasing the latest industry innovations, ideas and actionable insights, that can be harnessed by others in the industry to bolster their business and career.

The event can be attended virtually or in-person, giving attendees the opportunity to network with executives, peers and luminaries from the industry. ”See how companies like yours are tackling the problems that keep you up at night, engage in a community that many struggle to access and share your ideas with people who care as much as you do.”

This year, Procurement & Supply Chain Live was held on September 28 - 29, 2021 at the Tobacco Dock in London; a stunning and historic building in London.

Speakers: BCG, Vodafone, NHS, Oracle, Mastercard, Walgreens Boots Alliance.

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BI GROUP RISES TO MEDICAL CHALLENGES IN CENTRAL ASIA WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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BI GROUP

BI Group has seen a boom in health business during the pandemic and Chief Procurement Officer Darkhan Shildebayev anticipates rising demand

T

Darkhan Shildebayev, CPO, BI Group

he last 18 months have been universally challenging for the construction industry but companies of the size and pedigree of BI Group have weathered it better than most.

The COVID-19 crisis actually presented the group – which has 5,000 employees and is ranked as one of the leading globally – with unexpected opportunities, as it was tasked with building 15 hospitals in two months, spanning a total area of 115,000sqm.

Meeting the urgent health needs has been an overriding priority for its 160strong procurement team, to the extent that it established a dedicated medical procurement division and even opened its own lab for PCR studies at Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana – the name change was made by Presidential decree in March 2019).

This was on top of procuring items for the group’s 180 projects, covering everything from materials and machinery for housing developments to major stadium projects; last year saw the launch of a 7,000-seat athletic complex in the Kazakhstan capital.

“There was huge demand for medical equipment last year. We did well, as we never broke any agreement terms or schedules,” said Chief Procurement Officer Darkhan Shildebayev. “We believe supplychaindigital.com

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BI GROUP

that medical building will be at the heart of construction for the next couple of years for us.”

As part of a charitable campaign to help fight the pandemic, BI Group also donated 1,065 oxygen concentrators to hospitals throughout Kazakhstan.

The BI-Zhuldyzai Foundation, despite the quarantine measures and economic difficulties, has continued its charitable activities and helped 1,253 children with difficult medical diagnoses. In total, 52,603 rehabilitation services were provided in 2020.

Housing drives group growth This year BI Group is budgeting for growth of 15% in development business, and a 106

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slight growth in contracting and projects – and altogether group growth of around 5%, which is respectable given the precarious economic situation.

Housing projects are its main business driver and affordable housing accounts for 10-15% of its portfolio.

The main objective is to make sure it doesn’t face challenges with shortage of materials – a universal predicament facing the industry.

“The pandemic has had a huge impact on our business. We had our suppliers shut down their production lines, and had to deal with border closures – we had materials stuck but it’s much better nowadays.

BI GROUP

DARKHAN SHILDEBAYEV

“WE BELIEVE THAT MEDICAL WILL BE AT THE HEART OF CONSTRUCTION FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS FOR US”

TITLE: CPO INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION LOCATION: CENTRAL ASIA Darkhan Shildebayev, 34 years old born in Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. He has been with BI Group for a little under six years, and held various positions within the company including, head of competitive intelligence and representative offices in Moscow and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Previously worked at financial institutions and mining companies including Jusan Bank (formerly Tsesna Bank) and Kazakhmys. Holds master’s degree in International Business Management from Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria.

DARKHAN SHILDEBAYEV

“We don’t have much production in Kazakhstan, it’s mostly imported from Russia and neighbouring countries – and they’re trying to develop their economies through construction,” he said. “The fastest way to warm up the economy is construction and there will be huge demand for resources and procurement.”

One permanent change will see BI Group set more long-term contracts with its suppliers, and prioritise them, he said.

“We’re going to change how we work with our suppliers, making it easier for them to see what they’ll be working on, so they’ll know the projects in advance – so they can allocate their resources much easier than it used to be.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

CPO, BI GROUP

BI GROUP

BI Group rises to medical challenge in central Asia

He foresees sharp growth in construction, anticipating 9% industry growth, which will create challenges with materials, machinery and manpower.

Building on supplier relationships BI Group was fortunate as it had embraced digital before the pandemic, so making the switch was painless compared with many companies.

Through its supplier relationship platform, BI Partners, suppliers can directly interact through the app. Without going into specific terms, he says that “the more you buy, the bigger your discount.” Last year also marked a real estate services turning point, as apartment units could be bought via the BIG App. Now the plan is to combine all the platforms together, creating one ‘eco-system’ for the whole company. He hopes it will 108

November 2021

be finalised within a year. In 2020, service specialists processed 147,608 client requests.

“The idea is to connect what we buy, with those who buy it from us,” he said. “We have sufficient amount of information, in construction and sales, but now the idea is to create a picture to understand what this data says to us.”

Out of 10,000 partners, BI Group has 200 main partners, which will be important for the next five years. Suppliers at the top of the list include Danfoss (hydraulic solutions), Kazenergokabel (electrical equipment

BI GROUP

1995

Year Founded

$1.4bn (2015) Revenue

5,000

Number of Employees

supplies), GQ Engineering (low current solutions and electrical equipment supplies), MIT (medical innovation technology and medical supplies), Troya, Fenix, Megasmart (all furniture supplies) and Kazintertech (educational equipment supplies).

In another clear example of its attention to detail, BI Group has a special IT department responsible for cybersecurity, which carries out ‘penetration testing’ on an ongoing basis.

RECORD SALES IN 2020 In 2020, more than 10,039 thousand families received the keys to their apartments. The first residential complex Tamerlan Residence was built in Shymkent and the company entered the Uzbekistan market with the construction of the first residential complex from BI Group in Tashkent (NRG Oybek).

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HOME TRUST

HOME TRUST

Procuring diversity: The benefits of balance WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Sanja Cancar-Todorovic, Enterprise Procurement, Outsourcing & Vendor Management Leader at Home Trust, talks about diversity and why balance is best for productivity

F

ollowing a career that saw her spend 18 years in the male-dominated telecommunications industry, Sanja Cancar-Todorovic is no stranger to a diversity imbalance.

But rather than simply endure the status quo, she is determined to bring about fresh change in her latest role at Home Trust, Canada’s largest independent trust company that offers a wide range of financial services including deposits, residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, and credit cards.

“I head up the Enterprise Procurement Outsourcing and Vendor Management team here at Home Trust,” she explains, when asked to define her current role. “My team is driving enterprise procurement, contact centre outsourcing, and third-party risk management strategies to create value across the organisation while influencing behaviours and processes consistent with our policy, risk appetite, business strategies, best practices, all while mitigating the risks to the organisation.”

Her work in the telecommunications industry has shaped her approach to procurement because 11 out of the 18 years spent in telcos were in strategic sourcing, outsourcing, and vendor management area.

“From my experience, telcos are leaders in innovation, automation, and digitisation of processes, simply because they have to be due to the competitive landscape they operate in, and the fact that they support the infrastructure that IOT is built on.”

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“ I love being in a position where I have a frontrow seat to the new and innovative vendors and their products” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

Cancar-Todorovic says she is grateful for the time she spent in that environment because it taught her ‘everything’ about the importance of the customer experience, reliability, and sustainability of products and services, agile working environment with fast go-to-market mandates in order to remain on that competitive edge.

But, she says, “The most importantly, telco experience instilled in me is that diversity is 114

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the key driver to innovation. And when I say diversity, I'm not talking about DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion) only, but also diversity of thought, diversity of the supply chain, diversity of suppliers through products, services, and offerings.”

Diversity in business Diversity. It fosters creativity and generates the best ideas from our suppliers, partners, customers, and employees at all levels of the organisation, and incorporating them into our business, guarantees business success.”

The only caveat, she believes, is to have a strong corporate culture, that encourages innovation. An agile approach to the implementation of new ideas also encourages people to try new things, in a controlled environment without the fear of failure.

“And if they're not successful, they're able to fail small, fail fast, learn from it and try again, but this time with gained experience”

HOME TRUST

SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

1977

TITLE: E NTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER

Year founded

Finance Services

LOCATION: CANADA With over 20 years of experience in large global organisations, Sanja is a passionate customer experience, strategy & transformation leader, specialising in driving technological innovation, agile digital transformation, corporate culture evolution and cost & quality streamlining via outsourcing, offshoring / nearshoring, global procurement, strategic sourcing, vendor management and third-party risk management.

Industry

700+

Number of Employees

Cancar-Todorovic says. So, in essence, celebrating the failures and successes of any innovative process only breeds more success and more innovation down the line.

In her current role at Home Trust, Sanja leads theenterprise procurement, outsourcing and vendor management function.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Women in procurement Though she feels lucky that her current role allows her to amalgamate all of her 20 years of experience, best practices, and lessons learned, into one role experience, Cancar-Todorovic says she never felt that her performance in the workplace was disadvantaged.

She also takes a pragmatic approach to her environment, seeing it as an opportunity to make headway in a challenging setting.

“I think the trick to that is really not to take things seriously and personally, and really use every interaction as a learning opportunity.

Having a family was never up for debate for Cancar-Todorovic. She wanted to be both a mother and a respected corporate professional. She has certainly achieved that goal, but it hasn’t always been an easy ride.

Ultimately, she acknowledges that working mothers face unique challenges. .

“If you're out of sight, you are out of mind, and

Sanja holds an Executive Master of Business Administration (eMBA) degree, a Master of Management (MM) degree and an Honours Double Major Bachelor of Arts (BA(Hons.)) degree in Law and Political Science.

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sometimes that translates into delayed career growth. If I could do it all over again, would I change anything? Absolutely not. I think people need to measure their happiness by how fulfilled their life is. And personally, I don't know that I would be able to ever feel fulfilled without having my family.”

She is also adamant that ‘procurement’ in general, needs women because of the unique talents that they bring to the business table.

“I think women have a very strong emotional intelligence, and that is crucial to being a great leader, strong negotiator, and a good business partner.”

Diversity in the industry As part of her mission in procurement to increase diversity levels, Cancar-Todorovic has introduced the Corporate Supplier Diversity Program to Home Trust. The initiative was launched in January 2021 and has been instrumental in successfully forming a number of significant business relationships with certified diverse suppliers, which will be expanded upon.

The current focus is on tier-1 suppliers, and as the company evolves there are plans to shift that focus to include tier-2 suppliers as well.

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“ All roads are pointing to the fact that we might be hit with another pandemic in our lifetime” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

Home Trust is now a corporate sponsor to the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, which is the organisation that certifies Aboriginal and minority-owned businesses, as well as the corporate sponsor to Women Business Enterprise Canada, which is the organisation that certifies women-owned business.

She explains, “A diverse and inclusive environment facilitates a broader exchange of perspectives and better reflects the true makeup of our society. So, choosing to do business with organisations that share the same values as us, and building a portfolio of viable competitive and diverse suppliers, allows us to make better business decisions while helping to create healthier communities and differentiate ourselves in the hearts and minds of our customers.”

Cancar-Todorovic believes the procurement industry lends itself perfectly to meeting diversity objectives in the workplace as well as in business.

“Over the years I have seen an increase in women coming into this industry, and it makes me happy,” she says. “I'm not surprised by it because this industry is

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so dynamic. There is no other role in any organisation that gives you visibility across the entire organisation (as opposed to just your business unit), that is impacted by not just what’s happening in the organisation, but what’s happening on a global scale (from a geopolitical standpoint to weather and climate change across the globe), and it truly is never ever boring! It’s a great dynamic industry, and I'm glad to see that a lot more women are seeing the value in joining it and really thriving in it.”

The general sphere of diversity is also changing, she feels. “DEI really became a hot topic in recent months. And while organisations spoke about it in the past, I think the advent of the last 16 to 18 months really put those words into actionable measurable

targets that most organisations are now reporting to their shareholders. So, as the saying goes, “What gets measured gets done,’ which is a good step in the right direction.”

Risk mitigation and management Alongside her passion for diversity, Cancar-Todorovic is also an expert in risk management. The past two years have been challenging for companies globally. For many, “digital transformation was primarily driven by, not the CIO, but COVID. And the pandemic truly accelerated the fourth industrial revolution”.

“A lot of organisations were tiptoeing around the concept of digital transformation until COVID literally just pushed them right into it. It's amazing to see the changes that supplychaindigital.com

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“ It's a perfect storm when you have so many moving parts happening all at the same time” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

have occurred in such a short period of time.

But with massive changes, you now have the exposure to massive risks that, if not mitigated properly, could be catastrophic to the organisation.”

Cancar-Todorovic points to areas such as supply chain, vendor concentration,

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fourth-party risk management, information security, business continuity and says that all of those were points that were ticking-the-box exercises prior to COVID. But as a result of the pandemic, they're now part of the elevated third-party risk management process.

“At Home Trust has partnered with some great vendors that enabld us to automate our sourcing process and ensure a robust third-party vendor management program that ensures a solid due diligence process, not just at the onboarding stage, but throughout the life cycle of the vendor relationships, including continues monitoring of our critical suppliers.”

Attitudes to risk management have changed over the past two years too – and companies have had to find unique ways to respond to that. She explains that while both procurement and risk management might

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have been seen as bottleneck functions within the organisation, the view has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic.

“The disruptions we all felt and continue to feel within supply chains, as well as the unprecedented reliance on IT Vendors for the business continuity, elevated the importance of the robust procurement and vendor management strategy.

Home has taken this one step further, and shed the concept of the conventional vendor management practice, to partnership management, where vendors are not just the service or product providers, but are a critical part of our roadmap and continues success.”

Cancar-Todorovic says the traditional measures of success for procurement were always based on savings or value for money.

That outdated concept has now been replaced by the value of ownership. “We focus on strategic partnerships based on mutual

trust and respect, efficient operating models, financial stewardship, risk containment, supplier management, reliability, sustainability, appetite for innovation, and passion for customer experience.”

Strategic partnerships in procurement Partnership roles have been essential in making sure the massive shifts that have occurred over the past two years have been dealt with smoothly. As an organisation Home Trust is in the final stretch of its IGNITE program, a multi-year, digital transformation initiative for the company. In addition to a significant SAP re-platforming, it involves numerous other strategic vendor partners.

IGNITE drives significant improvements in Home’s ability to manage deposits, loans, treasury, and syndications, while allowing us to streamline financial operations, and enhancing our ability to deliver superior customer service.

“Aside from IGNITE, which is an overarching program, we have numerous different initiatives of a transformative nature,” says Cancar-Todorovic. These include digital banking, credit cards, and contact centres, that all demand a strong and strategic sourcing strategy and a robust vendor management program.

“Even within our own procurement team, we have engaged a number of vendors to help us automate our processes, making us more efficient, resilient, and adaptable to business needs. We have partnered with ServiceNow to ensure that we have a robust in-take process and embedded workflows, ensuring adequate controls are put in place in line with our organisational risk appetite.”

Home Trust also partnered with DocuSign, a collaboration that has been instrumental in the sourcing business continuity, especially as the company moved to the work-from-home model in early 2020. supplychaindigital.com

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Procuring diversity: The benefits of balance

“We are further looking to enhance that process by integrating DocuSign with our SharePoint central contract repository that was also launched earlier this year. Panorays is another vendor that we engage with on our third-party risk management transformation, in order to automate our third-party security management for vendor due diligence process, annual vendor attestations and vendor materiality assessments.”

Scanmarket eSourcing tool is another strategic partnership, formed recently to help accelerate Home Trust’s go-to-market strategy by simplifying and speeding up the competitive bidding process that was previously done manually.

Cyber initiatives for Home Trust With digital transformation now in full swing, cybersecurity is now an area of major concern. The footprint upon which criminals can attack has been widened by the work 120

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from home mandates. Strategy is key, says Cancar-Todorovic, and ultimately, the fortification of a company comes down to leadership, training, and a solid plan of action.

“Cybersecurity and information security is one of the most important risks that we continuously look to improve. At Home, we do this by investing in our cyber resources and tools. We provide regular training and testing to all of our employees, and we have the governance processes around the operational risk committee. We always try to stay one step ahead of the threat, and that seems to be a secret sauce to our success thus far.”

Home Trust enabled 98% of its workforce to work from home within two weeks of the pandemic being announced, without experiencing any service disruption.

Cancar-Todorovic says the remote working mandate also shifted attitudes globally towards the security of the home

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“ More than ever we are now dependent on our IT vendors, and that will just continue to be the case as we move to a more hybrid work-fromhome model” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

environment, and people’s ability to buy and keep their homes. The demand for mortgages and home loans skyrocketed.

“While we were moving to a remote working model, we also had to launch and administer a deferral program to provide temporary financial support to many of our borrowers.”

“It's a perfect storm when you have so many moving parts happening all at the same time. And on top of it all, it was important to update all the processes and documentation required to support mortgage lending and ensure the safeguard of the physical safety of our stakeholders and all the documents that were coming in, like appraisals, inspections, legal documents, and so on.”

But unlike many companies that were caught short by sudden digital shift, Home Trust had already made strides towards digitisation.

“Home has moved to paperless underwriting and funding, which prepared us well to enable our customers to achieve their homeownership goals in a remote workplace. But looking back now, the dependence on the IT vendors has not dropped.

“More than ever we are now dependent on our IT vendors, and that will just continue to be the case as we move to a more hybrid work-from-home model.

Home has been able to keep our culture alive and thriving while continuing to meet our strategic objectives and deliver strong financial performance. This is evident in both our employee engagement scores, as well as the value we are creating for our shareholders.”

Throughout the pandemic Home Trust also made a significant effort to provide people leaders with the new tools and resources, to manage and lead their teams remotely. These included seminars, workshops, guest speakers, and

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“ Cybersecurity and information security is one of the most important risks that we continuously look to improve” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER,HOME TRUST

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the deployment of new and engaging collaboration tools.

“We also work very closely with the mortgage broker community to serve our customers. And during the pandemic, we made broker engagement, education, and service a priority to ensure that they too could meet the evolving needs of their clients through these unprecedented times”.

“We also provided direct-to-consumer solutions and we have been working to enhance their digital experience and the platform’s functionality so they can interact with us in a medium of their choice, through a variety of omni-channels, whether its voice, in-person or over the phone.”

People value and mortgages The mortgage lending business is a peopledriven business and therefore the knowledge and expertise of Home Trust’s people, its partners, services, and relationships are critical to success in this industry. The company encourages a solution-oriented, entrepreneurial, and hardworking culture embedded in the foundation of a sustainable risk culture.

In 2018, Home Trust introduced a new set of corporate values, which are part of everyday language, and govern every decision its employees make.

“We regularly engage our employees to help make sure that Home is a great place to work by conducting regular employee town halls, surveys, feedback sessions,” says Cancar-Todorovic.

“And we actually use the feedback that we get from those sessions to further improve where we are. So, it really doesn't come as a surprise that recently we had been awarded the Great Place to Work certification, and Home has also been named a Great Place to Work in Ontario.”

The future of procurement While diversity is obviously a key passion, she also believes the industry will have much bigger changes in store over the next five to ten years, and part of that will be its recognition as an essential profession.

“Until recently, procurement as a term in a profession was not really given the recognition it deserved. It was often misused to describe a purchaser or a buyer. In the next five years, I think procurement will solidify its position as the key player and a trusted advisor to the business, recognised for its strategic process of product and service sourcing, market research, planning, negotiations, and thirdparty risk management.”

The pandemic had motivated this period of maturation, she explains, because it revealed how unprepared the supply chain was for major global disruption.

“Many might feel content with the changes that have been put in place so far. And I know it's not a popular opinion or belief, but all roads are pointing to the fact that we might be hit with another pandemic in our lifetime. And as such, this industry cannot get complacent with the transformation that has taken place so far and simply just take a break from this transformative journey that we are on. The way the industry has reinvented itself during COVID should only be the beginning and not the final destination.”

And this time in history is the perfect point to embrace innovation, she adds, because change and dynamism are everywhere. “I love being in a position where I have a front-row seat to the new and innovative vendors and their products and services that really have the ability to change everything that we do.”

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