The Business Profile 4/23

2023 / Issue 4

www.BusinessSocial.org

BAT

Navigating Today’s Polycrisis World, While Building a Better Tomorrow

Rony Moura and Eduardo Chrispim on procurement roles in “building a better tomorrow” Vanquis Banking Group all encompassing transformation

Persán

people first

YDUQS

a lesson in transformation

procurement based innovation

© 2021 A.P. Moller - Maersk

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Welcome Ending with a bang!.

The final edition of 2023 is headlined by BAT’s Eduardo Chrispim and Rony Moura who provide the details on an innovative Supplier Relationship Management strategy that is setting the tone for a better tomorrow. With supporting content from key SRM transformation partner Vizibl, it is a great example of the multiple doors that can opened when selecting the perfect partner.

Partnership has to be the key focus word from Steven Schools as he discusses an all-encompassing transformation at Vanquis Banking Group where procurement has been placed front and center. Kudos to Barkers Commercial Consultancy who have acted as procurements chief support and received high praise from Steven along with Zoot and UST. Ana Dias, the first externally hired CPO at Persán provides a fascinating insight into why it will all be about the people and culture as the organisation transforms to meet its extraordinary growth.

Of course, there is much more with content from; Brazil’s leading higher education institute YDUQS – procurement transformation; SpendHQ – procurement performance management & more; Amazon Business – procurement 2024 outlook; plus Mars, Gartner, and Verra.

Enjoy

The Business Profile Team 3

06|

Leadership

20|

Procurement & Supply Chain

54|

Sustainability

66|

Technology

06|Leadershi Persán

hip

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Leadership | Persán

Persán – people first P

ersán is Spanish family-owned business, founded in 1941, with an operations presence in 3 countries, Spain, France and Poland. The company has grown substantially in the last couple of years and is now a leader in Europe in the development and manufacture of home care and personal care products. Persán has a clear goal which is to became one of the world’s leading companies in the home care sector whilst keeping the culture of the simplest multinational in the world.

Rapid growth and big ambitions meant that Persán needed to add outside knowledge to develop a structure and culture that can support and go beyond these goals. Ana Dias joined at the end of 2022 as the first Chief Procurement Officer from outside of the business. With extensive experience across

multi-nationals within the food and beverage sector Ana has been tasked with an exciting opportunity – revolutionise procurement.

Ana offers a great insight into what she has inherited, the ambition, the challenges, the opportunity, and the blue print.

Ana you joined Persan as CPO at a very interesting time in its history as it moves away from its traditional roots towards an exciting period of growth. As the first true outsider to head up the procurement function what was the opportunity at hand?

The opportunity is to build almost from scratch a next generation procurement operating model. The large multinationals I worked for before were very structured companies, with an established system of governance often with a firm bureaucracy,

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leading to lack of agility. In Persán I have the chance to rewrite the entire model and to adapt it to the new needs, not losing sight that Persán wants to be the simplest multinational in the world, so as not to lose agility, which is one of our advantages and which has allowed us to this tremendous growth.

The model needs to be sustainable and agile, to keep up with the growth, and scalable for the internationalisation strategy, increasing efficiency, building better supplier relationships and generate additional long-term cost savings for the business.

Also, the opportunity to lead a different kind of team. I’ve never led a full team of such young people before. I presently have a

team of which 88% is millennial generation and 12% is Gen Z. No X generation in the team, and this is not only a challenge for me but also an opportunity. An opportunity to share with them my learning journey, being able to transmit my experience, try to make a positive footprint in their life.

Mentor, provide guidance and support as they develop their skills, provide progress feedback. These young people are sponges, keen to learn, this is the moment to engage them to embrace procurement.

But also, I see it as an opportunity to learn from them. Learn different skills and to also develop other skills that were not so important to me until now, understand their different perspective of the world, what moves them and why, and mainly, see their development and growth.

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Leadership | Persán

Processes and digitalisation are not the key for success. People are.

Ana Dias Chief Procurement Officer

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Persan’s symbol is a butterfly, which could not be more appropriate for the transformation project that is taking place across the organisation. An authentic metamorphose, a change of mindset, as everyone beginning with the family, is looking ahead to became one of the world’s leaders in the home care sector.

Of course, I also inherited a different business, as I came from the food industry.

Although similar in what concerns stakeholders, markets, clients, and dynamics but unfamiliar in what concerns raw and packaging materials portfolio. So, for me it is also a learning process and a challenge to get familiar with the chemical industry and its particularities.

What did you inherit on day one?

I have inherited a team of young people, resilient and very committed, with a great desire to learn and develop in a procurement role, who were doing excellent work and with good results, but still a very transactional department without clear and defined processes, working under pressure as all procurement departments, focused on the urgent and not the priority, without setting procurement strategies, just putting out fires every day.

Also, a low level of digitalisation which also concerns procurement tools, albeit the IT department had made tremendous progress, it had no yet reached procurement, and also like most companies a business where the focus is selling not buying.

In short, a department with good results but with fantastic potential to develop and provide even more value to the company, eager to show that they still have a lot to give, but also due to lack of clear and written processes and policies, digitalization, and a scalable and organized structure, under prepared to face the growth of the internationalization in a smooth, organised and sustainable way.

Yet, I also must say that I have found in the company a willingness to change the ways of working and a strong committed team at all levels.

So, it is fair to say that the function needed a refresh. What steps did you identify as you started the transformation?

Yes, it is fair to say that the function needed a refresh, but it is also fair to say that it would be impossible to multiply by two the results in the last couple years without a strong team behind. The truth is that procurement functions in general need a refresh as we have now new generations arriving into the job market, with different perspectives than the ones we had before.

Different skills and different motivations.

As I have a young team it is natural that the ways of working also have to be adapted to these new profiles, in order to engage them.

I have identified three major steps for the transformation, People, Processes and Digitalisation, in this order of priority.

People are core to make sure everything works. Without interest and compromise from their side it will be difficult for new processes and digitalisation to work, 11

Leadership | Persán as I think the best way to achieve robust processes and useful digitalisation is to make people part of the process, this will also help to engage them. If we want to be agents of change we need to engage our teams to be part of it, and think as a team what we can do differently to get better results.

In my opinion, to have clear and written procedures, facilitates not only the daily work, but the onboarding of new members and also allows the entire organisation to know how we work in order to improve synergies between departments and agility, in addition to everyone knowing the workflow and who does what and when.

Processes and digitalisation are not the key for success. People are.

Of course, digitalization now plays an important role in the business. Although there is no magic technology solution that will perfectly integrate your full needs, the use of technology to optimise and automate procurement processes and workflows is a must, as it streamlines routine tasks and leaves more time to spend in strategic topics, AI and chat

Although the Procurement Governance was clear, and some of the processes were in place, there was the need to write them and take them to another level, given they have been created for a small company, not a multinational company.

A FILM ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY

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GPT are now the most trendy topics in procurement, along with sustainability.

How much have your previous experiences influenced your approach?

As part of my previous role, I had the privilege of managing a global team made up of individuals of different nationalities, spanning different time zones and languages. The first thing I’ve learned is that we have to accept cultural differences, the second important thing is that, you need to understand, you need to listen and create an inclusive culture.

Team members from different regions have unique communication styles, work preferences and cultural nuances.

WATER SOLUBLE FILMS

I’ve been a privileged person. Every day I contact people in different parts of the world, learning and teaching, explaining and listening and I can say that this diversity influenced a lot my approach, giving me the opportunity to develop as a leader and as a person.

Also, having worked in large multinationals, with defined governance and processes, being part of multicultural and transversal projects, also helped me to add value to this new challenge. We don’t always have to invent everything, sometimes you just need to apply what you learned.

Furthermore, I have learned in my previous experiences, that to make a difference in

Ecopol was founded in 2009 in the heart of Tuscany with the idea to help people safeguard the unique landscape that surrounds us, and, more importantly, our wonderful planet. Despite its young age, Ecopol has become the leader in Europe for production capacity and the second largest producer in the world in a very short time.

Our products, developed by the R&D team with and for our customers, are made with excellence to offer the best performances in many different applications: from household detergents packaging for ADW and laundry to Personal Care and Cosmetics, from Solid Surface to Water Transfer Printing and many more.

The idea of Ecopol has always been the same: provide our valued customers with products that are easy to use, safe and environmentally friendly.

Our technology is unique and Ecopol water-soluble films are the ideal solution for your sustainable projects. Recently, our Hydrolene® LTF/TB film has been certified as “OK biodegradable WATER®“ by TÜV AUSTRIA , which ensures the biodegradation of our films in a natural freshwater environment. This substantially helps reduce waste in rivers, lakes or any natural fresh water. It is the first PVOH-based water-soluble film to have received this attainment.

www.ecopol.com

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Leadership | Persán the environment in which we operate, each person must seek the best of themselves, putting skills, abilities and attitudes into practice. Making a difference is within everyone’s reach, all it takes is attitude to get out of the ordinary.

Whilst the business continues its rapid phase of growth it is wrestling with a transition, this is as much a cultural issue as a physical one. What are the primary challenges from your perspective and what opportunities are born out of these challenges?

In my opinion, the primary challenges in the internationalisation process lay on two axes: people preparation and strategy. It

all starts with developing competence in formulating and implementing business and management strategy.

It is key to have talented people and if talent and strategy go hand in hand the result is outstanding.

The limit of a company is where the limit of its people are.

Prepare a team to face the growth Persán is facing is a tough job but is also a beautiful and gratifying job. How many dream of being part of a company with this growth and have the opportunity to grow professionally with it? Of course, growing pains are part of this growth but in return

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provide you with more knowledge and soft skills like resilience.

The second one, strategy, defines and drives the decisions, to achieve the goal, driven by growth and based on building revenues. Key for a company’s success.

When you are able to manage both, you open the door to countless opportunities.

The opportunity to work in an international team, that is also expanding, brings you a different perspective, elevated levels of creativity, vision, proactivity, and opportunism, and in my opinion this is a relevant topic to engage the new generations of procurement talent.

Also, procurement and supply chain strategies are unique based on your business requirements, and you need to develop them specifically for the locations you wish to expand. This includes studying the local trade regulations, external influences, existing supply chain, and local material availability. You need to proactively and closely align with business priorities and requirements to anticipate and react to current and future opportunities, and, most part of the time, to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did. Being a procurement professional for over 13 years, where tactical work is the most common, I find very attractive and a great opportunity to be challenged and be able

Over 40 years of experience in packaging production The company was founded in 1981 and has 2 production plants in Poland: in Bielsko-Biała and in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, employing over 500 skilled people.

Our core business is the production of packaging from HDPE, PP, PET and PCR materials.

We manufacture the packaging ranging from bottles, tubes, containers to different types of closures, caps, lids and other items.

Our aim is to offer our clients comprehensive solutions: we design, develop and build molds in our own tool shop. As an experienced producer and moldmaker, Rosinski Packaging offers a wide range of possibilities and technologies to expand the product portfolio: n Extrusion n Injection stretch n Injection molding (EBM) blow molding (ISBM) molding (IM) Our packaging products are supplied to customers from various market segments: n Cosmetics n Food n Home care n Pharmaceuticals Thanks to many years of experience and expertise, we guarantee the compliance with the highest technical, quality and sustainability standards.

Join us for collaborative success! Let’s design the future of packaging together!

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Leadership | Persán to get out of the comfort zone. Everything I have done that has made me proud of my achievements was outside what I would have been comfortable doing.

As business pressures continue to elevate, the more exciting it is to work in the procurement area.

Transformation revolves around people, processes, and technology. One of your big focuses in this early phase is people.

Creating a team, arming them with the skills and capabilities required, and

It is key to have talented people and if talent and strategy go hand in hand the result is outstanding.

The limit of a company is where the limit of its people are.

retaining them, is a big challenge. How are you approaching this?

This is the most difficult challenge. In addition to facing a market where the shortage of procurement professionals is a reality, in a country where fluency in English is scarce but essential for a role in a global team, also the young and new generations are a challenge for procurement area, as they see it as a transaction function, no appealing.

As I said before, I have a new generation team. New generations have a different personality, different ambitions and what

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they value in their life and job is completely different from previous generations who are still the vast majority in the organisations.

Arming the team with the skills and capabilities required involves having a mix of profiles. Profiles with more seniority that bring experience, and younger profiles that you can train and who bring interactivity, a strong tendency towards entrepreneurship, dynamism, innovation and creativity, but also a constant search for new challenges and the absence of fear in taking risks, including changing jobs as a new normal.

To retain these new generations, there are some musts like flexibility, training, career plans, which is one of the most valued things for Y and Z generations, as they want quick professional and financial growth; digital tools, as they do not like to perform administrative tasks; you have to give them meaningful work, as they have to feel that what they do must contribute to a better planet, social causes, sustainability; freedom to propose ideas and present projects.

So, we are working on these new requirements to ensure we can attract and retain the talent we need for our growth while we are also searching the job market for profiles with more procurement seniority.

As procurements influence grows within the organisation the path of opportunity and what is achievable becomes much clearer. One such area of interest is

moving from a transactional to a strategic function. What are the ambitions to work collaboratively with suppliers in the future?

Has any progress been made on this? Are there already high levels of participation at the top end of the supply chain?

The development of strategic alliances and collaboration with suppliers is key to strengthening not only the resilience of the supply chain but also growth and business continuity.

Supply chains are very stressed due to geopolitical challenges, climatic changes, production bottlenecks and new ESG requirements. We went from a VUCA to a BANI world, and this is the new normal, in which to predict disruptions instead of reacting to them is key. It has never been more essential to have an agile and resilient value chain to try to control the uncontrollable and, at the same time, cover the legal and strategic requirements, and achieve good value for money. For that, we have to make sure the relation with our suppliers does not end once a contract has been signed but evolves through the contracting life cycle.

The progress made so far is a structure based in on a Category Management Center of Excellence, which includes methodologies, tools and templates that drive efficiency, consistency and results. If you are able to combine with a category manager skill set, deep category knowledge, market intelligence and spend analytics, you will have less stress in your supply chain.

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Leadership | Persán A significant part of category management work is supplier relationship management, which we have included in our procurement model as a process, including how and when it is important to hold regular review meetings where both parties seek to understand how they can make the contract perform better and that promotes improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. This process helps to determine the value each supplier provides, and which ones are most critical to business continuity and performance. It also enables category managers to cultivate better relationships with suppliers based on each supplier’s importance.

It is vital that the category manager or the buyer keeps managing the supplier and deals with problems as and when they arise, but it is also key is to address problems when they are still minor and therefore easier to resolve.

Clearly, operating models increasingly require a resilient supply chain, and for these, procurement models need to be more agile, flexible and, above all, adaptive.

In short, I can say that yes, there are already high levels of participation at the top end of the supply chain.

The transformation and reshaping of procurement at Persan whilst continued rapid growth in sales will be a big challenge, but will of course offer the business a firm footing to go further than expected. What are your aspirations for the coming 12 months. What is the key to this ambition?

My aspirations for the coming 12 months are as big as Persán’s growth in recent years and in the years to come.

But my particular ambition is to lead my team to achieve the level of a high performance team.

Also, as organisations around the world are experiencing radical changes in their operations accompanied by the different demands of their interest groups, CPOs are now masters of complexity due to supply risk disruption, climate changes, trade wars, digital disruption, talent shortage, new regulations, mega suppliers power, ESG requirements. My ambition is that Persán manages to navigate all this complexity in the smoothest way possible, while heading to the ‘One Billion Project’, and for this to be possible, it is key that procurement and all stakeholders navigate in the same direction.

The key to this ambition, lays in having the right people in the right place, adapting to changes as it occurs always trying to predict them as much as possible, and proactively stay ahead of challenges.

As Robin Sharma said, “change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end”

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20 |Procurem & Supply BAT Vanquis Banking Group

ment Chain

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Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT

Navigating Today’s Polycrisis World, While Building a Better Tomorrow

A

s Head of Procurement Excellence at a global business like BAT, Eduardo Chrispim’s primary objective is to execute transformative strategies to help overcome the challenges of a “polycrisis” world. Alongside Procurement Business Manager, Directs Europe, Rony Moura, he explains how this transformation is taking shape and what the company’s future procurement landscape will look like.

An innovative Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) strategy is setting the tone for a better tomorrow.

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Hi Eduardo. The best place to start would be to explain this volatile procurement landscape that you’re operating in; and what you mean by a “polycrisis” world?

In the current post-pandemic environment, a “polycrisis” world doesn’t merely express the coexistence of multiple crises; it highlights the fact that the combined impact of these crises is more dangerous than the individual components. In the realm of procurement, we are confronted with a multitude of challenges stemming from these converging global issues which include the escalation of geopolitical tensions, economic turbulence marked by inflation and high interest rates, an environmental crisis with climate change, and perhaps the most pronounced talent shortage. All these factors bring serious challenges - and opportunities - to us as a procurement function.

As BAT is a global business operating in approximately 180 countries, we have a highly complex and interconnected supply chain and therefore we are exposed to all those risks. Our function, as a bridge to the external world through our value chain, deals with these factors on a daily basis. Our effectiveness in responding swiftly, maintaining the highest standards of integrity, and equipping ourselves with comprehensive market intelligence is paramount to preserving our value proposition.

Furthermore, within the unique context of BAT’s transformation into new business segments, most notably with our new

categories that venture into uncharted territories, we are aware of the need to swiftly acquire and deploy fresh capabilities, expertise and innovation.

In this regard, our suppliers emerge as pivotal partners in this transformative journey. Consequently, we have invested significantly in strengthening our Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) processes to foster collaborative evolution with our suppliers. This strategic approach ensures that we remain agile and responsive to the evolving landscape, enabling us to seamlessly adapt and thrive in our new and diverse business landscape.

Please build on this approach to continuous improvement, with SRM as a flagship strategy and investment…

We have deliberately placed our people and our suppliers at the forefront of our strategy. We recognise that our success as a business is intrinsically tied to the strength of our partnerships with these crucial stakeholders. In today’s dynamic business landscape, forging collaborative supplier relationships is paramount, particularly in areas such as innovation and sustainability. We firmly believe that by nurturing these strategic alliances, we boost our capacity to drive positive change, ensuring a sustainable and innovative path forward for both our business and the broader procurement ecosystem.

For example, we have developed a holistic environmental management framework which is built into our SRM model. This includes upskilling the procurement 23

Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT function and suppliers on their ability to execute against an ESG framework, digitalising elements of the ESG SRM programme, and continuously improving our data quality by working with a firstparty data provider. We are pleased with the positive feedback we have received from suppliers regarding our clear communication of expectations, and our proven commitment to supporting their capability uplift.

Starting well ahead of our 2030 target has given suppliers the time to plan and implement what is expected within a reasonable timeframe, and our openness of approach has been commented on repeatedly, with suppliers pleased at our transparency around current capability and gaps. Our offer to build capability and identify opportunities together has been widely adopted and enjoyed.

Bringing Rony into the conversation, how would you perceive the impact of this dynamic approach to supplier relations?

Simply, SRM is very important to us. The outdated “one-way” interaction, where customers simply conveyed their demands for suppliers to execute, has proved insufficient for industry leaders seeking to excel in today’s dynamic, fast-paced and highly competitive environment.

Our suppliers are experts in what they do and can bring significant capabilities for innovation and value generation to our consumers. It is our responsibility to create a forward-thinking, innovative environment where both parties collaborate seamlessly

towards a joint vision of exceeding consumer expectations.

Additionally, the boundaries of our relationships with suppliers have expanded well beyond traditional confines. We witness a pivotal shift where sustainability is not merely our corporate responsibility towards society but has become a compelling and attractive factor that we cannot afford to overlook, and cannot be reached without collaborating with our suppliers.

More broadly, our most ambitious objectives must encourage ownership at supplier level, and the traditional approach of focusing on tracking performance, while still fundamental, is no longer sufficient for success. We recognise the importance of nurturing collaboration across procurement, our entire organisation, and our suppliers; and the vital role these relationships play.

You seem to have a clear vision for what supplier relationships should look like now. How does the introduction of new technologies augment, or maybe even add complexity to, this strategy?

More data has been generated in the past two years than throughout the rest of the history of humankind. This obviously needs managing and harnessing.

However, a common mistake I see from many organisations is the urge to invest in digitalisation without a clear vision focused on value generation. The challenge of transforming data into information to support decision-making should be

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Eduardo Chrispim 25

Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT addressed without amplifying digital complexity and, even worse, digital isolation.

Every new software should be implemented as part of a bigger strategy of simplification and every solution, including artificial intelligence, should serve as a business enabler rather than as an endgame.

Digital Transformation in a supply chain context is only whole when it encompasses processes end-to-end, from suppliers to points of sales. Our digital strategy at BAT is based on this premise, as a neverending journey towards digital excellence.

To this end, functional platforms have been designed to allow data integration; cross-functional systems have become key elements to our ways of working; and

our strategic suppliers have now joined the party to unlock the missing parts for complete end-to-end collaboration.

Having a clear digital transformation strategy enables specific technologies to hit their mark. To that end, are there any solutions in particular that you feel epitomise this approach, Rony?

In the context of our SRM2.0 strategy, the system we chose to improve performance, unlock innovative solutions and enhance sustainability with our strategic partners is the Vizibl Platform. It is a web-page platform live 24-seven, connecting the whole business and suppliers at all times, in all locations.

More data has been generated in the past two years than throughout the rest of the history of humankind.

This obviously needs managing and harnessing. However, a common mistake I see from many organisations is the urge to invest in digitalisation without a clear vision focused on value generation.

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Eduardo Chrispim and left Rony Moura

The importance of such collaborative platforms cannot be underestimated. I frequently use the “small drop in a lake that creates many ripples” analogy to explain what happens on a daily basis with business decisions, where each one can trigger a chain reaction of effects. Those effects could represent risks but might also create positive waves of transformation.

By having such collaborative workspaces, like we do with Vizibl, where selected crossfunctional metrics are visible to everyone, actions are categorised and jointly tracked, supplier-led innovation is stimulated, and potential “ripple effects” of decision-making are closely monitored.

Vizibl continues to support our strategy of creating a fast-paced decision-making

environment that will eventually strengthen our relationship with our suppliers and ultimately deliver benefits to consumers.

And of course, any successful digital transformation must also incorporate the human element?

Absolutely – it is pivotal. Rather than fearing the revolutionary technology before us, we should embrace this transformation and ensure our workforce is equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively navigate and leverage the digital landscape.

Significant efforts have already been undertaken in upskilling the workforce and will continue to be a central part of our strategy.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT

The Business Profile | ADVERTORIAL

The 3 key benefits of Supplier Collaboration every organisation should strive for Supplier Collaboration is a strategic approach to supplier relationship management that involves aligning suppliers and partners around a business strategy to deliver on key goals and drive mutual value.

Done correctly, Supplier Collaboration enables an organisation to deliver exponentially more value back to the business by leveraging the untapped value sitting in its extended supplier ecosystem, focusing the relationship on collaborative goals and activities that deliver strategic value, to both the buying and the selling organisation.

Supplier Collaboration benefits to both the procurement team and the wider organisation, include: Privileged “Customer of Choice” Status “Customer of Choice” status grants privileged access to a supplier – their best people, smartest ideas, preferential pricing, latest innovations, and priority access to capacity in times of scarcity or supply shortage.

Deep Supplier Engagement with ESG Initiatives Whether the goal is reducing scope 3 GHG emissions, boosting supplier diversity, ensuring a fair living wage or maintaining child labour free supply chains, Supplier Collaboration enables organisations to address these impacts.

Priority Access to Supplier Innovation Whether it’s finding alternative solutions in bottleneck categories, uncovering new ways to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions, developing novel processes to uncover efficiencies, or driving new product introduction and opportunities for growth, Supplier Collaboration provides the foundations for innovation to flourish.

Supplier Collaboration offers countless benefits to buyers and suppliers alike, including cost management and quality improvements, better risk management and resilience, more responsive and better-performing relationships, and increased quality and competitiveness.

Vizibl’s Supplier Collaboration & Innovation solution is the place where smart, progressive procurement teams go to power valuable collaborative relationships systematically, and at scale.

Supercharge your Supplier Collaboration strategy at www.vizibl.co

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Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT Continued from page 27 We firmly believe in our people as fundamental pillars of our growth. As I consistently emphasise, technology is an enabler, but we are the ones leading this journey with our vision, ambitions and unwavering commitment to building a better tomorrow. This goes for our employees, our society and our consumers.

People empowerment, aligned with people diversity, is resulting in the most powerful transformation in our generation. Disruptive technologies are not only new to the world but for the first time they are also accessible to everyone. Having a truly diverse and empowered workforce is essential because all points of view are relevant. Inclusivity ensures that our innovation is well-rounded,

In a nutshell, what makes BAT special is our belief in the power of diversity and our commitment to a better tomorrow, we cherish all the different voices and ideas that make us who we are.

responsive, and capable of addressing a broader range of perspectives and needs.

I’m proud to say that in our company we have a mix of 138 nationalities in our management team. That’s a lot of different backgrounds, and it’s awesome! We love this diversity because it sparks new ideas, creativity, and different ways of looking at things. Our workplace is like a global melting pot, where you get to collaborate with people from all over the world, each with their own culture and perspective. It’s pretty cool, and it’s something that I really appreciate.

In a nutshell, what makes BAT special is our belief in the power of diversity and our commitment to a better tomorrow, we

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cherish all the different voices and ideas that make us who we are.

Back to you, Eduardo, and moving the discussion on to a different form of social responsibility: what has been BAT’s approach to environmental sustainability throughout this SRM transformation?

BAT’s declared target of a 50 percent absolute reduction across all three scopes of carbon emissions by 2030 is a particular challenge for our procurement function, given that almost half of total emissions arises from purchased goods and services.

Without significant progress in this area, the BAT business will struggle to achieve its business-wide emissions targets.

BAT procurement has also assumed a higher proportion of responsibility for these business-wide emissions targets, making the function’s commitments even more ambitious.

Needing to get off the ground quickly and look for areas of opportunity while defining the ways of working in parallel, we created a Supplier Engagement Framework for emissions that was effective, efficient, and easily deployable across the entire procurement organisation.

The development of this framework consisted of five key steps: 1. Defining the scope of the decarbonisation framework by assessing the state of play in regard to scope 3 emissions in the BAT organisation, and selecting metrics to monitor areas of impact.

2. Baseline assessment of our suppliers’ capability through CDP submissions and direct conversations, allowing us to appraise the environmental impact of each supplier and tailor our engagement approach on a case-by-case basis.

3. Working closely with higher impact suppliers to drive collaboration and stress test the effectiveness of our framework, to drive the right behaviours and actions.

4. Enhancing the environmental focus of our procurement standards, particularly regarding RFx, to ensure that ESG is front and centre.

5. Embedding the framework into activities through internal capability building, digital supplier management solutions, and continuous improvement of emissions data. This includes upskilling the procurement function on their ability to execute against the now-proven framework, and optimising accordingly.

I understand that ‘building a better tomorrow’ is more than just a soundbite?

Indeed, it is a motto and a purpose. Our Sustainability Agenda is an integral part of BAT’s strategy and purpose to build A Better Tomorrow™. It reflects our commitment to reducing the health impact of our business as our principal focus area, while achieving excellence across environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters relevant to our business.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT

The BAT of tomorrow will be a high-growth consumer goods company: global, consumer-centric, multicategory, with sustainability at its core.

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BAT’s publicly stated aim is to progressively transform our portfolio by actively encouraging adult smokers to switch to less risky products compared to smoking; a transformation delivering longterm multi-stakeholder value.

To illustrate the extent of our ESG efforts, we should mention that, group-wide, we have more than 30,000 direct materials and indirect service suppliers. We estimate around 50 percent of our direct and indirect supplier emissions can be attributed to 60 suppliers. By engaging with these suppliers through data collection, information sharing, direct discussions and asking them to participate in the CDP Supply Chain Programme, we are focusing on areas where we believe we can make the biggest impact.

The next phase is to extend the programme to the second tier of suppliers, contributing to over 80% of emissions. This approach is integrated into our revamped SRM model.

Our goal is to have 20 percent of suppliers of purchased goods and services setting science-based targets by 2025.

Looking forward, how would you now define the overall culture at BAT, incorporating these transformative efforts around ESG, diversity and supplier management?

We are becoming a business that defines itself not by the product it sells, but by the consumer needs it meets. We are creating the brands of the future – brands with purpose. By driving value from our combustibles business - and simplifying our organisation - we will accelerate this ambitious transformation.

The BAT of tomorrow will be a high-growth consumer goods company: global, consumercentric, multi-category, with sustainability at its core. Procurement plays a pivotal role in not only delivering traditional key performance indicators such as savings, budget control, and cash flow optimisation, but also in actively contributing to revenue generation. As BAT embarks on its journey into new categories, our suppliers will become indispensable partners, driving customercentric and forward-thinking innovations that underpin our business’s evolution.

We recognise the imperative of nurturing long-term and strategic supplier partnerships. We place emphasis on innovation, sustainability and risk management as critical pillars in our supplier development programmes. This holistic approach ensures that our suppliers become integral contributors to our ongoing transformation, working seamlessly alongside our procurement teams.

Innovation seems key in every facet – something I also understand you’ve been rewarded for?

At the heart of our procurement culture lies this relentless commitment to innovation, epitomised most strongly in recent times by our approach to supplier management. Our pioneering SRM programme is founded on the principles of data and technology, and it has been instrumental in promoting robust supplier collaboration amid the challenges presented by the post-pandemic macroeconomic landscape.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | BAT

Our innovative “SRM 2.0” strategy has been recognised on multiple occasions, including being shortlisted for two prestigious procurement awards. It was designed to foster ‘customer of choice’ partnerships with our key strategic suppliers across all BAT geographies and categories. It allowed us to identify, develop, and deploy winning products in a faster, more streamlined, standardised, and collaborative manner. Through this platform, these suppliers now have continuous access to performance metrics, sustainability plans and product ideation functionality. They can engage around-the-clock on tasks, documents and project health checks, all from a centralised location.

It perfectly demonstrates our transition into a data-driven function, continuously evolving our technologies and tools to

harness comprehensive and insightful data, enabling us to make precise decisions.

We are committed to building a procurement function comprised of innovation champions who are digitally fluent, collaborative, agile and adaptable professionals. They are advocates for sustainability, making commercial decisions with a purpose. This collective vision of the BAT procurement team ensures we are fully aligned with the organisation’s transformation into a highgrowth, consumer-centric and globally sustainable enterprise.

We’re coming to the end of 2023 now, so what’s in store for 2024 and beyond, given the progress that has already been made, and also in the context of a “polycrisis” world?

The Business Profile

As we look ahead to 2024, BAT remains committed to building on this strong foundation by extending coverage to further suppliers. This expansion will enable us to further drive governance and performance management, while also focusing on innovation development, risk management and sustainability.

challenges, whether due to trade wars, expanding legislation, or macroeconomics, we are aware of the role responsible sourcing can play in bringing resilience and future-proofing to our organisation.

Responsible sourcing creates shared value, not only for BAT and its customers but also for the environment and society as a whole.

More broadly, I would say the future of procurement is bright, even in the midst of a volatile macro-environment marked by what can only be described as a polycrisis. While the short-term may remain challenging, we’ve demonstrated our value and resilience over the past decade, and now it’s on us to continue building on these successes as we confront new challenges that lie ahead.

Digital transformation goes hand-in-hand with this, but it’s essential to recognise that behind every digital transformation, it’s our people who will make the real difference. Developing our talent, fostering a shared vision, and ensuring their active participation in this transformative journey are integral to our future success.

Procurement’s evolution points to a more strategic, sustainable, responsible and ethical future. As we recognise the escalating

In essence, we are on a journey to shape a procurement landscape that not only meets the demands of today, but also anticipates and addresses the needs of tomorrow.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group

VBG - Unifying a Procurement department Driving an all encompassing transformation V

anquis Banking Group (“VBG”) is a FTSE All Share company, and a leading specialist bank, focused on the near prime and mid cost credit markets.

The Group has been providing financial inclusion, which supports social mobility, to those whose needs have not been well met by traditional lenders for over 140 years. A responsible lender that provides tailored products and services to 1.7 million customers throughout the UK.

“We’re proud to support the 1 in 5 people in the UK who can’t get access to credit products through mainstream banks and building societies. We want to provide a helping hand when others don’t. That’s why our aim is to continue to develop better banking products for the 10-12 million people in the UK who deserve good quality products that they can’t get anywhere as well as to support the whole of the UK population to build up their financial resilience and better protect themselves against the rising cost of living.

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Lending responsibly and acting responsibly has always been at the centre of everything we do. What’s more, helping to aid financial inclusion and social mobility for our customers and the communities they live in is a big part of why we’re here. You only need to look at our purpose to understand what motivates us: Our purpose: To help put people on a path to a better everyday life.

We offer credit cards and loans as Vanquis, Vehicle Finance as Moneybarn and through the award-winning fin-tech brand Snoop, our group can now provide people with personalised insights to help them better manage and understand their finances.

All our credit products are delivered online and are built with customer flexibility in mind, and we also have a great team of colleagues working in our UK call centres and offices to support our customers and the development of more products to help meet their needs.”

Steven you have been Head of Group procurement at Vanquis since October 2022 but this does not tell the entire story of your career so far with the Group.

I joined the Group in 2009 as a procurement manager, this was within one of the divisions called the Consumer Credit Division (“CCD”), this was a doorstep lending division known as Provident or “the Provi”, which sadly was closed back in 2020 due to several reasons.

The Procurement department was newly formed in 2007 and only had coverage within a few departments, I focused on areas where Procurement had been rebuffed previously with offers of support and quickly gained traction, providing excellent assistance in problem areas, plus of course helping stakeholders renegotiate prices and holding supplier to account against SLA and other commitments.

That introduction was provided by VBG Groups Head of Procurement Steven Schools. Steven and his procurement team have been busy unifying and transforming VBG’s procurement function in order to be fit and able to meet the goals and purpose of the wider business.

I was promoted to senior procurement manager in 2012, where I was given two other departments to manage, it was evident that both departments had been operating under the same processes for many years, therefore I could see efficiencies in the operating model for both departments.

The VBG procurement transformation is a story of collaboration and dedication from team members, stakeholders, strategic suppliers and partners, that has culminated in an all-encompassing group wide transformation. As Steven explained.

In 2014 the head of procurement at the time transferred to head up the business change team, this was my opportunity to lead the procurement team, which the business recognised and officially made me the head of Procurement in 2015.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group

Zoot created a plan and delivered a new system within very tight timescales to ensure the continuation of service to our customers. This kind of attitude and success of delivery was evident in their ongoing engagement versus other providers we had, this was incredibly important to VBG’s transformation and path to success.

Steven Schools

The Business Profile

In 2019 VBG had 3 separate procurement departments for the 3 main lending divisions, I saw a huge opportunity to gain massive efficiencies and savings by combining these into a single group function, providing services to all areas of the group. I outlined a high-level plan with benefits in a board paper, which was approved, so from 2020 I was the Group Head of Procurement, which I created a 3-year plan to consolidate, standardise and drive out as much benefits and additional value as possible, including new technologies to have better visibility and control over the groups spend.

It is an interesting time at VBG with the organisation well into an allencompassing transformation. What has brought about this transformation?

Due to the previous operating model for 3 main divisions, this meant 3 separate IT

infrastructures, which were not linked in any way, simple requests to be more joined up, meant huge IT projects to link different parts of the infrastructure to enable, the often-simple request.

As the group’s strategic direction was to be more aligned, a decision was taken to unify the IT systems, several options were tabled and discussed at length, but VBG landed on building a greenfield new IT stack, of which we would migrate the products we offer onto this, and then retire the legacy systems.

The goal here was to have a state-of-the-art cloud-based model, with no legacy systems, which invariably caused issues and reduced VBG’s agility, so that would enable the group to grow and adapt and have a USP over our competitors, have a lower cost base, so that we could offer better more attractive rates to our customers.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group Procurement is at the centre of this transformation. With an overhaul of your tech stack, new processes, operating systems, and much more, there are certainly numerous plates spinning. Talk us through your procurement evolution.

The 1st thing I needed to do was to assess what documents, process and procedures and maturity level of the different areas of the 3 Procurement departments. Once this had been completed a full collaborative and interactive session with the newly formed team was set up, so that we could divide the different areas of focus into smaller SME cohorts within procurement.

These cohorts were focused on smaller

Barkers: Award-winning ethical procurement consultancy; we deliver transformational change through people, technology and industry expertise.

deliverables, which would all add up to the larger transformation taking place.

Choosing our standard, utilising best practice, whilst balancing with external (to procurement) requirements from other departments and the regulators, then implementing the new standard or practice across the group and bringing the business on the journey to a standardised and more mature procurement function. This was particularly important as there were still several areas of the business that had not been mandated to use procurement and so investigations in this area were worrying, but were significantly reduced

OUR SERVICES • Digital Procurement • Procurement Transformation • Cost Transformation • Procurement Managed Service • Contract Lifecycle Management

GET IN TOUCH www.barkersprocurement.com +44(0)330 133 0418 admin@barkersprocurement.com

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by the new requirement to comply and adhere to the new procurement policy and ways of working.

Part of the transformation was to redesign our onboarding and in-life due diligence process for 3rd party suppliers, to take a more risk-based approach to new and ongoing due diligence, this then linked into an update of the tiering formula we use, which the team then went and re-classified all the suppliers to ensure consistency across all of the 1300 suppliers.

The final strategic part of my plan was systems, this focused on 2 areas, P2P/

Coupa and also digitising our due diligence process with Riskonnect.

VBG did not have a single P2P platform, meaning that spend control and data was by no means optimum, performing periodic group wide spend reports took up to 3 weeks to get the full picture due to the disparate systems and data sources from different parts of the group. After the implementation of Coupa spend reports can be done in minutes.

As the implementation of Coupa was pivotal to the success of my plan, we needed an implementation partner that would work as one with my team and the

Barkers are committed to transforming organisations through leveraging the capability of our people, technology and experience to accelerate the impact of procurement. We enable clients to better understand their organisation’s procurement maturity and identify solutions that address the challenges faced, delivering results that work. We are CIPS award-winners, recognised for our outstanding procurement practice, and Coupa Spartan award winners, acknowledged for our digital implementation expertise. Our services include:

• Procurement Transformation • Cost Transformation • Digital Procurement (including implementation and diagnostic services)

• Contract Lifecycle Management • Procurement Managed Services • SME Procurement as a Service Our one-team ethic, working as an extension of a client’s own team, enables us to work with honesty and openness, delivering results on time and within budget. This transparent approach is founded on strong subject matter expertise that complements the needs of our client.

We are committed to leaving a legacy, empowering clients with the skills to continue to excel and grow.

And our carbon neutral status underlines our commitment to acting with accountability and integrity.

Find out more about how we can support you to deliver your Procurement ambitions, go to www.barkersprocurement.com 41

Procurement & Supply Chain | Zoot

Zoot: A trusted decisioning partner in times of change Author Adam Jackson

F

or over 30 years Zoot has been at the forefront of transforming time consuming manual decision making to fully digitalised processes, driving great customer experience.

We were delivering cloud solutions before they became the norm. Today we process billions of automated requests each year across multiple sectors. Our diverse client base includes 3 of the 5 largest global banks, sector specific lending businesses, such as motor finance or credit cards, and commercial loan providers. With our scalable systems we support niche lenders with customers numbering in the thousands to large, multi-product credit providers servicing millions.

Zoot’s position as a trusted partner results from innovative solutions that solve ongoing challenges from market demand and regulatory pressures.

However, as a private company we are comfortable to take a long term view of growth, which true partnership demands, for both our customers and ourselves.

PARTNERSHIP IN ACTION Vanquis Banking Group is a leading specialist bank for millions of UK adults not served by traditional lenders. It is focused on continued development of a range of products, reflecting changes in consumer demands and needs, which they are consolidating onto one platform. Agile technology is key and Zoot was selected as the strategic origination partner on both commercial and technical criteria. We are pleased to say that the relationship has gone from strength to strength.

Our flexible service has delivered crucial functionality in record time allowing the building of many innovations along the way. A modern Low-Code, LowIntegration solution has replaced legacy spaghetti, driving rapid time to market and to production.

Scan or click QR code to watch video

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As testament to our partnership the Vanquis team genuinely own the solution, building and maintaining strategy themselves. Facing future changes in regulation and competition, they know they are in full control of their own platform – this is true customer empowerment.

DELIVERING RESULTS We have many examples of where customers use our flexible, composable, modular technology to push business strategies forward. n

he world’s largest electric vehicle T manufacturer launched its captive European motor finance business in record time

n

major European commercial A lender automated data acquisition with a single platform across

more than 25 countries and then adopted further modules to roll out credit decisioning on that same platform n

he world’s largest alternative payment T provider runs multiple decisioning applications including merchant onboarding, consumer lending and business lending

n A major international plant

manufacturer makes rapid asset finance decisions with a 70% automation rate

n A top 5 global bank implemented enterprise level strategies across multiple business units increasing customer satisfaction and profitability n A specialist mortgage lender launched

sophisticated web screens and backend decisioning to automate their renewals process to 15 minutes.

We could talk about much more...

www.zootsolutions.eu Adam Jackson MD Zoot Enterprises Limited

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Procurement & Supply Chain | Zoot LOWER COST, QUICKER DELIVERY

sooner you see a reduction in bad debt, or improvement in take-up rate, or a better margin. Our customers realise these benefits when working with our solutions.

Zoot’s Low-Code, Low-Integration technology means the lifetime cost of delivering and maintaining a new lending system is significantly lower than with our competitors. The investment to develop it over many years will likely exceed the initial build costs. This is especially true when there is reliance on vendors to support the changes, be they simple strategy updates or more complex data provider integrations. With our technology Zoot can deliver these changes more quickly than anyone else – if you want us to. Even better, your own staff can be trained to do this themselves.

WHY IS ZOOT TECHNOLOGY DIFFERENT? Web customer application pages, data provider integration, decisioning and case management, all underpinned by a single data model, means new data is immediately available across the whole solution without further integration effort – we do away with the downsides of what we call the ‘API ripple’.

You don’t need all our components from Day One? No problem. Our solutions are modular and composable. You can take the components that solve your current challenge knowing that other functionality can be added at a future date.

Cost is only one part of the value equation. The quicker a new market opportunity is taken, the quicker you see a return on the investment. The sooner a new credit strategy it put in place, the Scan or click QR code to find out more

O R I G I N AT I O N

Motor Finance Automation

Future-proof your motor finance operation with an all-in-one digital lending service

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Zoot’s digitalised, all-in-one loan origination solution for motor finance provides the platform for efficient change with the agility to enable ongoing innovation at pace.

Make continual improvement in your lending process without the headache of continuous system and data integrations

Make faster changes to improve take up rates and lending performance

Scale your business without scaling cost

Become an agile digital lending operation

Benefits

New data and services to make faster smarter decisions and improve the customer journey

Ability to pivot your origination quickly to capitalise on new business opportunities

Exploit sophisticated riskbased pricing and champion challenger testing

Implement and manage operational Consumer Duty requirements

Business and technical users can control the entire system in-house

Faster underwriting through intuitive case management

c All-in-one means just that! Everything you need to get a smarter loan decision is fully integrated within Zoot’s service so no delays and unnecessary costs. Even better – you have the option of training your teams to manage the entire service internally.

ZOOT’S ORIGINATION FOR MOTOR FINANCE | ZOOTSOLUTIONS.EU

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And there are other benefits our customers see.

The ease of integrating additional data providers gives you negotiating power on data costs As new data sources become available, you can be the first to benefit from them in your strategies The speed of strategy testing and development, supported by champion / challenger configuration, drives controlled increases in levels of automated decisions allowing staff to be deployed where their skills are most valuably applied on marginal or high value cases Multi-stage processing means that you can configure strategy to deliver a rapid decision-in-principle and a rapid final decision giving great customer experience Ease of sophisticated strategy implementation gives you the option to offer alternative lending instead of saying ‘No’ With the ease and speed of making changes, Consumer Duty in the UK can be turned into competitive advantage as Zoot is proud to regulatory interpretation stand on its record of evolves innovation, on-time and onbudget delivery, empowerment, award winning support and reliability that have made us a trusted partner for so many customers over many years. Let us explore how we can repeat this with you.

Contact us at hello@zootweb.eu to start a conversation.

Futureproof your lending business with Low-Code, Low-Integration, composable digital decisioning services.

Adam Jackson

www.zootsolutions.eu Zoot Enterprises Limited Platform, New Station Street, Leeds, LS1 4JB Telephone: +44 113 246 8693 45

Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group Continued from page 41 wider business, flexing where needed and of course at a reasonable price.

After looking at multiple different options we selected Barkers. Barkers shone through the RFP process and it became evident that their flexible and innovative approach, far outweighed the other well respected suppliers, who had bid for the work. The project hit bumps in the road, mainly from other projects running in parallel that impacted our delivery, but I’m very pleased to say that each challenge was debated and solutionised, meaning that I was very pleased with the fixed price project, which was delivered on time and within budget and to an amazing standard.

We are in the final stages of our digitisation of Riskonnect, this project has been just as intense and required far more attention, due to its’ bespoke nature of our requirements for the configuration of their TPRM Module, I’m pleased to say that after some very large challenges, that we are on track to deliver this into production by December.

In many procurement transformation stories there is an underlying narrative of procurement battling for buy in from the exec leadership, but in your case the entire organisation is on a transformation journey together. Based on your significant experience how beneficial to you believe this has been to the overall achievements and aims?

It has been hugely beneficial, as the board desired a group wide unified approach, this

enabled me to produce a business case for unification of the departments and the wider transformation and maturity of procurement within VBG. Procurement and Finance were running 2 parallel and inter-dependent projects, as finance were implementing a new single source general ledger, this was inherently linked into the deployment of Coupa.

That meant that we had a single goal, but sometimes competing priorities and as an additional accountable exec to work with, it was very important that we remained aligned and practical, to ensure both our projects were delivered together, which they were.

Barkers who were completely new to VBG’, went through a comprehensive tender process, where they outshone their competitors, by providing me the comfort that they could be flexible and adaptable, whilst bringing knowledge to the implementation that had not been done previously.

The Coupa project team which was made up of a part of my team and Barkers, worked hard to collaborate and give direction to other 3rd party providers, who were engaged in the project, this

The Business Profile

cross project, cross functional working was essential to the delivery of both the general ledger and Coupa within the tight timescales we had set for ourselves.

Barkers helped VBG in defining business requirements, ways of working and future system design by collaborating with various internal SME’s across VBG. Being realistic of course there will be challenges and points of friction given the volume of moving parts. What would you point to as the primary challenges, how have you attempted to work around these?

The primary challenges that we faced in this project were: n M any interdependencies from other

projects and areas outside of my control; n B alancing 2 FTE resource in my team

to dedicate to this project for 9 months, with how to re-allocate their BAU day job tasks; n B eing mis-informed or not being

advised or key items/strategy changes or new issues; n P icking the correct suppliers to

ensure success.

I ensured that my 2 FTE split their time, so that they could attend key project meetings of the other projects where we had dependencies, this was critical to our success, as this les to far less

primary challenges happening, although did not prevent it entirely. This enabled both projects to run better, so both of us were far more aligned and led to speedier discussions, or to highlight areas where one decision would affect another in a negative way.

I re-evaluated the FTE’s BAU tasks and trained some other team members to do the most critical tasks that were still required on a day-to-day basis, then took a risk based approach to other items, where I advised key stakeholders or the new approach and to expect some deviations, whilst this project was ongoing, also mentioning any direct benefits to them after the systems had been implemented.

VBG’s experience with other system integrators across the group had made myself very guarded and cautious for my own project. One of our current P2P system builds was not functioning optimally from a previous installation back in 2018. The specialist nature of our system integration challenges meant that the success of system transformations was heavily reliant on deploying a provider who would deliver against very tight timescales, and to budget. We aspired for a partner who ‘got us’ as a business and would work flexibly in a very challenging time for our business, in an ever-evolving business transformation.

Barkers delivered this and more; acting as a true extension of our own team, the Barkers Digital team worked seamlessly with us to guide us to, and deliver, the best technical solution.

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Procurement & Supply Chain | UST

Discover a digital transformation partner with a global footprint and boundless impact. ust.com/en/boundless

The Business Profile | ADVERTORIAL

How the right partner can add value to your digital transformation journey The evolving landscape It is essential to look at more than the solutions as the business transformation journey evolves.

Identifying key tech and implementation partners who can work collaboratively is also crucial— partners who can quickly mobilize leading expertise and deploy mature managed services.

A transformation story In Vanquis Banking Group’s (VBG) case, it was paramount that they select a partner that would fulfill and meet the vision of VBG and collaborate as one team. They needed to enlist the right support for designing and implementing their technology strategy. UST has been one of those steadfast partners for the past eight years, and our teams have been working alongside them on their journey.

The collaborative partnership Initially, the partnership expanded from providing crucial IT operations and cybersecurity services across legacy technology infrastructures to modernizing and transforming the core systems to enable a single, flexible, lower TCO stack across all operating units. All this with a continuous focus on minimizing business risk and introduced a high degree of resilience and robustness.

Over time, this focus has evolved to enable the group to become a digital leader as they embark on a major transformation journey. UST has been helping the group modernize and transform the core systems to enable a single, flexible, lower TCO stack across all operating units. The underlying approach has been combining DevOps and Agile work practices with a focus on customer experience to help Vanquis become a truly product-centric financial institution.

Bringing value to business The key to successful transformation lies in customer centricity and proving business value.

To help ensure technology investments are well made, UST has been working with Vanquis to prototype ideas and new services in our Banking Technology Sandbox. However, beyond technology, mutual success comes from building a trusted partnership, where goals and key objectives are aligned and the business outcome is delivered.

D p b

u

Learn more about our Banking Sandbox

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Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group Continued from page 47 As previously mentioned the processes and technology landscape have significantly changed, how important has not only the solutions but the ability to work collaboratively with key tech and implementation partners been to the process so far? Was the opportunity to work with partners that did not fall into the ‘one size fits’ all mentality an important factor in selecting specific partners?

A key consideration for the overall VBG IT strategy was to select strategic partners with products and services to meet the differing needs of the business. The business detailed key architectural principals and non-functional requirements, that weren’t to be deviated from. This helped in the selection process, as we assessed different suppliers’ offerings against the overall architecture that was required to be built.

During the RFP process, the different stakeholder teams understood that this was very different to what had been done before, so they knew they would need partners who could flex and change direction if required, without masses of resistance or contractual debates and negotiations.

Due to the individual IT systems for the separate divisions, we sometimes had several suppliers that were providing the same product or service; however it was of paramount importance that we selected a partner that would fulfil and meet the vision of VBG and work with us, collaborating with VBG as one team, helping us design and implement the future IT for VBG. Zoot who provided a decision engine to us, stood out as they had already previously stepped in, when another partner had

The Business Profile

started to struggle with a critical delivery, the impact of this would have been catastrophic to one of VBG’s division, Zoot created a plan and delivered a new system within very tight timescales to ensure the continuation of service to our customers.

This kind of attitude and success of delivery was evident in their ongoing engagement versus other providers we had, this was incredibly important to VBG’s transformation and path to success.

UST who provide many resourcing IT services, had also provided different services to several parts of the group since 2016, were considered in the overall resourcing model mix for delivery, as it was pivotal to have the right balance between system integrators, in house teams and on and off shore resources. Due to previous successful deliveries and a very flexible contract, this

allowed for UST and VBG to contract knowing that both parties would receive what they expected, but with the added benefit of being able to flex up and down on resources at a moment’s notice.

Barkers who were completely new to VBG’, went through a comprehensive tender process, where they outshone their competitors, by providing me the comfort that they could be flexible and adaptable, whilst bringing knowledge to the implementation that had not been done previously. The one-team approach was also underpinned by a sense of accountability that we recognised and could rely on. As with any complex system change, there can be unwelcome challenges; the tenacity of the combined Barkers and VBG team overcame these with pragmatism, openness and honesty.

51

Procurement & Supply Chain | Vanquis Banking Group A key point for VBG was enhancing the knowledge of our own team. The Barkers Digital team promoted knowledge sharing throughout the project to further improve our own in-house capabilities.

We have touched upon processes and technology so what about people? This procurement transformation will place the function on the front foot. Pro-active not reactive. How proud are you of the team during this transformation? Is it fair to say that creating an entrepreneurial culture will be the backbone to future successes?

The team have been amazing, really embracing my vision of a unified group department, the team went above and beyond and were really invested in the departments maturity and ways of working.

They have worked really well with challenging the BAU practices and all helped to shape the department to where it is today. Without their effort and enthusiasm, we would not have been able to achieve what we have, plus in a really short space of time.

The team have also been the groups advocates on this transformation, publicising what we are doing, what we have done to key stakeholders to bring VBG on the journey, communicating the rationale, so that stakeholders were bought in and not obtrusive to any new processes and procedures. This was particularly important, as different areas of the business had different previous levels of interaction with procurement and supplier governance,

ranging from reasonably embedded to nonexistent, therefore a cultural shock had to be managed carefully, as going from nothing to mature in one jump, was quite the leap.

However stakeholders were keen to learn and embraced the change, but I do put that down to great comms and stakeholder management by the team itself in all areas.

Dividing up the overall goal into small cohorts really worked, as the team were invested in their deliverable(s) and so could see the fruits of their labour and also see the benefits and how they were pivotal to the overall strategy to unify and mature the department as a whole, which in turn would mean a more cohesive alignment to the overall business’ strategy.

Much has been achieved so far but there is still much to do. What do you want to achieve in the coming 12 months?

From a procurement perspective I want to finish delivering the Riskonnect TPRM module and start to use that from January 2024, I also want to continue to deliver what the business requires by further leveraging the new technology and access to fast data, which we didn’t have previously.

In conjunction I am nearly 12 months into a new 3-year plan for my supplier management department, so have plans to unify, standardise and implement new processes and procedures to mature this area for in-life supplier relationship management across VBG.

The Business Profile

Due to previous successful deliveries and a very flexible contract, this allowed for UST and VBG to contract knowing that both parties would receive what they expected, but with the added benefit of being able to flex up and down on resources at a moment’s notice.

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54|Sustainab Mars Verra Gartner

bility

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Sustainability | Mars

Mars “reuses” fan-favorite ads ® ® for M&M’s , TWIX , ® SNICKERS and Ben’s ™ Original to deliver message of hope for climate action

The Business Profile

I

n a first-of-its-kind digital and out-ofhome campaign for the company, Mars revives iconic advertisements from beloved brands to engage and inspire the public around climate action.

publication of Mars Net Zero Roadmap to accelerate action towards achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050, including a new Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) approved target to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 across its full value chain.

n T he Mars campaign is aimed at raising

consumer awareness by ‘reusing’ old, iconic advertisements and showcasing creative ways to leave a lighter environmental footprint in advertising, following the recent publication of the Mars Net Zero Roadmap. n T he focus on engaging a wider

consumer audience comes after a recent Ipsos/Mars survey involving over 14,000 people across the world’s seven largest economies found, on average, 69% of adults want businesses to focus on tackling climate change as much as, or even more than, economic issues. n A ndrew Clarke, Member of the Global

Mars, Incorporated Leadership Team and President of Mars Wrigley, welcomed the campaign as a fun way to harness the power of iconic brands and marketing to inspire and drive consumer awareness.

Mars, Incorporated has launched a firstof-its-kind digital and out-of-home campaign that ‘reuses’ fan-favorite advertisements giving them a second life with new messages of hope and progress around climate.

The campaign, titled “Healthy Planet Productions”, follows the recent

Advertisements in the Mars ‘reused’ advertisement campaign will run in the U.S., U.K. and Mexico across Meta platforms and YouTube and will include out-of-home activations in select markets.

In the U.S., the campaign will highlight advertisements for M&M’s®, TWIX® and Ben’s Original™. The U.K. will feature Bounty®, M&M’s® and TWIX®. Mexico will include M&M’s®.

Andrew Clarke, Global President of Mars Wrigley, said consumers want to connect with brands on critical issues: “They share our urgency in tackling climate change, but it’s not always clear what companies are doing to deliver real change. That is why we decided to use our iconic brands in the adverts consumers know and love and deliver a message of hope and optimism on climate change. We are taking action now to reduce carbon emissions - from working with farmers to protect forests to sourcing renewable electricity. We want consumers to know we’re working on having tangible impact now.”

Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer said, “When we launched our Net Zero Roadmap back in September, we talked about delivering real impact and the need to inspire and involve everyone in the challenge.

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Sustainability | Mars With this campaign, Mars is taking the work we are doing across our value chain to reduce carbon emissions and making it easy for consumers to engage and feel good about the products and brands they know and love.”

The Mars ‘reused’ advertisements campaign reduced production emissions by cutting emissions and removing the need for travel, filming and set production by repurposing content; and it minimized remaining emissions by prioritizing carbon avoidance as a key

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consideration in decision-making and creative development, including forgoing emission-intensive animation techniques for more sustainable methods. Mars also partnered with organizations and businesses committed to sustainability and that hold industry designations, such

as Certified Green Energy Offices and Studios.

Find more information on the Mars Net Zero Roadmap at www.mars.com/ sustainability-plan/healthy-planet/netzero-2050

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Sustainability | Verra

Verra Launches New Era Protection with Transform REDD Methodology

V

erra, the nonprofit that serves as the world’s leading standards setter for climate action and sustainable development, today unveiled its transformative new methodology for protecting forests. It includes a new approach to setting baselines for calculating emission reductions from forest conservation activities under the landmark Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program. And, for the first time, it better aligns with the national accounting approaches under the Paris Agreement – opening the door to a new era of global investment in protecting nature.

The new methodology, which comes as the world prepares to meet in Dubai for the latest global climate conference, has been under development since 2020. It covers REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, an approach that covers activities that range from stopping illegal logging to creating alternative livelihoods for forest communities. It builds on the system that has protected tens of thousands of hectares of the world’s forests and moved hundreds of millions of dollars into communities across the developing world who are the stewards of these forests.

“Keeping forests standing is vital to achieving our global climate goals. tation accounts for as much as a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon markets are the best and most readily available tool we have for forest protection. Today marks a substantial advancement for ensuring the integrity of REDD and supporting the scaling up of these critical activities.” Toby JansonSmith, Chief Program Development and Innovation Officer, Verra

Under the new methodology, Verra will now lead and manage the baseline-setting process, using jurisdictional-level data that meet stringent requirements and a robust development process. The program will employ advanced remote-sensing technologies coupled with a thorough risk assessment to determine the expected deforestation for a project area, ensuring that the number of verified emission reductions from all projects in a jurisdiction is consistent with jurisdictional-scale accounting. Overall, the new approach

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a of Forest mative ensures consistency, reduces the potential for conflict of interest and adds greater quality control while better aligning with and supporting government action.

“Today, the carbon market takes a leap forward to ensuring REDD projects deliver nationally aligned high integrity credits.

With this new methodology, buyers can be confident that they are making meaningful and credible contributions to climate action, while also supporting biodiversity and local communities, leadingto higher market values for projects.” Naomi Swickard, Senior Director for Redd+ Program Development and Innovation, verra The new methodology is the result of collaboration and consensus-building across carbon market experts and stakeholders. In addition to Verra, co-authors include Tim Pearson of GreenCollar, Kevin Brown and Sarah Walker of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Till Neeff, Simon Koenig of Climate Focus, and Manuel Estrada.

The forthcoming allocation tool that will complement the methodology was

authored in collaboration with Estrada, J. Ronald Eastman of Clark Labs, Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr. of Clark University, Rebecca Dickson of TerraCarbon, and Lucio Pedroni and Juan Felipe Villegas Echeverri of Carbon Decisions International.

Verra has shared a detailed roadmap for how all current Avoided Unplanned Deforestation (AUD) projects will transition to the new methodology and what that entails. Verra has also committed to providing a path to Core Carbon Principles (CCP) labeling under the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM) for historically verified emission reductions and issued VCS carbon credits, once the VCS program is assessed by the ICVCM as CCP-Eligible and this methodology is included in a CCP-Approved category. The path will enable project proponents to voluntarily transition their project(s) to the new methodology and adjust historic project calculations accordingly. More details on this pathway as it relates to different methodologies will be available in the coming months.

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Sustainability | Gartner

Gartner Says Half of Sustainable Procurement Leaders Report Limited Progress in Addressing Modern Slavery Risk Supply Chain Visibility Alone is Not Enough to Adequately Mitigate Forced Labor Issues

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Sustainability | Gartner

S

eventy-one percent of sustainable procurement leaders consider addressing modern slavery risk a key priority, but just half report making effective progress on the issue, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) cannot rely on achieving supply chain visibility alone to address modern slavery risks where adults and/or children are victims of forced labor. However, CPOs must take a series of ongoing, proactive actions to mitigate and remediate forced labor being used within their organizations’ supply chains.

“Modern slavery is a risk to almost all supply chains,” said Laura Rainier, Senior Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice. “It’s also one of the most challenging risks CPOs have to address; rooting out the practice requires visibility into multiple tiers of suppliers and a willingness to address issues in areas of the supply chain that traditional due diligence processes often fail to reach.”

Gartner completed a global survey in May 2023 of 104 procurement leaders that had recently participated in a sustainability initiative on their organizations’ progress in addressing modern slavery risk. Additional client conversations have indicated that procurement leaders often struggle after investing in supplier visibility and related technology initiatives, constrained from making further progress on the issue due a lack of resources, strategy or capability.

“Procurement leaders who have made progress on multitier supplier visibility should feel encouraged as accomplishing this step alone can be an overwhelming task,” said Rainier. “Once a baseline of visibility is achieved, however, procurement leaders need to embrace the ongoing work that is required to accurately monitor and mitigate the risks associated with the use of forced labor in global supply chains.”

Gartner’s research recommends that CPOs start in addressing modern slavery risk with a focus on building greater visibility into their supply chains, including prioritizing the Tier-2 and Tier-3 supplier relationships most at risk via geography or commodity source. Rainier notes that achieving data visibility among these suppliers requires a mix of incentives and contractual obligations, and that technology will play a critical role in enabling the ability to map supply chain visibility.

Mitigate and Remediate Modern Slavery Risks To avoid stalling progress on addressing modern slavery risk, Rainier says CPOs need to take a series of actions beyond improving supplier visibility to mitigate and remediate the risk on an ongoing basis.

CPOs should: n S et and cascade policies: Ensure

expectations around forced labor and modern slavery are clearly outlined in the supplier code of conduct. Suppliers

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Seventy-one percent of sustainable procurement leaders consider addressing modern slavery risk a key priority, but just half report making effective progress on the issue, according to a survey

by Gartner, Inc. must understand the nature and importance of the risk and how to comply.

Suppliers must also cascade the supplier code of conduct and related policies around modern slavery to their suppliers. n C onduct supplier trainings: Ensure

that suppliers are aware of policies, especially when they go beyond the legal requirements. Support suppliers to identify risk factors. Train them to conduct due diligence on their recruitment agencies and upstream suppliers.

organizations to be ready to respond.

Forging partnerships ahead of time, including with specific membership organizations focused on modern slavery, can help in ensuring best practices are followed in providing remedy or mitigating risk factors.

Remedies should address the root cause of the issue and consider whether earlier steps in the plan, such as ensuring policies set for suppliers, are being adhered to. n E mbed risk mitigation throughout

the supplier lifecycle: Starting with supplier selection and onboarding, embed modern slavery risk mitigation into the supplier life cycle starting with the RFP process, through supplier onboarding, contracts, scorecards and remediation policies.

Gartner clients can learn more in: 10 Steps to Address Modern Slavery Risks in the Supply Chain Nonclients can learn more in: Leadership Vision for Chief Procurement Officers

n A ssess suppliers: Traditional

supplier assessments often miss risks associated with forced labor.

Mechanisms must be put in place to verify that local site auditors speak the language of workers and additional, non-traditional assessments should be contemplated with high-risk markets or commodities. n R emedy issues: When issues are

uncovered in audits it is critical for 65

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Technology | YDUQS

A Lesson in Transformation Alexandre Moco Barros only joined YDUQS in October 2017, but has immediately put his mark on a company that has enjoyed more than 50 years of success to become Brazil’s biggest higher education organisation. But how do you further transform a company that is already entrenched and so successful in the region? Alexandre highlights how there is always room for improvement, and has already maintained progress through a digital transformation of procurement operations.

Hi Alexandre. YDUQS has made a name for itself in Brazil over the past five decades as a source for learning? A great place to start, then, would be for you to teach us about the company’s evolution and success story…

YDUQS is the largest higher education company in Brazil in terms of the number of students, which has now surpassed 1.3 million. It is also the largest in terms of market value, having grown and grown since the inception of its Estacio brand in Rio de Janeiro more than 50 years ago.

Now, in addition to Estacio, YDUQS brands also include IBMEC, Wyden, Idomed, Damasio, Q Concursos and many more. In this present day, we exist as an educational technology and services group, but with the

same mission as when we started – to raise the quality of higher education in Brazil.

This is now achieved through three large business units – on-campus learning, digital learning and premium operations.

It has been important to diversify over the years and to take advantage of the digital culture we now live in. That being said, it is just as important to ensure that people from all social levels and all over Brazil, have access to our services.

Since 2007, YDUQS has been a publicly-held company, but we still rely on the tradition and reputation that was formed more than 50 years ago. Our purpose remains to drive development through education, generating a positive and lasting social impact on people’s lives, business, and indeed the world.

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We must continue to try and transform Brazilian education through the extensive use of technology, to support the development of young people and adults from all income levels, from north to south, with sustainable practices across all stakeholders.

Alexandre Barros 69

Technology | YDUQS We must continue to try and transform Brazilian education through the extensive use of technology, to support the development of young people and adults from all income levels, from north to south, with sustainable practices across all stakeholders.

To that end, what challenges or industry shifts have you noticed in recent years, that you’ve had to respond to, in order to stay true to these missions?

Education is naturally important in every country. Why do you think your approach has been so well received in Brazil especially, though?

From a macroeconomic standpoint, there are higher inflation rates and limited incomes, therefore lowering purchasing power within society. In addition, we also see a large number of students migrating from campus learning to digital learning.

Both of these elements connect with the need to implement a successful digital transformation.

In a culturally diverse country with social contrasts, we understand that access to quality education is the basis for social mobility for millions of people. Our mission, therefore, goes beyond expanding and democratizing access to education.

We want our students to be agents of transformation of their own histories and of society.

For us, managing our social and environmental impacts and the humanistic training of our students is done with the same strictness and discipline that we apply to our economic and financial management. It is precisely in this exact scenario that our governance is united into one - a management practice expanded by ESG practices.

Technological advances, environmental challenges and the need to prepare millions of people for the job market are the foremost topics in today’s world; and we know that education is at the heart of it all, as a path and tool for the change we want to see.

Indeed, higher education in Brazil is facing a lot of challenges.

For example, if we are being as efficient as we possibly can, and being smarter with savings, then we can keep average ticket prices at a level that all students can afford.

With that in mind, we have had to implement cost reduction projects by negotiating all contracts related to more representative categories in terms of spend, such as marketing, real estate, IT and facilities.

More broadly, we have engaged with several new partners to build on that philosophy and to implement a digital transformation project across the whole company.

I know that this digital transformation effort has been extensive, so please do build on your point above to introduce this process…

Continued on page 74

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Technology | YDUQS

The Business Profile | ADVERTORIAL

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We add quality information to optimize processes and enable the potential of your information to make quick and accurate decisions.

Data cleansing project is the premise for different initiatives in companies, in the areas of Purchasing, Finance, Logistics, Tax, Production, Maintenance and Management, and our projects offer a proven return on investment.

Through our specialist software, we maintain the quality of Direct and Indirect Materials, Services, Suppliers and Customers, eliminating duplications and generic descriptions, categorizing items by family, carrying out fiscal and tax classification and translating descriptions into different languages. Our software integrates with any ERP on the market and makes it possible to insert new items into the master data with a unique and unambiguous description.

Among the main benefits obtained in our projects, we highlight the reduction in the cost and lead time of the purchasing process, reduction in incorrect purchases, emergencies and returns, reduction in stock value and increase in turnover, reduction of multiplicities in the master data, tax compliance and increased confidence in managed data.

For more information, contact us through https://conteudo.astrein.com.br/data-cleansing-projects Whatsapp +55 11 2824-5148 or e-mail contato@astrein.com.br.

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Technology | YDUQS

Well, from a procurement perspective, which is my area of expertise, we looked to address initial pain points such as: being unable to implement an electronic purchase catalogue in the marketplace we had at the time; an inability to conduct reverse electronic auctions; our material registration process creating duplicates and contracting errors; invoice delays due to our legacy system; similar delays with contract signings; payment tracking shortfalls; a lack of mobility in approval processes; and a series of other pitfalls in areas such as budget monitoring, stock replenishment and general administration.

In light of this scenario, we hired a consultancy that designed a future REQ-to-Pay roadmap. Based on this

work, we went to the market through a comprehensive RFP, and contracted various solutions.

These included: n

New marketplace - Ariba

n

SAP mobile tool – SAP Fiori

n

Material database solution - Astrein

n

Electronic catalogue solution - Vaees

n

Supplier qualification tool - Uqualify

n

In-voice portal tool - Tech Consulting

n

Contract platform - DocuSign

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Material Requirements Planning

That is an extensive list – can we perhaps focus on one or two of these as significant examples of successful integration, and their immediate impact?

The reason this was so important, is due to data. Data would be the key to how well the following tools and integrations would work. Simply, they wouldn’t work if they were dealing with duplicated or incorrect data. We had to get this part right before moving on to the next stages. It made all the difference to get this done early. To no longer be working with a ‘garbage in, garbage out’ process, was vital.

I think it makes sense to start with Astrein as the role they played in our digital transformation was very important to us. We previously had a lot of problems with materials, where SKU numbers were duplicated or even wrong, and the tool we deployed from Astrein rectified this.

Another important transition at this point was to then change our marketplace, where we would carry out transactions with suppliers. We did this with the help of SAP and their Ariba solution. It wasn’t easy to prepare for such a change, but the result is that we can now conduct reverse

n

solution - SAP Module n

Chatbot - OMAR

n

Purchase robot (‘Rosie’)

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Technology | YDUQS

We have almost 100 units spread out across all areas of Brazil, so you can imagine the confusion across these units if it’s not clear and seamless when contracts, invoices or information is shared.

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public auctions which we weren’t able to do through our previous marketplace.

These initial steps were hugely significant and kickstarted in late 2019. Of course, I don’t have to explain how significant that timing ended up being, as we essentially embarked on a transformation before everyone else started doing so a few months later.

After such a substantial effort to accumulate and organise large swathes of data, which of your other aforementioned solutions have looked to leverage that data and take you to the next level since then?

Well, at the other side of the main pandemic storm came our new SAP mobile tool using SAP Fiori, as well as a new contract platform via DocuSign. Pivotally, we also introduced a specific marketplace, not only for dealing with suppliers, but to also capture the invoices issued by suppliers, which was a stated problem before.

We have almost 100 units spread out across all areas of Brazil, so you can imagine the confusion across these units if it’s not clear and seamless when contracts, invoices or information is shared. For example, if it’s not clear whether a material has reached a unit yet, then we don’t know whether it’s time to pay the supplier or not. We needed that smooth translation of information and of communication.

This naturally has big benefits in terms of partner relationships as well, as there are never any delays or confusion between the organisations.

Internally, it has also been very helpful for each individual employee, who takes pride in being able to see the whole picture in real-time, and confidently relay information to customers or suppliers.

Further feeding into this, and another important addition, has been our MRP solution by SAP. This gives those workers a specific system to access, to see which materials are needed and which have been automatically requested. Before, they would have had to go through a lot of manual effort to work out these metrics themselves and set quantities from their calculations. Now, this MRP is a flexible solution that we can alter according to need, but that responds primarily to centrally-set stock levels that the company states we need. Time, effort and errors are all saved as a result.

As a final question regarding your recent digital transformation, we must of course ask about Rosie?

Ah yes, this was a more recent addition in the past year or so, that builds upon our efforts to be more automated; especially now that our processes are so much smoother and our data is clear and accurate.

Rosie is a purchasing robot, who we named after the Jetsons family character on television. This new way of working involves thousands of pieces of materials, that took up valuable time of our buyers’ historically.

Rosie is now taking that strain away from them, where they can instead dedicate their time to other activities.

77

Technology Technology||Zalando YDUQS Just like our MRP, we can configure Rosie to a certain amount – in this case, setting the metric to money-spent (reais).

After such a remarkable journey in recent years, is it possible to compare the company from 2019, to the company of today?

We have certainly changed a lot. Back in 2018, our total spend was around 1.2 billion reais. Now, that spend sits at 1.9 billion reais. This is because of how we’ve been able to expand, to acquire and to grow as a result of the efficiencies we’ve introduced and the savings we’ve made.

The digital transformation of our supply chain has been critical to these group efforts. And it certainly hasn’t been a case of replacing people with machines to get there. In fact, our headcount in the procurement department has almost doubled in that time, to help us keep up with our own ambitious scaling plans.

As you can see, it was so important for us to start this transformation – to get our data right, to introduce automation and AI, to be better in our correspondence with partners through innovations like Rosie, and to enrol the help of partners like SAP and Astrein. We haven’t even touched upon additional innovations like our new chatbot, which further showcases how comprehensive this transformation has been.

However, one thing that is also important to mention, is that this isn’t solely a journey based around technology…

We have certainly changed a lot. Back in 2018, our total spend was around 1.2 billion reais. Now, that spend sits at 1.9 billion reais. This is because of how we’ve been able to expand, to acquire and to grow as a result of the efficiencies we’ve introduced and the savings we’ve made.

What would you say the transformation is ultimately based around, then?

As always, our sustainability, and our ESGbased mission.

We’re not just transforming our company to be the best. We are doing so to be sustainable, because the service we provide is so valuable to so many people in the country. There is a responsibility for us to be the best we can be, and to set an example for our suppliers and partners also working in the industry. With that in mind, we continue to dedicate a lot of time to understanding the level of ESG we need to embed into our supplier relationships. This will be something to watch out for in the future, for sure.

As a market leader, you are clearly setting positive examples. To that end, how do you feel that other organisations could learn from your philosophy and your recent transformation efforts?

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I really want the message to be put out there, that you can always do better. And right now, the way to do better is by taking advantage of new technologies, while keeping hold of your values and vision. It can’t just be innovation for the sake of innovation.

However, when done for the right reasons, we have shown what can be achieved if you really go for it. We have digitised almost our entire supply chain in quite a short amount of time. There is always a reason to be quite cautious, or to delay, or to think about the risks. But my message is to think about the positive outcomes, and to target the supply chain specifically.

better communicate with suppliers and partners, you determine availability to customers, you free up revenue, you reduce errors, engage with staff, become more sustainable and green, and achieve so many other benefits. It can all be realised by targeting your digital transformation towards your supply chain.

Hopefully the global challenges of the past few years will have motivated people to take those first steps towards a more digitised, efficient and valuable supply chain.

The supply chain transcends all aspects of the business. You reduce costs, you

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Technology | SpendHQ

SpendHQ procurement base P

ierre Laprée is the Chief Product Officer at the best-in-class procurement solution provider SpendHQ. He joined SpendHQ with the company’s July 2022 acquisition of Per Angusta, which he founded in 2012, serving as CEO. During that time, he grew Per Angusta to more than 150 global customers and created a new category of technology named Procurement Performance Management (PPM). He is currently responsible for driving procurement-based innovation at SpendHQ as well as leading the company’s product vision and roadmap.

We caught up with Pierre and got a great snapshot of what is in offer at SpendHQ. Pierre, what is SpendHQ? SpendHQ is the leading best-in-class provider of enterprise Spend Intelligence and Procurement Performance Management solutions. Our platforms help procurement teams identify, extract, Pierre Laprée

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ed innovation and execute on purchasing and sourcing improvement opportunities.

SpendHQ offers Spend Intelligence (SI) and Procurement Performance Management (PPM), which make up our strategic procurement platform. Spend Intelligence helps organisations normalise, categorise, and evaluate organisational spend data holistically in search of spend optimisation opportunities.

Procurement Performance Management helps teams drive execution by harnessing project visibility, clear communication, and results tracking so they can turn actionable insights into strategic, measurable impact.

Together, these products fill a critical strategic management gap in the solution landscape by allowing teams to methodically find and execute on opportunities while clearly demonstrating their overall value to the business.

Backed by nearly 20 years of procurement

expertise, $8 trillion of analysed spend, and 500+ global customers and growing, SpendHQ’s solutions give businesses the rapid, accurate spend intelligence and performance optimization needed to drive better financial and non-financial outcomes, advance procurement maturity, and illustrate their impact with data.

What issue does your solution solve?

SpendHQ bridges the strategic solution gap in procurement by providing teams with the tools they need to find and execute on opportunities while also making their strategic impact clear to the entire organization. Starting with Spend Intelligence, teams overcome fragmented spend data and gain visibility into their entire spend profiles so they can evaluate spend activity across the organization.

Companies can then leverage Procurement Performance Management to more efficiently communicate with stakeholders, allocate resources, and confidently report on financial and non-financial impact.

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Technology | SpendHQ

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Who is your solution aimed at?

What does your perfect client look like SpendHQ’s platform helps procurement teams in every industry across the world, regardless of their location in the procurement maturity curve. SpendHQ helps procurement and finance functions at companies of all sizes, ranging from MidMarket to Large Enterprise ($1 billion + in revenue), identify value and drive savings.

What is the biggest challenge SpendHQ faces?

SpendHQ’s largest challenge lies in growing brand awareness globally.

Because we were two separate companies (Per Angusta and SpendHQ) until July of 2022, the SpendHQ brand name is less well-known in the EMEA market. While all businesses need a way to find and execute on opportunities, being able to sift through the various offerings to determine the right solution is easier said than done.

use of AI to quickly clean, normalise, and categorise data for faster implementation and easier adoption. As a result, teams can drive measurable value in a fraction of the time compared to other solutions.

Additionally, SpendHQ’s solutions were built by procurement professionals with decades of experience who wanted to solve the problems plaguing their work daily. As a result, the platform is built on a database of $8 trillion of analysed spend and best practices from across the industry, allowing teams to benchmark their performance against industry best practices.

Finally, our Strategic Procurement Platform simply provides better results. It rapidly categorises 97% of organisational spend leveraging our best-in-class spend taxonomy. It also comes equipped with 40+ integrations with market-leading partners like Coupa, EcoVadis, and Corcentric and several flexible data intake options so teams can streamline their work.

Why pick SpendHQ SpendHQ’s unified Strategic Procurement Platform has several unique selling points that make it a clear choice for procurement teams.

First, the unification of spend intelligence and performance management makes the process of finding and acting on opportunities seamless.

Secondly, our platform offers faster time to value by leveraging our experience and 83

Technology | Amazon

Amazon Business’ State of Procurement Report Reveals Key Procurement Strategies for 2024: Increasing Budgets and Investments in Tech Third annual report reveals that procurement leaders are keen to invest in new technologies, including artificial intelligence, to improve efficiency and strategic capabilities, and also expect to increase their spending

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A

mazon Business (NASDAQ: AMZN) has released its 2024 State of Procurement Report, revealing that a majority of procurement teams expect their budgets to rise next year, and many leaders are evaluating how they can further invest in tools and technologies to deliver optimization and a more strategic approach to business buying. The report highlights business-to-business (B2B) trends and global insights around procurement needs, priorities, and challenges. It features insights from government, financial services, hospitality and food service, health care services, manufacturing, medical and pharma, retail, technology, and telecom industries, and includes insights from

buyers in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK, and U.S. The report shows that more than half (53%) of respondents expect their budgets to increase in 2024. Following a year of focusing on reducing costs, procurement leaders are now planning to use the funds they saved to invest in approaches to optimize their procurement processes and allow them to operate more strategically, with the efficiency and complexity of procurement listed as the top challenge they’re currently facing. Among respondents, 98% said they were planning investments in analytics and insights tools, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) over the next few years.

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Technology | Amazon “We are entering a new era of smart business buying where senior leaders are understanding the impact procurement can have on efficiency and overall company success,” said Alexandre Gagnon, vice president of Amazon Business Worldwide. “At Amazon Business, we develop scalable solutions for customers and solve their biggest procurement challenges, and I couldn’t be more excited about the evolution of procurement. Heading into 2024, the procurement function is now crossdisciplinary, spanning both functional and strategic purviews as buyers are planning to invest more in technology and optimization while future-proofing their companies and organizations. Ultimately, procurement not only keeps operations running, but plays an integral role in achieving key organizational goals, and with smart business buying, companies have procurement solutions to serve as a growth lever for organizations.”

As procurement expands within companies and organizations, leaders are being forced to find ways to optimize their processes so that they can allocate more time and resources to addressing strategic challenges. The report also found that: n 9 5% of decision-makers acknowledge

that there’s room for procurement optimization.

strategic sustainability goals for procurement. n 8 1% of respondents had mandates

to buy from certified sellers, which might include sustainable, local, or disadvantaged group-owned businesses. Among those without mandates, 40% still consider supplier environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Despite the desire for responsible purchasing (85%), difficulty finding sustainable suppliers hinders sustainability goals.

Amazon Business is dedicated to equipping its 6 million and growing business customers, ranging from large multinational enterprises to sole proprietors, with smart business buying tools that can help reshape organizational processes, fortify procurement efforts, and ultimately, ensure procurement is better prepared for the unpredictable. Through a variety of the services Amazon Business offers, such as analytics and Guided Buying, organizations of all sizes can reduce costs and improve their efficiencies to meet key organizational goals. In addition, Amazon Business simplifies the process of finding and purchasing products with sustainability certifications by partnering with trusted third-party certifications, including Carbon Neutral Certified by SCS Global Services, Bluesign, Blue Angel, and BIFMA LEVEL.

n 8 5% of respondents say the difficulty

of sourcing suppliers that follow sustainable practices prevents their company from setting or achieving

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE 2024 STATE OF PROCUREMENT REPORT

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Amazon Business’ 2024 State of Procurement Report Methodology The 2024 Global State of Procurement Report was fielded online from June 6 to July 14 among 3,108 procurement decisionmakers and senior leaders familiar with procurement operations at their organization.

Respondents were located in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK, and U.S. Respondents spanned nine industries and all commercial sector respondents worked at organizations with a minimum revenue threshold set by geographical region.

needs; key attributes and assessments of suppliers; procurement trends related to ESG and technology; and differences between industry or country segments. Quotes included in the report were sourced through thought-leadership interviews conducted with five executives responsible for procurement who are based in the U.S. and UK, and span a range of industries - as well as directly from Amazon Business executives.

The study was designed to explore procurement challenges, priorities, and

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