The Age of Intelligence

In the “Age of Intelligence,” the procurement function is positioned to leverage its position at the hub of business operations to become a more productive, agile, and intelligent operation and use data analytics to drive better business outcomes. Each year, our Summit has an overarching theme we try to weave through. This year, I couldn’t think of a better topic for the leading minds and global experts working in and around procurement to tackle than operating a procurement function in the age of intelligence. Developing a new type of intelligence that will redefine the procurement function is an idea that emerged in both our annual state of procurement/CPO studies and in keynote presentations delivered at the Summit over the past three years.

With the rise of business process automation tools, cloud-based applications, mobile solutions, and connected devices the world has become increasingly data-driven, and procurement teams around the globe have an extraordinary opportunity to capitalize on it. Over the next few years, Ardent Partners predicts that a new type of intelligence is going to enable CPOs to view their operations differently and, by doing so, it is going to force these same CPOs to manage them differently. Chief Procurement Officers must hire new talent while developing their existing roster; institute new processes while refining existing ones; and invest in new technologies while enhancing existing tools.

Leading the Dialogue: 20 Global CPOs and Procurement Experts

At our 2018 Summit, we were excited and honored to have another world-class roster of 20 CPOs and procurement experts discuss how procurement can become more intelligent and transform operations and capitalize on the most significant opportunities in this new age. This year’s roster was more diverse and considerably younger than any previous Summit roster, and I have to say that the overall quality of the presentations, panels, and breakouts was as strong, if not stronger than what we’d seen previously (this is really saying something because we’ve had some amazing presentations). In particular, the main-stage keynotes on both Day 1 and Day 2 were outstanding from top to bottom.

These keynote presentations were delivered by a group of global CPOs including

• Steve Listzwan, the Head of Procurement (CPO) of Shire Pharmaceuticals and Ardent Partners’ 2017 “CPO of the Year.” His presentation, “Faster, Higher, Stronger: Building the Data-Driven Procurement Athlete,” was designed to help CPOs and Procurement Leadership Teams use internal data to get more from their staffs and ultimately build an elite team of high-performers. Steve’s innovative and thoroughly unique approach to staff development is to leverage different sources of data to both evaluate and improve staff performance and discuss the strategies that enable the best use of that data to build a better Procurement athlete and team.
• Chris Shanahan, VP of Global Procurement & Global Real Estate, Thermo Fisher Scientific, whose presentation, “0 to 60: Driving a High Velocity Procurement Transformation,” shared the key strategies and approaches that he has used to successfully drive procurement transformations at the “speed of business.”
• Meghan Truchan, Head of Procurement, Bain Capital, LP, whose presentation, “Procurement Transformation: One Size Does Not Fit All,” took a consultative approach to assessing and contrasting different procurement transformation scenarios and the approaches that make the most sense to take in each situation.
• Dan Warn, Director of Strategic Procurement (CPO), Wayfair, whose presentation, “Spend Therapy: Transforming Procurement In a High Growth Company,” looked at a new procurement delivery model that is many ways more representative of today’s business environment than the classic approaches.

I could go on and on — and my team and I will — but not today. We will continue to discuss and review this year’s CPO Rising Summit in a series of articles publishing over the next few weeks. So, stay tuned!

Summary

Procurement’s “Age of Intelligence” demands powerful analytics and deep insights. It demands agility. The ability to make better-informed decisions across an organization can and will be game-changing; I believe that this new intelligence coupled with agility are going to be the fundamental drivers that push procurement to the next level. But this all starts with the CPO and his or her mindset. If you are a CPO or report to one, please mark your calendars for October 29 and 30, 2019 for the CPO Rising 2019 Summit.

BOSTON, November 16 — Ardent Partners, a leading analyst firm focused on supply management, presented five “CPO Honors” awards at its annual CPO Rising Summit held in Boston last week, including one new inductee into its Hall of Fame. The Chief Procurement Officer (or “CPO”) Honors were established to celebrate the procurement function and recognize the accomplishments of the profession’s best leaders and teams. These awards have quickly become the procurement industry’s most prestigious series of awards.

Scott Singer, a globally-renowned business executive and former Chief Procurement Officer at Rio Tinto and United Technologies was inducted into the CPO Rising Hall of Fame and was the sole member of the Class of 2018. Mr. Singer was honored based upon a career spent leading large, global procurement organizations. Mr. Singer was an early technology and cloud evangelist and one of the first major CPOs to advance his career beyond procurement, becoming both the CIO and Head of Global Business Services at Rio Tinto. “It is an honor to be recognized by what I consider to be a premier research and advisory firm like Ardent Partners,” said Scott. “I value my relationship with Ardent’s analyst team and I am thrilled to join such a prestigious list of CPO Rising Hall of Famers.”

During the CPO Honors Gala, awards were presented in four major categories, including:

• Chief Procurement Officer of the Year: For her efforts in increasing spend under management by $100 million and leveraging technology to redesign Harvard University’s source-to-pay process, Sarah Malconian was awarded the “CPO of the Year” distinction. “I am incredibly excited to be honored as CPO of the Year,” said Malconian. “This award is a testament to the Harvard Strategic Procurement team’s dedication and commitment to providing the highest level of service to our stakeholders. The team’s commitment to functional transformation and adoption of enabling technologies to increase our overall spend visibility has allowed us to provide measurable impact aligned with the mission and goals of the University.”
• Best Team Performance: The procurement team at Watermark Retirement Communities demonstrated its ability to drive business agility within the procurement operation and across the enterprise, and was awarded for their successful efforts. “Considering the high level of the organizations participating in the CPO Rising 2018 Summit, winning the Best Team Performance Award is an honor and a truly proud moment for Watermark,” said Amee Foss, National Director of Procurement and Plant Operations. “This prestigious award is a testament to the continuous dedication, commitment, and hard work by everyone across the company to create a positive impact on the quality of lives of our residents. We also thank our technology partner, Determine, for helping us achieve the process agility that enables our team to continuously improve service delivery.”
• Innovator of the Year: Dennis Silva, CPO of BCNET, received the “Innovator of the Year” award for helping unlock new opportunities for his company by fostering engagement among supply management professionals, institutional leaders, and their suppliers. “It was a tremendous pleasure to attend the CPO Rising Summit 2018 event. For procurement leaders, the opportunity to network and connect with CPOs from organizations represented at this conference is a great investment of time,” said Silva. “The summit was also inspirational; as a CPO, listening to the speakers and talking to the attendees, it reaffirmed that our profession can make a significant impact to our organizations. Thank you to Ardent Partners and the panel for the opportunity to be considered for this award.”
• Technology Excellence: The procurement team at Brighthouse Financial was honored with the “Technology Excellence” award for its incredible achievement of procurement automation success (such as requisition-to-purchase order cycle time and unified source-to-pay processes).

“The procurement profession continues to advance and thrive because of new and innovative strategies and technologies, like those on display at the CPO Rising 2018 Summit,” says Andrew Bartolini, founder and chief research officer at Ardent Partners. “We are thrilled, once again, to honor an amazing group of Best-in-Class procurement leaders at this year’s CPO Honors Gala.”

This CPO Rising 2018 Summit was sponsored by Coupa, GEP, Determine, iValua, AppZen, Guidant Global, Basware, SourceOne, and ScoutRFP. For more information on the CPO Rising 2018 Summit, please visit https://www.events.cporising.com. Details about the CPO Honors can be found at http://www.cpohonors.com.

About Ardent Partners

Ardent Partners is a leading research and advisory firm focused on defining and advancing the supply management strategies, processes, and technologies that drive business value and accelerate organizational transformation within the enterprise. Ardent’s analysts have decades of experience publishing primary research that help business leaders in procurement, supply management, and financial operations make smarter technology decisions and improve their performance. Ardent hosts its annual CPO Rising Summit in Boston each fall. To learn more about the company, visit www.ardentpartners.com and www.cporising.com.

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Day One of the conference kicked off with energetic keynotes from the Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) from Shire Pharmaceuticals, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bain Capital, and MUFG Union Bank. It also featured breakout sessions and panel discussions from global procurement luminaries and technology thought-leaders. Day One concluded with the extravagant CPO Honors Gala Dinner, where awards were given to procurement leaders/teams from Harvard University, Brighthouse Financial, Watermark Retirement Communities, and BCNET. We were also excited to induct Scott Singer, a procurement veteran and a true thought leader who has consistently pushed the industry forward, into the CPO Rising Hall of Fame.

On Day Two, we were thrilled to have speakers from the City of New York, Wayfair, Rio Tinto, and Honeywell International. The conference ended with lunch and a closing keynote from Ardent’s Founder and Chief Research Officer, Andrew Bartolini, who spoke on the innovative technologies that will fundamentally change (and are already changing) procurement.

The team at Ardent Partners wanted to give a special thanks to the more than 20 speakers who took time out of their busy schedules to give thought-provoking presentations on a diverse range of topics surrounding the procurement function. The speakers inspired those in attendance to take action, and develop the tools necessary to make their own procurement teams more agile and intelligent. We also wanted to thank the attendees with whom we got to share these two days. We hope they have returned to their teams energized and ready to share all that they learned from the CPO Rising Summit, amplifying the strategies necessary to bring procurement to the next level.

How to Relive All the Memories

If you missed the event, or want to relive some of the highlights, Andrew Bartolini and Christopher J. Dwyer will share the collective “greatest hits” drawn from the event’s outstanding keynote presentations, panel discussions, and breakout sessions in a webinar on Tuesday, November 20^th at 2 PM ET. Attendees to this complimentary webinar can expect to gather a collection of new and innovative ideas to help improve the performance of their organizations and increase the procurement team’s overall impact. Click here to register.

Conclusion

Just because the 2018 Summit is over, it does not mean that Ardent’s work of evangelizing the CPO and the procurement profession is done, too. Ardent continues to produce research that examines the processes, strategies, and technologies that drive operational excellence across the procurement and financial arms of an enterprise. We are excited to announce that the 2019 CPO Rising Summit is scheduled for October 29 and 30, once again in Boston. Mark your calendars now, and be on the lookout for more information from us in the near future.

BOSTON, November 7 — Today, nearly 125 procurement professionals and executives will convene at the elegant Harvard Club in Boston’s historic Back Bay district to discuss best practices, learn about emerging market trends, and collaborate with like-minded peers. The third annual “CPO Rising” Summit and executive symposium, hosted by prominent research and advisory firm Ardent Partners, will feature an unrivaled lineup of speakers and presentations, all of which will serve to push the procurement function into a new era.

This week’s event, which will feature nearly two dozen procurement luminaries from large corporations around the globe (and across many industries), will tackle a vast array of exciting topics within the world of supply management. These executives, from Thermo Fisher, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Bain Capital, Rio Tinto, and more, will speak about:

• The “Age of Intelligence” (this year’s event theme)
• Data-driven procurement strategies
• The role of innovation in today’s procurement function
• Designing and building the optimal procurement operation (and procurement transformation)
• Strategic category management
• And much more!

“The procurement function of 2018 sits on the edge of an incredible transformation in its ultimate quest for business agility and enterprise-wide value,” says Andrew Bartolini, founder and chief research officer at Ardent Partners. “Today’s procurement executives have the power to leverage innovation, intelligence, and transformational thinking to become a truly agile business function. The CPO Rising 2018 Summit is the ideal forum for procurement professionals from around the world to learn how to achieve these goals.”

This exclusive summit is sponsored by Coupa, GEP, Determine, iValua, AppZen, Guidant Global, Basware, Source One, and Scout RFP. For more information on the CPO Rising 2018 Summit, please visit events.cporising.com.

About Ardent Partners

Ardent Partners is a research and advisory firm focused on defining and advancing the supply management strategies, processes, and technologies that drive business value and accelerate organizational transformation within the enterprise. The Ardent team has decades of experience publishing primary research that help business leaders in procurement, supply management, and financial operations make smarter decisions and improve their performance. To learn more about the company, visit www.ardentpartners.com.

• Kicking us off will be Stephen Listzwan, Head of Procurement (CPO) of Shire Pharmaceuticals and Ardent Partners’ 2017 “CPO of the Year,” who will deliver a powerful keynote presentation entitled “faster, Higher, Stronger: Building the Data-Driven Procurement Athlete.” Steve’s talk is designed to help CPOs and Procurement Leadership Teams use internal data to get more from their staffs and ultimately build an elite team of high-performers.
• Next up will be Chris Shanahan, Vice-President Global Procurement (“CPO”) & Global Real Estate for Thermo Fisher Scientific, who will give a presentation entitled, “0 to 60: Driving a High-Velocity Procurement Transformation.” Chris will share the key strategies and approaches that he has used to successfully drive a procurement transformation at the speed of business.
• Finally, David Gallaer, Vice President of Category Management at MUFG Union Bank, will deliver the day’s final keynote presentation, “Strategic Category Management: A Vital Part of Corporate Strategy and Supply Chain Optimization.” This presentation looks at how a strategic approach to category management can help sourcing and procurement teams deliver greater value to the enterprise.

Click below to learn more about the CPO Rising 2018 Summit and to register! If you have any questions about the event, please feel free to reach out to us directly and we’d be happy to help!

“The technology sponsors are all very interesting, the speakers are fantastic, great food, and great people to be around. In my opinion this is the very best conference to attend.” ~ Gregg Brandyberry, the former VP of Procurement at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, and 2016 CPO Rising Hall of Fame inductee.

“As one of the speakers at this year’s event, talking about Big Data analytics, it’s certainly ‘on theme’ with one of the key buzz words of future of our business. I shared some case studies of how we use Big Data analytics on bid data to unlock almost a 2x savings rate, which is awesome!” ~ Walt Charles, CPO of Allergan.

“Just the intellectual power in the room is really great to learn from. There are some real thought leaders out there talking about their experiences. And it seems like they are still learning, they talk about the fact that they haven’t sat back, that they continue to be students and learn. And that is inspiring,” said one procurement leader.

“One thing that makes this conference special is the size. Truly you aren’t just a number. When the speakers are done, you can go up and ask questions. The intimate setting that is created at this event is something special,” said another CPO attendee. 

Check Out The Video Below to Hear More:

Attendees to the CPO Rising 2018 Summit are certain to depart from this executive conference energized and armed with new ideas to improve their operations. Please consider joining us this November 7-8 at the Harvard Club in Boston! To view the speaker panel and the Summit agenda, visit the event site https://events.cporising.com.

Like so many other Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs), Steve Listzwan, the senior vice president and head of procurement at Shire Pharmaceuticals (and the recipient of CPO Rising’s 2017 Leadership/CPO of the Year award), began his career outside of the profession. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering from Union College and for the first five years of his career, Steve designed environmental engineering projects for O’Brien & Gere Engineers in Syracuse, NY. Not long after beginning his career, Steve enrolled in a part-time MBA program at nearby Syracuse University. In June 1995, with his new degree in hand, Steve took a temporary assignment within the procurement office at Merck & Co., Inc., one of his firm’s clients, covering for a maternity leave. After six months, he was offered a permanent position within the Merck procurement organization, the first of many over a six and a half year period that would have him relocate to Italy and Ireland. He capped his tenure there as a Manager in Global Procurement responsible for implementing Merck’s first electronic P2P platform.

“Merck was great for my development as a young procurement professional,” he said. “I was given great opportunities, had the luxury of a great mentor, and learned the fundamentals of the procurement profession.”

In September 2001, Steve joined Cambridge, MA-based Biogen when it was a much smaller company than it is today (at the time, it was spending only about $400 million a year and has since grown significantly). He reported into the controller of the company and established Biogen’s first strategic sourcing team. In moving from Merck to Biogen, Steve went from pharma to biotech at a time when the two industries were still largely separate (now they are often intertwined). After more than seven years, Steve left Biogen and became the Director of Global Strategic Sourcing at MedImmune (the biologics division of Astra Zeneca), headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD. In 2012, he was recruited out of MedImmune to become the Global Head of Procurement (CPO) for Novartis Vaccines, a position he’d hold until the company was purchased by GSK in 2015.

Coming Home to Shire

Steve joined Shire in April of 2015 as vice president and head of procurement (CPO). “Being at Shire has been especially interesting given that it is such an acquisitive company,” he said, adding that the company has purchased four companies since 2015. When Shire acquired Baxalta in the summer of 2016, Shire’s annual spend doubled from $3 billion to $6 billion. Steve and his team “used that opportunity to accelerate the transformation of Shire Procurement” by finding synergies between the two companies (for example, 30-40% of the total integration synergies were delivered by procurement). Steve and his team merged and reorganized the two procurement teams and “used that opportunity to create a truly world-class procurement function and deliver substantial value back to the business.”

Earlier this year, Steve and his team learned that Takeda was interested in purchasing Shire, and as a result, they are in the process of preparing for that acquisition, which they expect to close in the first half of 2019. A majority of the team is focused on continuing to drive the procurement function and delivering results for the company.  Steve has a small team that works with a team from Takeda to map out the future of the Shire-Takeda procurement operation – how they will merge, what kind of spend opportunities they intend to pursue, and standing up “clean teams” resourced by independent third parties to look for those opportunities.

The Procurement Game has Changed (and that’s a good thing!)

When Steve began his career in procurement, “it was thought of in a certain way as a transactional support function.” It’s gone from managing individual deals to managing categories and delivering total company value. For Steve, “the biggest transition has been procurement being looked at as a strategic partner by the business. That’s something that needs to be earned by procurement.” Procurement had to work hard to elevate itself to that level. Steve’s team at Shire has been very deliberate about creating a standard operating model for how the whole procurement team functions around the globe. There are four fundamental pieces:

1. Stakeholder Engagement – Formal mapping and regular scheduled interactions with key stakeholders around the company to understand spend, needs and progress initiatives that deliver value. “Stakeholder engagement is not always a top skill of the average procurement professional” Steve said, “but it’s very important to build that skill to be successful in our model.”
2. Category Management – “Procurement is the only group that has the ability to see spend across the whole company,” to see market trends, and find ways to optimize spend.  Developing multi-year global category strategies in partnership with stakeholders transforms the relationship between the procurement function and stakeholders from tactical to truly value added and strategic.
3. Sourcing Projects – Using standard processes, tools, and procurement team skills to implement strategic initiatives that are generated by the Category Management process. “The main process has stayed relatively the same over the years but the tools and techniques have advanced significantly,” Steve said.
4. Supplier Management – Partnering with stakeholders and preferred suppliers to get the most out of each relationship.

A Sneak Preview of Steve’s Main-Stage Presentation

At CPO Rising 2018, Steve will deliver a presentation entitled, “Faster, Higher, Stronger: Building the Data-Driven Procurement Athlete.” As an avid cyclist, Steve will draw parallels between athletic competition and the procurement function – how technological innovations in both spheres are used to help individual performers, teams, and their managers improve their performances and realize their potential. As Steve will illustrate, given the use of modern procurement technology platforms, there is a significant amount of performance data available to procurement professionals and their leaders. The challenge for CPOs and procurement teams, as it is for coaches and cycling teams, is to collect and leverage that data in real time in order to measure performance, create custom improvement programs, and ultimately improve performance.  Steve will demonstrate that, just as there has been significant technological innovation in sports and cycling, in particular, the procurement space abounds with innovation and robust business tools able to collect and analyze data in real-time and provide almost instantaneous visibility and control. He will then illustrate how Shire’s procurement teams use these innovations to measure and ultimately enhance their performance as individuals and as a total function.

Want to hear Steve speak at CPO Rising 2018? Register by clicking here and take advantage of standard pricing while it still lasts (expires after 11:59 PM on October 16). 

Last year’s inaugural CPO Honors Gala, which recognized Chief Procurement Officers and their teams for outstanding performance and execution over the last year, was such a smashing success that Ardent will reveal winners of this year’s industry achievement awards at the CPO Rising 2018 Summit Gala Dinner. We will present four companies with global procurement achievement awards (CPO Honors) for excellence demonstrated in these categories:

The Innovation Award: Presented to the CPO and team that have used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.

The Technology Excellence Award: Presented to the CPO and team that have leveraged technology solutions to impact procurement operations and performance.

Best Team Performance Award: Presented to the procurement department that has excelled across the full scope of procurement operations to make a significant impact on overall enterprise results.

The Leadership Award (CPO of the Year): Presented to the CPO who has driven new performance heights as a result of their direct involvement and leadership and overall exceptional executive management.

“We distinguish top performers in all Ardent Partners’ research efforts as ‘Best-in-Class’ enterprises: from this group, our research team has identified a smaller list of procurement leaders and organizations who are notable for their transformative strategies and results.”

– Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer, Ardent Partners

The CPO Honors winners will be selected based upon external nominations. If there is a CPO or other procurement leader who you think is deserving, make sure to submit your nomination here.

If you haven’t already, register for The CPO Rising 2018 Summit at https://events.cporising.comtoday!

Event Details:

CPO Rising 2018

November 7^th and 8^th

The Harvard Club (Back Bay)

Boston, MA

Register today or by August 31 to take advantage of the early bird pricing and make sure you don’t miss what is sure to be the procurement event of 2018.

Day-and-a-Half Executive Symposium to Highlight Technology, Innovation, Intelligence, and the Transformation of the Procurement Function

BOSTON — With the modern enterprise facing a new “age of intelligence,” in which data and insights are promoted as profound tools to succeed, the typical procurement function finds itself at the crux of a new world of business transformation. As other organizational groups latch onto the necessary tools, technologies, and innovations to foster growth and triumph, the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) and its team must take the required steps to build more forward-looking, “smart” capabilities and strategies.

“Now is the time for procurement to make the strides towards a ‘smart’ function that can be a source of incredible value for the greater organization. As the group designs its next era, there is tremendous pressure to revolutionize both tactical and strategic capabilities,” said Andrew Bartolini, Ardent Partners’ Chief Research Officer. “We are thrilled to announce our CPO Rising 2018 event this November in Boston to help CPOs and other procurement executives understand how to make the next great leap and transform the way it delivers value to the enterprise.”

The exclusive event — sponsored by Coupa, GEP, iValua, Determine, and AppZen — promises the interactive exchange of ideas and cutting edge research and analysis for CPOs and procurement executives. From explosive keynote presentations to illuminating CPO panel discussions, case studies, and breakout sessions, the executive-level speaker panel will highlight procurement-led innovation within the enterprise and across the supply chain. This year’s event will also include roundtables focused on innovation, technology, and the transformation of the profession. Register for the event today at https://events.cporising.com and take advantage of early-bird pricing.

Event Details:

CPO Rising 2018 Summit

November 7 & 8

The Harvard Club

374 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

About Ardent Partners

Founded in 2010, Ardent Partners is a research and advisory firm focused on defining and advancing the procurement and supply management strategies, processes, and technologies that drive business value and accelerate organizational transformation within the enterprise. Ardent Partners delivers “Research with Results.” To learn more about the company, visit www.ardentpartners.com or call us at 617.752.1728.

The summit promises the interactive exchange of ideas and cutting edge research and analysis for CPOs and procurement executives. From explosive keynote presentations to illuminating CPO panel discussions, case studies, and breakout sessions, the executive-level speaker panel will highlight procurement-led innovation within the enterprise and across the supply chain. This year’s event will also include roundtables focused on innovation, technology, and the transformation of the profession.

To register for CPO Rising 2018 (and to take advantage of early-bird pricing, which ends on August 31), click here!

To throw your hat in the ring and be considered for a speaking slot, click here!

To discuss sponsorship opportunities at CPO Rising 2018: Reach out to Ardent Partners today!

Attendees of this exciting day and a half event will receive fantastic exposure and direct networking opportunities (during the day and evening) with the key decision-makers within leading procurement departments. Attendees will also gain a view into the hearts and minds of leading CPOs and share their views and insights on how to extend organizational transformation, leverage technology solutions, and lead innovative initiatives.

The executive-focused agenda will ensure that CPO Rising 2018 maintains a high level of relevancy and maximizes the time and opportunity for attendees and sponsors. Join an expected 100-125 CPOs and other procurement and business leaders for this exclusive event, hosted by Ardent Partners.

Event Details:

CPO Rising 2018

November 7th and 8th

The Harvard Club (Back Bay)

Boston, MA