Anyway, the Ardent team is once again reflecting on the event in a series of articles here on CPO Rising. Today’s article is the first installment — three primary takeaways from CPO Rising 2019. So if you missed the event and want to catch up, this is for you. But if you were there and want to quickly refresh, we’ve got your back, too.

Three Takeaways

One — The Face of Procurement is Changing. The crowd at CPO Rising 2019 was more diverse than in recent years, and that’s something for the procurement industry (and us) to both acknowledge and celebrate. Ardent welcomed a beautiful array of men and women from all walks of life — Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials; people from all over the country and all over the world; and professionals from other industries and verticals, whose roles are touched by procurement and supply chain. Speakers, panelists, and roundtable hosts brought their authentic selves to the event, and looked out at an audience that not only looked like them, but also represented them and their challenges and opportunities to make an impact in supply management today.

Two — The Paths to Procurement are Winding Still. Speaking of diverse backgrounds, I was thrilled to see two friends in the audience who typify the ways in which professionals find their way to procurement (names and employers are being withheld to protect the innocent).

• One, a college friend who has spent nearly two decades climbing the ranks in procurement. A social sciences major, she decided instead to pursue a career in business, earning her MBA and progressing from vendor management, to category management, to sourcing, to ultimately procurement. As a senior manager, she is one procurement pro who is continuing to rise.
• Another, a dear friend who I’ve known for nearly a quarter century, returned to Boston after working abroad for more than a decade. As a former country Chief Information Officer for a major insurance company, the breadth and depth of experience he brought to this conference — as a collaborator of procurement, as someone who has vetted and implemented procurement technologies — was so unique. Although he was not a procurement pro, per se, his exposure to and experience with enterprise procurement teams offered delegates an opportunity to share perspectives with one of procurement’s most important stakeholders.

Three — Procurement Runs in the Family. 2019 saw the second consecutive parent-sibling duo at the conference. Last year, we had Meghan Truchan, VP and head of procurement at Bain Capital, in attendance. She is a third-generation procurement leader and a rising star in her own right. This year, we had Mary Kachinsky, CPSM, CPM, and VP of Strategic Sourcing at Kaleido Biosciences, and daughter, Amanda Kachinsky, senior manager of global sourcing at blue bird bio, not only in attendance, but also delivering a keynote presentation and sitting on a panel discussion, respectively.

While we are our own persons — few of us are still “directed” or “told” to pursue this or that career — we are also the products of our environments. Many of us grew up watching our parents climb the proverbial corporate ladder and hearing them tell us what was so special about each rung. We look up to our parents, even as we see them occasionally struggle to reach that next rung. We admire them even more for the struggle. So then it is no surprise that some of us follow in our parents’ literal and figurative footsteps, up that procurement ladder, rising towards the coveted CPO title.

Final Thoughts

I’ve written in past reflective articles about how the event amounts to months of prep work, late nights, and early mornings, only to come and go in a whirlwind of keynotes, breakouts, panels, and roundtables. That was as true this year as in year’s past. But every event is unique. This year’s event was more diverse, more representative of procurement pros and stakeholders, and in a literal sense, more familiar than in past events. Indeed, it does keep getting better.

P.S. I want to personally invite you to a new webinar, the Voice of the CPO Rising 2019 Summit, on November 14th at 2 PM ET, where the Ardent team will highlight the key speaker presentations and discussions that took place during the event.

Bill Browning

Matthew York: Tell us a bit about your background, as in your education and early procurement career.

Bill Browning: I have a Bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California, San Diego, a Master’s degree in Education, and an M.B.A. from Boston University. After I moved to Boston I eventually I got into coaching (I played baseball in college), which was my first foray into “corporate” or structured buying. When I was an assistant softball coach at BU, I was in charge of our budget, travel arrangements, and buying our equipment. My job was to ensure that we stuck to a strict budget so that our dollars would last as long as possible. So, that was my first exposure to buying and procurement – not even knowing what procurement was. I then moved to the university’s budget office where I helped the different schools and colleges at BU manage their budgets. I also went back to school to get my MBA.

Right after graduating business school, I became the capital budget analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital where I was in charge of all capital expenditures. And that’s when the procurement wheel started to turn for me. When capital budget requests came through, like when MGH started building the Yawkey ambulatory center, I had to ask questions, like “Why this equipment? When do you need it by? Who else did you check with? Does this have to come from this vendor? How can we make this budget work for you in the long run?” So, that’s where procurement really solidified for me.

Shortly after finishing my MBA, I got into consulting with a company whose whole focus was public-sector procurement (state and municipal government). That was really where I understood what procurement is and what it does, and how it can impact things; and, that it’s a formal career path that I could follow and figure out where I wanted to go.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve been on the consulting, corporate, and analyst sides, where I learned the operational aspect of procurement, how technology enables procurement, and what comprises a Best-in-Class team. It’s fascinated me as I’ve seen different stages of it throughout my career. It’s also gotten me to where I am now: trying to build out a procurement organization at Carbonite, trying to figure out what the scope is and what my company needs (particularly as we organically grow and acquire other companies), and understand what it means to have a procurement organization.

MY: Tell us what’s going on in your world today – what is your team focused on?

BB: We’re focused on building out the procurement team here at Carbonite. As we continue to grow and acquire other companies, like Webroot, it presents challenges in terms of what the other company does, especially considering that the procurement organization is still just me. We’re still able to manage the spend that we have, but it’s not without its challenges. So in the next six-to-twelve months, we’ll be focused on building out the procurement team and infrastructure, assessing what procurement means for Carbonite, and reassessing what we want it to mean (especially with the last acquisition wherein we doubled in size). So we’re still addressing some basic questions, like “How centralized do we want it to be? Do we want it to be center-led and give more autonomy to the stakeholders?” We’re evaluating our financial ERP options, and one of those considerations is going to have to be procurement.

MY: What are some other challenges?

BB: I think the biggest challenge, overall, is change management. Carbonite is still a fairly small, entrepreneurial company, even after the acquisition. Our revenues are in the $500 million range; we’re not a large company by any means, but we’re still looking at $200 million in spend at that level. It’s not unmanageable with a small or very streamlined team. But as a result of the previous acquisitions, and only being a public company now for five years, we’re still trying to get into the public stakeholder type of model where we really need to figure out how to tighten things up.

Change management is probably my first, second, and third challenge in terms of getting different stakeholders on board. Everyone’s on board to varying degrees: some bring me further upstream in terms of working the process and strategies, but there are others where I don’t get full visibility until the contract is submitted. That’s the biggest hurdle – figuring out how to make that change, how to get people within the organization to change, and how to do it myself. Another big challenge is figuring out the optimal time to expand a team or even just to create one.

MY: All that said, what are some of the opportunities for the profession moving forward?

BB: I think there are a lot. Procurement is becoming more and more of a profession every year. You see companies adding procurement functions, or trying to expand the scope of their functions. That’s always good to see. I think, especially in the last few years, there’s been an explosion of tools that are sometimes embedded in, or sometimes supplemental to the traditional spend analytics, sourcing, contract management tools – the ways that software companies are trying to leverage artificial intelligence to hone in on better data, or provide fresh viewpoints of the data (especially on things like diversity spend, tail spend, etc.). I think pushing the boundaries is going to be great going forward, but it all comes back to it being a data-focused function. Without good data, you won’t be able to produce good results; or if you are, it’ll take a lot more heavy lifting to get there.

Within procurement organizations, I think there’s more of a focus on developing and retaining talent, and when necessary, letting that talent leave for other functions, because they have good analytic capabilities or they’re good leaders. So, I think that’s a good sign as well for the procurement profession.

MY: What advice would you give other procurement leaders that are starting to go through the building or expansion process with their teams?

BB: One of the big things is to come in with a plan and a few ways to prove out your plan. This can be difficult from a procurement perspective when you’re asked to be streamlined; and you’re asked to bring savings into the door that you can justify reinvesting (e.g., by bringing in x-more people, you can add can x-savings or exponential value). But I think you have to look at all different aspects that could drive efficiencies, like card programs and different types of management programs, and be willing to dig in and figure out what might make sense.

I also think that soft skills are really critical, like being able to communicate. If you have the resources, figure out some of the organization’s priorities, try to embed or align yourselves with those groups (e.g., HR, IT, Marketing). Dig in, understand their business, and be able to have that back and forth so that you can become their trusted advisor or the person/group that is looked to when it comes to a procurement matters. This could be sourcing, contracts, leading a negotiation, or even sitting in the background and helping to form the strategy for that negotiation. There are all kinds of service models, but it starts with communication and trying to understand the business of your partners – not just your company’s business, but your partners’ specific business needs.

MY: Thanks so much, Bill – this has been great. Looking forward to seeing you in October at CPO Rising 2019.

BB: Likewise, Matt.

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Andrew Bartolini: What drew you to procurement? Or, if you weren’t drawn to it, how did you end up in procurement?

Greg Tennyson: Interesting story. I landed in procurement purely by accident. My first role after graduating was in sales. What drew me to sales was solutioning with the customer, the interactions. What I realized however was selling a product with minimal upside into a difficult market segment was not going to be profitable. I pivoted and landed in an administrative role where contracts and procurement were an element of the role. I realized that I thoroughly enjoyed procurement and wanted more. I went seeking opportunities that were more focused on procurement and contracts management. My first procurement gig was at Lawrence-Livermore Lab (an R&D center founded by Edward Teller, who was part of the Manhattan Project). I gained extensive experience at Lawrence-Livermore Lab. I went back and got my Master of Science in Management with an emphasis on procurement contracts. I got credentialed by ISM and NCMA and have been thriving in the space ever since. I saw procurement as a means to get into a leadership role. So, again, it’s more by accident than by design that I found myself in procurement, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it for the past 30 years.

AB: What are some of the large changes that have occurred since the early 1980s?

GT: Technology has fundamentally changed the role of procurement enabling it to become a trusted advisor to the business. When I was at Oracle in the late 90s I witnessed the advent of self-service purchasing. Oracle introduced self-service purchasing to compete with the likes of SAP, Ariba, Commerce One, et al. Other events like Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley and more corporate oversight would change how company’s bought goods and services. Difficult economic factors would drive procurement teams to take a more holistic view of what was being bought, how and the resultant money left on the table. Procurement teams were taking disaggregated data and trying to make sense of it to strengthen their negotiation position. Fast forward and Salesforce.com drove everyone to the Cloud. Now your data is managed by your provider and it can be enriched, amalgamated with more thoughtful analytics provided. Compound that with what is happening now with AI, RPA, machine learning, block chain, etc. and procurement couldn’t be better positioned to be that trusted – strategic – advisor to the business.

It’s interesting though you have had this titanic shift in technology, but the procurement function’s skillset has been lagging behind. I’ve seen, just in the last five-to-ten years, the skillsets catching up. A greater focus on soft skills and ironically solution selling into the business are bridging the gap. Today depending on the maturation of the procurement team and business needs of the company procurement has morphed into an advisory role. We’re more consultative than we were 10 years ago. My point is that the technology led the way, and the skillsets are finally starting to catch up.

AB: Technology has been a big part of your career – both on the usage side, but also in your work with some pretty progressive companies. You seem to have been an early adopter of solutions from some newer companies. Is that a mindset of looking for innovation, or does that have something to do with the companies being nearby, and you getting comfortable with them? I’m thinking about Coupa and Scout RFP. What has drawn you to those companies versus, say, some of the more established companies?

GT: It’s interesting, Andrew. The Interest kind of spawned, grew, and flourished when I was at Oracle. Oracle was a relational database provider back in the 1990s. It was dabbling in the application space, and really started to develop a suite of products around source-to-settle. The leadership team there sought out insights and points of view on how to evolve the product. I guess that was my first real experience sitting on an advisory board and contributing to a product roadmap. So, it started there, and that’s what created this interest that has allowed me to partner with Coupa. When I was at Salesforce, we were really the first major brand/logo to go with Coupa, and it was because we had the opportunity to influence/persuade how they evolved the product (and we were driving a lot of their product innovation at Coupa at the time). And, similar to Scout, right? I look at Scout’s product offering, and I’d like to think that the interactions that we’ve had with Scout’s leadership led to their intake and pipeline, and to some of the capability of the RFX tool and its contracts-lite functionality.

I’ve always been open to new opportunities to invest in companies and influence their product development. When I look at technology companies that are in that early-stage startup-mode, I really look at their leadership. If there’s a good chemistry and a similar mindset, I’ll take the leap of faith and invest. I’ll look at the product and ask, “How can we influence it? And does it meet our needs?” I’ve done that with Coupa, Scout, and CXO Nexus; with Suplari (a spend analytics provider); and with Fairmarkit (whose solutions manage tail spend). I mean, there are quite a few companies out there like these. I enjoy that entrepreneurial approach to evolving a solution and solving a problem. So, it’s been a lot of fun.

AB: Given your long-standing career in procurement (30-plus years), when you look out over the next decade, what are some things that are emerging or starting to take hold?

GT: Let’s continue the thought on technology. The procurement professional, based on my vision of the technology and where the skillset is going, will no longer be involved in conducting or managing transactions. They will no longer conduct analysis, run sourcing events, or even form sourcing-wave strategies. They are going to be purely focused on soft skills, and on being advisors to the business. The business driven by technology will have sourcing opportunities presented to them, and procurement will partner with the business to decide if they want to run a sourcing event that will already be queued up based on a very deep spend analysis that is tied to a sourcing event.

Imagine walking into your office, opening your computer and having a conversation with it on running a sourcing event. Maybe it’s some type of Alexa that asks, “Greg, do you want to run a sourcing event today?” Then it lays out the economics of the event and the options to consider based on current trends in the industry. Think back to the day of Mattel and the red paint coming out of China. They didn’t have the supplier intelligence to say, “Don’t use this supplier because of trends in the marketplace, or their social aspects (like sustainability, quality, etc.). In the future, you’ll get that aggregated view of the opportunity just queued up for you. And you’ll have that exchange with the computer wherein you’ll say, “Yes, run the sourcing event – what do you suggest we run it for?” It’ll just fire it off and you’ll get the results. We’ll use more decision-based systems than transaction-based systems. That’s where I think procurement is going.

AB: Yeah, that’s great. I always say, “There’s no better time to be working in procurement than today,” just with the potential impact on the profession in general. Thanks for your time today.

GT: It’s my pleasure, Andrew – looking forward to seeing you in October!

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Fast forward xx-number of years and in a flash, we’re into August…which means that in less than 30 days the summer will be effectively (if not technically) over. Now, there are plenty of things to look forward to in the fall: the kids going back to school (hah, suckers), football, apple picking, and for my brothers and sisters in the Northeast, leaf peeping. But here’s something else to look forward to: CPO Rising 2019.

Ardent Partners’ fourth-annual procurement executive summit returns to Boston (my new hometown) this fall and I’m pretty jazzed about it. This day-and-a-half symposium is Ardent’s newest fall tradition and I’d like very much for you to be a part of it. That is why we’re offering early-bird pricing to attend CPO Rising 2019 — that and a big part of procurement is finding and taking advantage of the best value (and I do believe these prices are the best value).

Bottom line, this is your best chance to join more than 125 Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) and other supply management leaders for a lively, collegial, and informative symposium at Boston’s historic Harvard Club. But it’s not just the delegates. You’ll join procurement executives from Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Veolia, and many more, who will share their knowledge, best practices, and winning strategies for driving best-in-class performance.

Be a part of something special this fall and join us – our lowest pricing ends August 31!

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