The 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. CPO celebrities and prior winners played an active role in the ceremony which was hosted by Tradeshift’s CPO, Roy Anderson.
The CPO Rising Hall of Fame Class of 2019
Established in 2016, The CPO Rising Hall of Fame inducts up to three procurement leaders each year who have differentiated themselves and their organizations by a blend in leadership in innovation, executive stewardship, process excellence, and dedication to their craft. This year’s inductees are:
James L. Polak, former Director, General Purchasing, PPG Industries, Inc.
Uldis Sipols, Former CPO Gillette, Danaher, AMP, Sonoco; Executive at P&G and Ford
CPO Honors 2019: And the Winners are…
The CPO Honors were presented in 6 categories. The finalists and winners (in bold) are noted below.
The Innovation Award Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.
- WINNER: Anu Saxena, Senior Vice President and Global Head for Hilton Supply Management (HSM) and the HSM Team
- Sprint’s Procurement Team
The Technology Excellence Award Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have leveraged technology solutions to impact procurement operations and performance.
- TIE – WINNER: Andrea Greco, Chief Procurement Officer, CBRE
- TIE – WINNER: Jorge Martín Torres Pérez, Strategic Procurement Director, Coca-Cola FEMSA
Best Team Performance Award Finalists: This award is presented to the procurement department that has excelled across the full scope of procurement operations to make a significant impact on overall enterprise results.
- WINNER: Highmark Health Global Procurement & Payables Team
- Endurance’s Procurement Operations and Business Intelligence Team
The Leadership Award (CPO of the Year) Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO who has driven new performance heights as a result of their direct involvement and leadership and overall exceptional executive management.
- Kai Nowosel, Chief Procurement Officer, Accenture
- WINNER: Greg Tennyson, Head of Global Corporate Services, VSP Global
- Mike Morsch, Vice President Global Procurement & Supply Chain, CDK Global
Innovative Solution of the Year Finalists: Presented to the solution provider who most significantly impacted the market with innovative solutions.
- WINNER: BuyerQuest
- Fairmarkit
Best Technology Partnership Finalists: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their procurement team customer on to a technology deployment.
- WINNER: Scout RFP and Biogen
- Ivalua and Whirlpool
Ardent Partners extends its congratulations to the CPO Honors finalists, winners, and new CPO Rising Hall of Famers! Watch for more details about those recognized last night.
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
]]>At the dinner reception, Ardent Partners will present awards for outstanding performance and execution in the last year – “The CPO Honors” – to a variety of high achievers including Chief Procurement Officers and other procurement leaders, procurement teams, and new this year: procurement solution providers and/or other experts. A new class of CPOs (two names will be announced next week) will also be inducted into the CPO Rising Hall of Fame based upon career achievements.
With a record number of nominations this year, the competition for the CPO Honors 2019 awards was extremely competitive. Making it to this far should be considered a huge achievement, in and of itself.
So, without further ado…
The CPO HONORS 2019 Finalists are:
The Innovation Award Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.
- Anu Saxena, Senior Vice President and Global Head for Hilton Supply Management (HSM) and the HSM Team
- Sprint’s Procurement Team
The Technology Excellence Award Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have leveraged technology solutions to impact procurement operations and performance.
- Andrea Greco, Chief Procurement Officer, CBRE
- Jorge Martín Torres Pérez, Strategic Procurement Director, Coca-Cola FEMSA
Best Team Performance Award Finalists: This award is presented to the procurement department that has excelled across the full scope of procurement operations to make a significant impact on overall enterprise results.
- Highmark Health Global Procurement & Payables Team
- Endurance’s Procurement Operations and Business Intelligence Team
The Leadership Award (CPO of the Year) Finalists: This award is presented to the CPO who has driven new performance heights as a result of their direct involvement and leadership and overall exceptional executive management.
- Kai Nowosel, Chief Procurement Officer, Accenture
- Greg Tennyson, Head of Global Corporate Services, VSP Global
- Mike Morsch, Vice President Global Procurement & Supply Chain, CDK Global
Innovative Solution of the Year Finalists: Presented to the solution provider who most significantly impacted the market with innovative solutions.
- BuyerQuest
- Fairmarkit
Best Technology Partnership Finalists: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their procurement team customer on to a technology deployment.
- ScoutRFP and Biogen
- Ivalua and Whirlpool
Our congratulations to all of the finalists! We will see you soon!
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Simply put, Gregg “gets” procurement and supply management, having logged more than 40 years of executive and managerial experience across multiple industries, like automotive, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. He was the Global eSourcing Lead and a consultant at Takeda Pharmaceutical after serving as Senior Vice President, Market Operations for FedBid, Inc, a high volume reverse auction marketplace serving the Federal Government. Gregg also served as a Senior Advisor for A.T. Kearney Procurement and Analytic Solutions organization following a three-year stint as CEO of Wildfire Commerce. But he is perhaps best known as the former Vice President of Procurement – Global Systems and Operations for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, a role that he held for 10 years.
Early Beginnings
After leaving Western Illinois University in 1974, Gregg promptly got to work building his 42-year career in supply management. He started at the very ground floor of manufacturing at an auto parts manufacturing plant and eventually became the head of quality. “Something that I learned very early on was that price doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality,” said Gregg. “There’s no strong correlation between what you pay and what you get. It stuck with me forever.” Indeed, Gregg echoed these comments when he was a panelist at CPO Rising 2016.
Before he switched careers to procurement, Gregg became Director of Manufacturing and Quality at the Gates Energy Products, a division of The Gates Corporation and GE’s former battery business division. The experience taught him the fundamentals about how to consider capacity, efficiency, utilization, velocity, and through-put – all the things that a good manufacturer that has a finite amount of time, space, and capacity needs to make the best product possible. As he got into procurement, Gregg realized that procurement did not quite work this way. “It was still in the early days, it was so transactional but did not have a lot of structure, aside from strategic sourcing,” he said. It was very event driven; each event took a certain amount of time; work never seemed as “planful” as what a good manufacturer would do – how they would do their future planning.
Finding His Way in Procurement with eSourcing
Gregg left The Gates Corporation in 1990 and found his way to GSK, where he would make the leap to procurement and also spend the next 16 years of his career. Between 2000 and 2005, he saw procurement technologies, particularly eSourcing platforms, grow in popularity. Gregg worked hard at GSK to illustrate how a small staff could conduct many sourcing events using eSourcing platforms. He set up four global sourcing hubs in the US, UK, and India where his staff of 15 ran between 10,000 and 12,000 annual sourcing events; roughly half of them were auctions. He had “an extremely engaged workforce” that was using a new technology, and that added to the excitement of it all. Pretty soon their excitement outpaced their efficiency, but he and his staff eventually learned how to source more efficiently, even for eSourcing.
As a result of his efforts to drive eSourcing at GSK, his team won the “Baseline ROI Award” for the highest ROI for any IT project that Baseline Magazine had ever considered. They returned investment every two or three working days. This wasn’t an accident. As Gregg says, “a lot of the stars were aligned: tremendous senior management support, a real burning platform to take costs out, an executive, CEO-level mandate, and an organization that was designed to help allow work to flow through it.” Other factors that contributed to the success of Gregg’s sourcing team were that he instituted eSourcing at GSK when it “was at the dawn of all the new procurement technology.” He and his team were not only willing to give eSourcing a try, there were excited by it. “When you have all of these things working together, there’s a good chance you’re going to be successful.”
Gregg reflects on his 10 years as VP of Procurement at GSK and calls it one of the best times in his working life – a time in which he saw many senior procurement people – including CPOs and directors – “sprout” while he was there. Still, every good leader knows when it is time to take on their next challenge, and in 2009, Gregg left GSK to take on three. He became CEO of Wildfire Commerce in February 2009. A couple of months later, he assumed a concurrent role as a Senior Advisor at AT Kearney Procurement and Analytic Solutions. More than a year later, he also joined FedBid as the Senior Vice Present of Market Operations, where he would serve for nearly four years.
Taking eSourcing to the “Next Level”
At FedBid, Gregg led a team whose focus was to run eSourcing events, and boy did they run them. At the height of his tenure, he and his team conducted more than 50,000 eAuction events annually for their government clients. At a time when the concept of “Big Data” was starting to be bandied about, Gregg and his team were getting soaked in data. On any given day, they might have had more than 500 auctions going on. He remembers a day at the end of FY2011 where they had 2600 auctions underway, with an average length of three days, and tens of thousands of discrete transactions occurring.
To understand their events and to help them better manage their auctions, they pulled data from the system every 20 minutes and, using their BI analytics tool, organized the data into real-time reports that their “market specialists” would consult. They would give the specialists real-time intelligence to say that they might not have enough suppliers bidding, or that there is not enough competition, or that there are some questionable bids coming in that need to be checked out. “Nobody’s doing procurement like that,” Gregg boasted.
Like his tenure at GSK, this was a really interesting time for Gregg, and the experience has shaped his thinking on how sourcing events will be carried out.
The Future of eSourcing
For Gregg, some of the approaches that procurement is using are getting pretty stale – procurement as a whole is spinning the same cycles year-over-year, and it is ripe for change. The way he sees it, a big change for corporations will be to get away from treating everything like a single event and move towards a marketplace approach where suppliers are pre-vetted. That way, they will not have to be trained because they already understand how the marketplace works, and buyers “just throw” opportunities at them. Buyers can get highly specific, too – they can ask for diverse suppliers, like women-, veteran-, or minority-owned businesses, or highly-specific suppliers to bid on niche projects. Gregg and his staff were able to do this at FedBid and were very successful with it.
Final Thoughts
We’re very grateful to Gregg for continually supporting CPO Rising, the CPO Rising 2019 event, and for being a true “friend of the firm.” He’s a great guy — colleagial and easy going — and we look forward to seeing him once again at the Harvard Club of Boston this week. Don’t be shy — introduce yourself!
]]>- The unparalleled lineup of top speakers…from Carbonite, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, TripAdvisor, United Technologies, and more, you won’t find a better agenda than the one Ardent has designed with some of the world’s top procurement professionals and executives.
- The ability to network with like-minded peers. Procurement professionals are often very busy and don’t have the opportunity to connect with colleagues in the industry. Why not take a couple of days and converse with like-minded executives?
- Procurement is evolving…learn how to approach the future. Every speaker at CPO Rising 2019 brings something different to the event. Learn how the industry is evolving, and what it means for your organization.
- Historic Boston is a lovely place to visit in the fall. As the weather gets cooler and the leaves begin to turn, Boston just feels like “home,” even to those who visit. Whether it’s the chill in the air, or the smell of fresh apple cider donuts, or the Fenway Faithful cheering on another Banner Red Sox Year, you’ll fall in love with the City…and maybe our accents, too.
- Learn the best practices that will help your procurement team be more successful. There are many strategies and approaches that you may not be aware of that will come to light at CPO Rising 2019. Make your team be more successful in the year ahead by learning from the very best.
- The ability to engage with the solution providers that are providing innovation to the procurement market. Technology is a critical component in driving value from the procurement function. The CPO Rising 2019 event will feature a variety of technology solutions from which to learn how innovation is paving a new path for the procurement industry.
- You will connect with Ardent’s expert analyst team on the issues you want to discuss. Ardent’s analyst team is well-versed in the supply management industry, and its entire lineup of thought leaders will be in attendance throughout the event. Utilize their knowledge!
- Learn about the “State of the Chief Procurement Officer.” One of the many highlights of the event will be a “State of the Union”-type address on where the modern-day procurement professional sits today and where it can go in the near future.
- Free, new research from Ardent Partners ($499 value). Every attendee of CPO Rising 2019 will be provided with a complimentary edition of new Ardent research focused on the big trends (and the team’s predictions) in procurement for 2019.
- It’ll be THE procurement event of 2019. No other procurement or supply management conference will offer the same level of expertise, thought leadership, and network impact that CPO Rising 2019 will provide.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to attend this year’s landmark procurement symposium: register now (click here), and we look forward to seeing you in just a few weeks!
]]>Ardent Partners will present awards for outstanding performance and execution in the last year – “The CPO Honors” – to a variety of high achievers including CPOs and other procurement leaders, procurement teams, and new this year: procurement solution providers and/or other experts. The deadline to submit nominations is September 15th, so if you and your team would like to be recognized for Best-in-Class procurement achievement over the last year, make your nomination today!
The categories for nomination are:
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.
**NEW
Innovative Solution of the Year: Presented to the solution provider who most significantly impacted the market with innovative solutions.
Best Technology Partnership: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their procurement team customer on to a technology deployment.
To make a nomination, visit the event site:
https://events.cporising.com/cpohonors/
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“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 2019 Summit are certain to depart from this executive conference energized and armed with new ideas to improve their operations. Please consider joining us this October 29 & 30 at the Harvard Club in Boston! To view the speaker panel and the Summit agenda, visit the event site https://events.cporising.com.
]]>Have you registered yet? Early-bird pricing ends on August 31 — don’t miss out, register today and join us in October!
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Ardent Partners is pleased to highlight that the CPO Rising 2019 Summit will return to the Harvard Club of Boston this fall. The prestigious and historic event venue has been named by Boston Magazine as one of the best event venues in Boston. Located in the historic Back Bay neighborhood, the century-old main clubhouse is situated in the heart of Boston on Commonwealth Avenue, accessible by public transit and centrally located to some of the best shopping and attractions the city has to offer. Known for its English oak paneling, lofty coffered ceilings, Spanish silver chandeliers, and roaring fireplace, The Harvard Club is the premier venue to hold an executive symposium like The CPO Rising 2019 Summit.
This year’s Summit, set for October 29 & 30, promises valuable networking opportunities and the interactive exchange of ideas for Chief Procurement Officers and other business executives. In the evening of the first day, the Harvard Club will also play host to the third annual “CPO Honors” Gala Dinner. At the Gala, Ardent Partners will recognize four Chief Procurement Officers and their teams for outstanding performance and execution over the last year. And, new this year, we will also recognize two solution providers for the Most Innovative Solution of the Year and the best Technology Partnership of the Year. (If you know a CPO or procurement leader who you think is deserving, make sure to submit your nomination here.).
This is the fourth year we’re holding the CPO Rising Summit at the Harvard Club of Boston, and the venue has now become symbolic of the acumen and veritas of our delegates and speakers. It is a venue unlike any other held by other analyst firms of solution providers, and my team and are so very proud to return this fall. We’ve made so many great memories in the first three years of putting on this event, and we’re ready to make some more with you. And so I encourage you to visit our event site to learn more about this year’s event and how you can take advantage of discount pricing to attend. My team and I hope to see you this fall.
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Candidates are chosen based upon external nominations, and must be nominated prior to September 15, 2019 to be considered. So, if there is a CPO (procurement leader), procurement team, and/or industry expert that you think is deserving, make sure to submit your nomination below before September 15th!
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.
**NEW
Innovative Solution of the Year: Presented to the solution provider who most significantly impacted the market with innovative solutions.
Best Technology Partnership: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their procurement team customer on to a technology deployment.
Submit your nomination here.
Ardent will reveal the winners of these prestigious awards in global procurement on October 29th at Gala Dinner held at the CPO Rising 2019 Summit. The CPO Honors winners are chosen by a committee of industry experts including the Ardent Partners analyst team, CPO Rising Hall of Famers, and other industry luminaries.
Previous winners include:
- Tom Linton, CPO Flex
- Walter Charles, CPO Biogen
- Shelley Stewart, CPO DuPont
- Gregg Brandyberry, CPO GlaxoSmithKline
- CA Technologies’ Procurement Department
- Steve Listzwan, CPO Shire
- Sara Malconian, CPO Harvard University
- Dennis Silva, CPO, BCNET
- Boston Scientific’s Procurement Department
- Scott Singer, CPO Rio Tinto
- Watermark Retirement Communities’ Procurement Department
CPO Honors Timeline
- Nominations open June 1 – September 15
- Finalists Announced – October 1
- CPO Honors Gala Dinner October 29 (at the CPO Rising 2019 Summit)
Register for The CPO Rising 2019 Summit
The Innovation Award: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.\
The Technology Excellence Award: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have leveraged technology solutions to impact procurement operations and performance.
Best Team Performance Award: This award is 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): This award is 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” states Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer at Ardent Partners. “The CPO Rising 2017 Summit is, in some respects, a celebration of the accomplishments of procurement as a function, so we think it is the perfect venue to recognize top performers for their excellence in procurement while also enjoying a great meal and atmosphere.” The CPO Honors 2017 Gala Dinner will also include the induction of several the newest class of Chief Procurement Officers into the CPO Rising Hall of Fame.
The CPO Honors nominees will be selected based upon both external nominations that can be submitted on this page and a detailed review of Ardent’s research over the preceding 12 months.
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