On Day Two of the conference, we had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Tennyson of VSP Global – and CPO Honors Award winner – and dive deeper into the role of sourcing in modern business. As part of the largest not-for-profit vision benefits provider in the United States, VSP Global’s sourcing organization must work closely with the business to ensure optimum cost savings and risk management. To do this, VSP uses technology including  Scout RFP to demystify sourcing for the rest of the business and encourage enterprise-wide engagement.

With simplified processes, the VSP sourcing organization has become a strategic partner to the business, leading to increased engagement and savings across the enterprise.

How do they do this? Here are Greg’s top tips:

1. Sourcing requires 2020 vision.

Complete visibility into the sourcing process is imperative to smooth operations. With new technologies, procurement professionals can now manage all of their projects in one place and keep their stakeholders constantly in the loop and up to date.

2. Automation is your friend.

With increasingly complex projects, the sourcing organization must nurture its internal and external relationships more than ever before. Procurement professionals need solutions to help streamline and automate their workflows, and ultimately give them more time to focus on people, not paperwork.

3. If you’re not early, you’re late.

Being proactive is imperative to sourcing success. Greg urges procurement professionals to engage with the business early and often in order to establish strong relationships and achieve better outcomes.

We sincerely appreciated our roundtable discussions with Greg and loved hearing how VSP Global is leveraging technology to maximize sourcing’s impact on the business. CPO Rising 2019 reinforced that sourcing and procurement are more important than ever in managing risk and driving cost savings. As business challenges become increasingly complex, sourcing organizations must be equipped with the proper tools in order to keep up and get ahead. We can’t wait to attend next year’s summit and continue learning from procurement industry leaders.

The ABCs of New Procurement Tech

AI: On AI, I gave some backstory on the term, and sought to clarify what AI is and what it isn’t, including some popular definitions and distinctions – like how there’s Narrow AI (like machine learning, natural language processing, and robotic process automation), and Artificial General Intelligence (like deep learning, neural networks, and fully-autonomous, self-learning systems). I then gave some examples of procurement use cases for AI – like guided buying and predictive purchasing.

Blockchain: On Blockchain, I again gave some historical context (it was invented only a decade ago), and really tried to explain what Blockchain is – a distributed, decentralized database that acts as a ledger for all transactions, changes, and movement. Everything you do on a blockchain is permanent, cannot be changed, and is open to others to see (especially on “open” blockchains). So it drives great transparency into transactions – especially those across extended supply chains. On that note I shared a couple of use cases for Blockchain, such as supply chain track and trace, and smart contracts that are written into the Blocchain’s code that automatically execute and fulfill.

Connected Devices: On Connected Devices, or what we also call the Internet of Things, I talked about how advances in sensors, processors, and transmitters enable them to be embedded within everyday items, machines, and products – like thermostats, utility poles, gas/electric meters, commercial equipment, and so on. This enables the automatic transmission of critical business intelligence point-to-point, or machine-to-machine. They’ve long-been used by manufacturing, and use cases for procurement have started to emerge, like helping procurement teams get ahead of managing maintenance, repair, and operational services (MRO) spend, and syncing with Blockchain digital ledgers to link the physical and digital supply chains to enhance track-and-trace.

Summary

Artificial intelligence for procurement has already started to become a reality, even if for now we’re still applying “narrow” AI to the discipline. Blockchain use cases for procurement, such as supply chain track and trace, smart contracts, and now supply chain financing and payment reconciliation, continue to be modeled, explored, and piloted, although the technology has some issues of scale to work out, like high energy consumption and effective aggregation of disaggregated commodities (like bulk coffee).

For their part, connected devices / IoT continue to collect and transmit vital operational intelligence to procurement, manufacturing, and services, allowing these departments to get ahead of MRO and budget accordingly. If industry can iron out some integration and deployment issues, IoT-integrated Blockchain can be the missing link for linking the physical and digital supply chains and enhancing track-and-trace.

RELATED ARTICLES

Artificial Intelligence for Procurement Gets a Reality Check

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Procurement’s Love Affair with Blockchain: Built to Last, or Destined to Fail?

Payables Place First Thing: Tradeshift Introduces Supply Chain Finance Using Blockchain Technology

Manufacturing Success: How Procurement can Leverage Industry 4.0 to Manage MRO Spend

How Far Can We Apply Industry 4.0 to Procurement?

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.

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

BOSTON, October 29 — Today, more than 140 Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) and other procurement executives convene at Boston’s elegant Harvard Club to discuss best practices, learn about emerging market trends, and collaborate with like-minded peers. The fourth 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 Johnson & Johnson, DuPont, Rio Tinto, and many more, will speak about:

• Expanding Procurement’s Value (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)
• The Future of Work
• And much more!

“The procurement function of 2019 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 2019 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 Tradeshift, Concord Contracts, Jaggaer, Scout RFP, Guidant Global, SAP Ariba, scoutbee, Sievo, and SpendHQ. For more information on the CPO Rising 2019 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.

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!

Two weeks ago, 120 global procurement executives descended on Boston for our Annual CPO Rising Summit. I’ve been organizing Chief Procurement Officer (CPO)-focused events since 2006 and I still find the entire process to be equal parts exhilarating, stressful, educational, empowering and highly-rewarding. I’ll share some of my thoughts with you here in today’s article. I plan to write a few more articles about the event over the final weeks of 2018 as does each analyst on our team. (Later today, I will also be co-presenting the “Voice of the CPO” webinar with fellow Ardent analysts, Matt York & Chris Dwyer that shares the key highlights and takeaways from the event).

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.

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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!
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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!

I’ve spent the past 17 years of my professional career focused on driving the procurement profession forward. I have been and continue to be very personally invested in this cause too. In this period of time, we have collectively seen the procurement profession take many great strides forward, but also a few steps back or to the side; we’ve even seen a few stumbles. Nonetheless, when business historians reflect on this period, the transformation of procurement and supply management will have its own chapter.

As someone who’s been a first-hand participant, researcher, and advisor in, of, or to this industry over the years, I’ve been fortunate to have many wonderful and great experiences and memories. For example:

• I remember the first time I sat in a conference room as an entire procurement team and the company CFO of a multi-billion dollar company watched an eSourcing event that I designed and managed save 31%. I remember dozens of similar events for very different companies.
• I remember going to audacious company parties in the B2B Internet Boom ‘hey day.’
• I remember helping Microsoft save millions of dollars on its digital media spend and then identifying how a change in its buying behavior could save millions more.
• I remember reading Tim Minahan’s 2005 CPO’s Agenda research report and realizing the great value of insightful and progressive market research.
• I remember Scott Singer telling me how pumped he was about his job as a CPO after reading the intro to one of my “CPO reports”
• I remember the WSJ’s front page article about procurement and Manitowoc Company.
• I remember Tom Linton explaining his amazing approach to his first six months at LG.
• I remember marveling at Shelley Stewart as he described (in a keynote at an event I had organized) how his office at Tyco was located between the CEO and the CFO.
• I remember the leader of a multi-billion dollar global sourcing program telling an audience that his company adopted a strategy that Ardent Partners developed and that it led to phenomenal results (more on this in a future article).

I could go on for days. But, above all else, it has been the conversations that I have had and the relationships that I have developed over this time that stand as the most important and memorable of my experiences. One day I will write a series covering some of these older stories and reflections; but not today. Today, I want to kick off a series designed to share some of the great ‘memories’ or takeaways from our CPO Rising 2016 Summit held last week.

In many ways, our CPO Rising 2016 Summit was the culmination the past two decades that my team has spent working in and researching procurement. When I founded Ardent Partners, I knew that I wanted to host an annual CPO summit, but I also knew that we should wait until we could pull it off on our own and without event partners so that we could clearly establish our level of engagement and influence in the market.

Having organized events of this nature, I can tell you that it is no small undertaking to attempt to bring an inaugural event to market, much less one with so many moving parts focused on an executive audience. So, it is with great pride that I can tell you that across all aspects, CPO Rising 2016 surpassed my extremely high expectations – the speakers, the audience, the sponsors, the venue, and the overall production. In sports parlance, it was an “instant classic” and it is an event that I will never forget. That does not mean it was a perfect event – in fact, we have many lessons learned… and our CPO Rising 2017 Summit will be that much stronger as a result. But, this is an event that is very significant for Ardent Partners as marks the beginning of the next phase in our development and growth. We will work doubly hard to ensure that next year’s event is a very significant one for CPOs and the entirety of this site’s readership. We have many great memories to share with you so, if you missed the  CPO Rising 2016 Summit, you are in luck because in the days (and weeks) ahead, we will be sharing key highlights from it.

Also, we encourage you to visit the official site for CPO Rising 2019, which will once again be held at Boston’s historic Harvard Club in the Back Bay neighborhood. Early-bird registration ends very soon, so if you like what you see and want to attend, get on over to the event site and take advantage of discounted pricing while you still can!

• Shelley Stewart Jr., CPO Rising Hall of Famer and former CPO of DuPont and United Technologies
• Heidi Landry, the CPO and VP of Enterprise Supply Chains at Johnson & Johnson
• Beatriz Loizillon, the VP of PNA Procurement and Real Estate/Corporate Services at Panasonic Corp.
• Gregg Brandyberry, CPO Rising Hall of Famer and former CPO GlaxoSmithKline and Takeda Pharmaceutical
• David Kern, head of global procurement, TripAdvisor Media Group
• Dan Warn, CPO of AthenaHealth and former CPO of WayFair
• Greg Tennyson, Global Head of Corporate Services at VSP Global
• Harold (Hal) Good, CPO Rising Hall of Famer and former Procurement Director for the City of Palm Springs
• Bill Browning, Director of Procurement at Carbonite
• Bob Kane, AVP & Head of Procurement at Enel Green Power North America
• More to come!

We’re constantly updating the CPO Rising 2019 Agenda and Speaker Lineup, so check back frequently, and be sure to register for the event, as tickets are now on sale. We hope to see you in Boston in October!