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.

This year, as in every other year that my team and I have produced this event, I was able to recruit a fantastic lineup of seasoned procurement veterans with nearly a century’s worth of combined experience leading supply chain, sourcing, and category management teams….and they did not disappoint. The 2019 Summit featured stimulating presentations and thought-provoking discussions on the role of the CPO as well as key strategies that will help bring the procurement function to the next level of performance.

But now that the 2019 Summit is in the rear view, my team and I want to quickly galvanize the enthusiasm from earlier this week and highlight the major takeaways from the event. With that said, I wanted to personally invite you to a new webinar, the Voice of the CPO Rising 2019 Summit, on November 14th at 2 PM ET, where my team and I will highlight the key speaker presentations and discussions that took place during the event.

If you have some time next month, I hope you will join us. Click here and below to register.

Webinar Details:

Voice of the CPO Webinar: Highlights from the CPO Rising 2019 Summit

Date: Thursday, November 14th 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET

Presenters:

Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer, Ardent Partners

Christopher J. Dwyer, VP of Research, Ardent Partners

Webinar Sponsored by: Tradeshift, Scout RRP, & Jaggaer

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!

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/

“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!

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.

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!

RELATED ARTICLES

Announcing Ardent Partners’ Distinguished Speaker Lineup for CPO Rising 2019

Announcing the Agenda for CPO Rising 2019 Procurement Executive Summit

From Industry 4.0 to Procurement 4.0: Turning Innovative Ideas into Innovation