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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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Ardent Partners

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

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

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

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

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

Event Details:

CPO Rising 2018 Summit

November 7 & 8

The Harvard Club

374 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

About Ardent Partners

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