780: The Art of Trust Building: Inside Unilever’s Procurement Success Story W/ Ashish Dhongde

“It’s still on us, as procurement professionals, to invest the right amount of time in building relationships and building our narrative.” - Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director Procurement Beauty and Wellbeing North America, Unilever

Unilever has built a notoriously well-integrated procurement program, and they are widely recognized for the strong partnership between procurement and the rest of the business. 

In this episode, Philip Ideson explores what procurement excellence looks like in practice with Ashish Dhongde, Associate Director of Procurement, Beauty and Wellbeing North America at Unilever.

Drawing on Unilever’s success, Ashish explains how procurement can transcend traditional boundaries of cost savings to become an integral part of business decision making, innovation, and revenue growth. Ashish also discusses:

• How procurement can build trust and credibility with stakeholders by ‘speaking the language of the business’
• Balancing long-term supplier relationships with the immediate need for supply chain resilience 
• Having constructive conversations with stakeholders about risk without being seen as a roadblock  

Links:

• Ashish Dhongde on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement
• Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube