Art of Procurement

“For anybody getting into the CPO role, whether internal or external, you ultimately have to start with your own assessment of the organization and quickly come up with what your priorities are.” – Darshan Deshmukh, President at ProcureAbility The role of Chief Procurement Officer has changed significantly over the last decade, with the focus shifting primarily from cost savings to value generation. In this Art of Procurement podcast episode, Philip Ideson talks with Darshan Deshmukh, President at ProcureAbility, about why CPOs need to strike the right balance between their ability to influence and their technical expertise. Darshan has extensive experience working with procurement leaders across multiple industries, and in this episode, he lays out a structured approach newly-minted CPOs can take in their first 100 days to set themselves and their teams up for success.  Understanding business priorities, creating strong stakeholder relationships, and aligning procurement’s initiatives and processes with organizational goals should all be top priorities.  Philip and Darshan explore: How the CPO role has evolved over time, including strategic priorities and reporting and incentive structures How CPOs can drive positive change by balancing speed with purpose-driven change management, all while preserving critical stakeholder relationships The features of a practical process and organizational framework that CPOs can establish in their first 100 days Links: Darshan Deshmukh on LinkedIn Overcoming Procurement’s Fear of AI Subscribe to This Week in Procurement Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube  

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement. Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

“For anybody in procurement that’s ever uttered the phrase ‘seat at the table,’ it’s not always a comfy seat. This is one of those moments where, if we want to be a part of the leadership discussion on the directional momentum of the company, we have to find the way, find the person, and find the time to have this conversation about supplier diversity.” - Kelly Barner, Co-founder and Head of Operations at Art of Procurement Is this the end of supplier diversity as we’ve known it? As the political and economic landscape continues to evolve, many supplier diversity programs are facing unprecedented scrutiny and rollbacks, forcing procurement to confront sensitive organizational shifts and rapid changes in corporate priorities and communications.  While no one can be sure exactly what the future looks like for supplier diversity, it’s clear that procurement teams and business leaders have reached a critical inflection point. In this special episode, Art of Procurement co-founders Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner have what will likely be the first of many conversations about how procurement can approach these changes thoughtfully, maintain focus on their core values, and lead the business through important conversations during this period of intense transition.  In this episode, Philip and Kelly discuss:  The current state of supplier diversity and its disappearing act across organizations  How understanding the original “why” behind supplier diversity programs is crucial for determining how to proceed Practical advice on how procurement can have productive internal conversations with leadership while also maintaining strong supplier relationships Links: Subscribe to This Week in Procurement Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube Diversity Goals are Disappearing from Companies’ Annual Reports  

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement. Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

The stakes are always high for procurement, but at mission-driven non-profits like the American Cancer Society, procurement is working to – quite literally – help save lives.  In this powerful fourth episode of “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement,” co-hosts Philip Ideson, Founder of Art of Procurement, and Rich Ham, CEO of Fine Tune, speak with Brian Kyle, Vice President of Supply Chain and Accounts Payable at the American Cancer Society, to explore what enterprise procurement can learn from mission-first organizations like ACS. Brian shares the kind of transformative mindset shift that happens when you transition to a nonprofit environment where every donor dollar is stretched as far as it can possibly go to directly impact the cause – in this case, the fight against cancer. He also explains how mission-driven environments create a kind of gravitational pull across the entire organization – suppliers included – where everyone is laser focused on the same set of goals and success metrics. Brian breaks down how this coalescence around a shared mission to help save millions of lives creates unprecedented levels of collaboration and collaborative decision making, engagement, trust, relationship building, and value beyond savings. The procurement team at ACS represents the essence of purposeful procurement and offers a tangible example of practices and perspectives that even private businesses can adopt to elevate their impact and find purpose in their work. Links: Brian Kyle on LinkedIn Rich Ham on LinkedIn Learn more at FineTuneUs.com  

“When we start thinking about and putting the end customer at the center of everything we do, it changes our perception of what’s important and therefore what we measure in the outputs from our contracts.” Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Workforce, SAP Services spend makes up a large, strategic part of the value procurement provides to the business. But, it’s also an area that’s ripe for improvement.  Building off of services spend management research we started in 2023 with SAP, we recently updated the survey data, gathering timely new perspectives on how procurement can drive greater value through services spend by collaborating with the business and optimizing processes. In this episode, Kelly Barner talks with Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Workforce at SAP, about the key findings and recommendations from this updated research into services spend management.  Gordon shares his perspective on how procurement’s rising confidence levels and scope of responsibilities within the business require teams to challenge the status quo when it comes to services spend management and move beyond cost metrics to more strategic considerations. Gordon and Kelly discuss: The importance of aligning services spend contracts with end-customer needs Why it matters what technology procurement is using to manage services spend How companies can differentiate their strategic approach based on service types to improve performance metrics The critical gaps in services spend management performance measurement Links: Gordon Donovan on LinkedIn Subscribe to This Week in Procurement Subscribe to Art of Procurement on YouTube 2023 Benchmarking Services Procurement: A Global Study  

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement. Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

“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  

Procurement 6 is a short podcast from Art of Procurement that publishes in the Art of Procurement feed every Friday morning at 6am US Eastern Time. Presented by a member of the Art of Procurement team, each episode has 6 short segments that summarize the week in procurement. Segments range from procurement tips to podcast summaries, from details of events to news or overviews of blog posts that capture our attention.

As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”  After taking an honest look at some of procurement’s most pressing challenges and flaws in episodes 1 and 2, Philip Ideson and Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham shift their focus from problem-spotting to solution-seeking with special guest, Oliver Hurrey, one of the world’s foremost experts on purposeful procurement. Through his work on sustainability and decarbonization in the supply chain with the Scope 3 Peer Group and the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, Oliver is the ‘real deal’ when it comes to empowering purpose-driven procurement teams to create meaningful change. In this episode, Oliver shares compelling real-world examples of instances where procurement has looked beyond traditional measures of success – and some pretty challenging constraints – to find purpose and meaning, proving what is possible when procurement takes a deliberate approach to problem solving. For example, Oliver shares how an innovative carbon pricing initiative is transforming the way major corporations evaluate suppliers, and the story of one little-known family-owned painting business that impressed seasoned procurement leaders at an international conference by sharing how they frame sustainability initiatives as a competitive advantage. These stories of purposeful procurement prove how procurement can lead organizational change and differentiated value creation when they choose to innovate beyond the status quo, to emphasize and incentivize the right KPIs, and to stand up to broken, ineffective systems.  Oliver’s own experiences with purpose-driven procurement create a clear path for what’s to come in episode 4 and beyond in “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement” as we dive increasingly deeper into how procurement can envision and implement the kinds of transformative practices that create meaningful, lasting impact. Links: Oliver Hurrey on LinkedIn Rich Ham on LinkedIn Learn more at FineTuneUs.com