I’m pleased to announce the 2014 Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Virtual Roundtable Series and also share the first recorded CPO Roundtable session with you today (click link to listen).
Working in concert with IBM, my firm Ardent Partners, is producing a three-part series where we bring together three or four best-in-class Chief Procurement Officers and tackle a specific theme and get these industry renowned experts to share their best ideas, strategies and practices in a lively and interactive roundtable discussion conducted online. The topics covered in this year’s roundtables include (1) collaboration, (2) risk management, and (3) plans and priorities for 2015. Each roundtable will be announced and discussed here and on my firm’s blog CPO Rising where additional materials including an analysis of each roundtable and CPO participant profiles will also be available.
Our first CPO Roundtable was recently recorded and is now available from the following link:
Roundtable 1: CPO Collaboration to Drive Performance
Roundtable Description: Procurement’s success in recent years has paid the dividend of greater executive awareness of the procurement function overall and greater visibility for its leader, the Chief Procurement Officer or CPO. A direct result of this dividend is that many CPOs have been given greater responsibility and control over business operations including more active roles in new corporate initiatives. Of course, for those to whom much responsibility is given, much accountability is required. Hitting “the numbers” for leading departments can become a baseline expectation that draws little fanfare while more pressure mounts to find other ways to deliver value. Leading Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) today seek to extract and deliver more value from their departments than ever before as they attempt to stretch the limits of their organizations while also maximizing the relationships they have developed with suppliers and internal stakeholders. Procurement’s ability to impact business processes, relationships, and results is greater than it has ever been, but the depth and breadth of that impact will depend on each organization’s ability to master its processes and technologies and upon the ability of its leader, the CPO, to maintain the department’s focus and ensure fast, but assured, decision-making and crisp and agile execution. In this roundtable, we bring together four CPOs who understand that collaboration is a powerful strategy that must be used to enhance savings opportunities and increase the level of influence that procurement has within the enterprise and across the supply base.
Our panelists were drawn from both industry and government for this installment of the Virtual CPO Roundtable. On hand were:
- Tom Linton, Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer of Flextronics International, an industry-leading supply chain solutions company. Linton also serves as the chairman of the board for the Institute of Supply Management and is on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Logistics and Supply Chain.
- Alicia Ralston, Director of Global Sourcing and Procurement at Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), who started at ADM in 1997 and currently oversees all non-commodity purchasing functions as well as managing key supplier relationships.
- Dr. Nick Nayak, PhD, former CPO for the Department of Homeland Security, who until early July 2014 oversaw more than 1,400 contracting professionals spending $18 billion to support 240,000 federal employees.
- Patrice Knight, Vice President of Global Procurement at IBM. Knight has led efforts that have transformed IBM’s internal operations into a profit center and enabled the success and profitability of the greater enterprise’s strategy.
Andrew Bartolini, Chief Research Officer, Ardent Partners and Publisher of the popular blog CPO Rising served as roundtable host and moderator.
Click here to listen to the first CPO Roundtable and make sure to visit CPO Rising and this site for more information and materials on the 2014 CPO Virtual Roundtable Series.
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