Reporting for Duty

One of the great clichés of procurement is that executives and practitioners often “fall” into it, having started out in a hard or social science before wandering into the profession. But in his own words, David Gallaer is unique: it was his duty from the start. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland with a BS in Physical Science / Engineering, and served in the U.S. Navy as a Supply Corps Officer specializing in government contracting. While on shore duty, he completed many government contracting classes, became certified as a Navy Procurement Officer, and acted as a Government Contracting Officer at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.

“That’s what started my career in procurement,” he said. And it set him up nicely for his civilian career. When he left the Navy, Dave went to work at Unisys Corporation as a procurement manager focused on managing sub-contracts for the large government contractor.

While the first half of Dave’s career was in government contracting, the second half has been in the private sector working for some of the world’s most recognizable companies. He is an alumnus of ACNielsen, Pitney Bowes, Revlon, Yale University, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and other organizations where his career has progressed from Director of Contracts and Compliance to Director of Global Procurement to VP and Head of Procurement. Dave is now a VP of Category Management at MUFG Union Bank.

“It’s interesting how it all came together,” he said, adding that, “the training I received in the Navy and with the Government has been the cornerstone of my career.”

Procurement Leadership in Action

Most of Dave’s career has been on the indirect procurement side; with a heavy emphasis on IT. But at Revlon, it was marketing and advertising. Dave has also managed HR, real estate, and facilities spend at various times throughout his career. “All of these categories are critical for organizations to run, but in numerous companies they are still somewhat decentralized;” he said. “Because of that, many large companies haven’t put forth the effort yet of applying category sourcing and procurement methodologies, especially manufacturing companies that have mostly focused on direct materials.” That was his experience at Revlon: when Dave joined the team there, he effectively had to start from scratch and address all of the indirect spend, like media and advertising agency requirements (what he refers to as “The Crown Jewels of Revlon”).

But the most important element for Dave and his team(s) has always been internal customer engagement: being able to win their trust and confidence and convince them that they’re going to help them “and not shove unwanted change down their throats.” Now that Dave is at MUFG Union Bank, the biggest focus for him and his team is to engage with business process owners and win their support, but then challenge them and facilitate and collaborate so that they can achieve optimum sourcing results.

At the same time, Dave is “adamant about not reaching out and offering a service” that he and his team cannot provide. Instead, he is a “firm believer in having a good methodology and system in place that’s going to set you up for success,” otherwise procurement leaders and teams may set themselves up for failure. His approach here boils down to two principles: 1) have at least basic core methodologies in place, and 2) employ a soft-sell / customer engagement process to ensure that people are comfortable with the approach.

Dave has also found that mandates are the worst way of doing things – “as soon as you set them, business process owners revolt.” He and his team had great success at Revlon with this strategy, so much so that upper management (CMO, CEO, etc.) immediately became comfortable with his approach. The CEO eventually encouraged his direct reports to seek out Dave and his team for help with all of their indirect spend. “Having access to that top-level support was key to our success,” he said. Conversely, “I’ve seen companies fail due to a lack of that upper management support.”

The Changing Nature of Procurement Leadership

By his own account, Dave’s role (and one could argue, procurement leaders as a whole) has more or less turned into internal management consulting, focusing on procurement, strategic sourcing, category management, and supply chain management. “Having seen many good and bad examples,” said Dave, “I apply the same basic process, procedures, and organizational alignment practices everywhere I go.” And the companies that Dave has worked at range from grassroots-level startups to fully state-of-the-art organizations that were already employing best practices.

Now, after nearly 35 years in the profession (and counting), Dave finds incredible value attending and speaking at conferences (like CPO Rising 2018!) where he shares his best practices and stays abreast of game-changing technologies, like artificial intelligence and Blockchain distributed digital ledgers.

The Exciting Things about Procurement are…

Over his career, Dave has seen the beginning of things like B2B that have evolved into much higher levels of automation, and much deeper, more robust capability in skillsets. And although he has enjoyed seeing this evolution, it has been pretty slow. “This stuff takes a long time,” said Dave, “and the larger the company the longer it seems to take to truly roll things out and get traction.” But the technologies out there now and their various applications (e.g., VMS for contingent workforce management, VMS for print management) are becoming commonplace. “Being able to apply that kind of technology to any spend category you have is a no-brainer – it’s a simple and basically free opportunity to manage a very large amount of spend and gain significant bottom line returns.”

Up Scope! Previewing Dave’s CPO Rising 2018 Mainstage Presentations

Dave will give a mainstage presentation entitled, “Strategic Category Management: A Vital Part of Corporate Strategy and Supply Chain Optimization.” In it, Dave will draw on his nearly 35 years in procurement to demonstrate how a strategic approach to category management can help sourcing and procurement teams deliver greater value to the enterprise. Join us on November 7 and 8 at CPO Rising 2018 in Boston where we will learn from Dave and many others like him – register now while you still can!

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