I’ve known Chris Shanahan, Vice President of Global Procurement and Global Real Estate at Thermo Fisher Scientific, for nearly a decade. And I am beyond thrilled to welcome him back to Boston tomorrow morning as one of our keynote speakers at CPO Rising 2018, the procurement executive summit of the year. What follows is the first of a two-part profile based upon a recent interview.
Like many procurement professionals, Chris sort of “fell” into the space. After earning a degree in purchasing and materials management from the Limerick Institute of Technology, Chris began his career with Essilor, working in a warehouse where he essentially packed lenses into boxes. After six years of progressive responsibility, Chris graduated to a purchasing role, which is how he arrived in procurement. He became a purchasing officer and was responsible for buying for the plant.
In 1990, Chris moved from Essilor to Sterling Drug (now SmithKline Beecham) and became a purchasing planning coordinator in the production planning space. Despite the title, purchasing was never his primary role, as his responsibilities were supply chain-focused. But in 1997, while on assignment in the UK, Chris met the VP of procurement at Becton Dickinson (BD) who would recruit him into a pure procurement role and begin an 18-year career with the global medical technology developer. In 2000, he joined BD as the Director of One Company Procurement for Europe, where he was tasked with setting up BD’s procurement operations in the region.
Driving Global Change at Becton Dickinson
At the time he joined BD, the procurement organization was neither centralized nor center-led. Chris, and his colleagues in Europe who joined with him, focused on driving change across the organization. They directed their efforts primarily on consolidating spend and gaining leverage, mainly within production and direct spend. Bolstered by his and his team’s success in Europe, Chris would next be tasked with setting up procurement offices in Singapore for BD’s operations in Asia in 2003. For two years Chris continued to grow procurement in the regions, and build trust in the services they delivered. In 2005, he came to the US to lead Global Procurement and evolve it into an even more comprehensive and rigorous function, which at the time had more staff focused on the direct side of BD’s spend. Chris and his team expanded their operations, and developed an effective matrix structure to address direct and indirect spends at global and regional levels. The structural changes required continual assessment, communication, collaboration and refinement to bring the best value to the company while meeting the needs of the businesses and their leaders. It is an evolution that continues to mature.
Procurement Transformation: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit
Speaking of evolution, change can elicit different responses depending on one’s perspective. For people who initiate change, it can excite, motivate, and fill them with purpose and satisfaction. But for people who have change thrust upon them, it can create anxiety, fear, and resistance to that change. Chris knows this dichotomy better than many.
In 1995, when SmithKline Beecham acquired Sterling Drug, Chris remembers when the corporate procurement group came to their plant and told them they were going to centralize procurement operations. He and his team challenged the rationale for doing it, believing the procurement team could not get better value or drive better service and meet the needs of the plant. It was an apropos learning experience because five years later he was charged with doing this same activity at a different company. In the interceding years, Chris realized that rather than fight this transformation, he and his team would be better off joining and enabling a successful change. As a result, he grew into a bigger role at SmithKline and helped his plant operations by “jockeying between the plant environment and helping corporate be successful.” Through that experience, Chris was able to understand plant and corporate-level thought processes, which he leveraged when he came to BD in 2000, particularly when driving change.
Thus, as BD’s Director of Company Procurement for Europe and Asia, and especially as Sr. Vice President of Global Procurement, change management was been “foundational” for Chris and his team. There were many dynamic questions to address regarding how to conduct good category management, how to conduct quality risk management, how to build up associates and their capabilities, how to drive innovation, and how to ensure that the organization has sustainable supply and a good corporate social responsibility program. “When you look at all of these factors, fundamentally, the big question is, ‘how do you drive change, manage change, and ensure that you’re meeting the expectations and needs of the business?’”
Preparing for the Road Ahead
In December 2017, after nearly two decades with BD, Chris accepted a position as the vice president of global procurement and global real estate for Thermo Fisher Scientific, headquartered just down the road from Ardent Partners in Waltham. He joined the company to lead its efforts to leverage the marketplace scale while transforming the supply base.
For Chris, the overall challenge in this role — and any new roe, for that matter — is to know how to communicate and drive change, and stay connected with his business partners to ensure that they are not blindly going down a path that does not meet the needs of the business. For him, change management and communication are vital to be successful. In the part two of this series, we will take a look at just how things have changed in the last 20 years; what Chris believes is in store for enterprises, in general, and procurement teams, in particular; and what Chris will speak about at CPO Rising 2018 tomorrow. Stay tuned!
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