The 6th annual CPO Honors Awards are less than 1 week away and it is an exciting time for everyone at Ardent Partners! On Tuesday, we announced the complete list of finalists across the seven distinct awards.

As we approach the CPO Honors 2021 Awards Ceremony (click here to register), I wanted to share some of the details and great achievements of this elite list of CPOs, procurement executives, teams, and technologies. Let’s look at the Technology Excellence Award.

The Technology Excellence Award: This award is presented to the CPO and team that have used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.

The Finalists:

Juan Ahmad Del Vecchio, Senior Director, Strategic Sourcing – Global Procurement at Ralph Lauren

Under Juan Ahmad Del Vecchio, the sourcing team at Ralph Lauren has been on a mission to automate and accelerate sourcing and procurement processes by utilizing cloud-based technology. Highlights include: In the last 18 months, the Ralph Lauren sourcing team has deployed a supplier portal, a sourcing tool, and a contract management tool and continues to identify opportunities for other potential investments. The results have been transformational, changing the way the sourcing team engages stakeholders, suppliers, and the CEO and executive leadership team. Driving significant savings and supporting corporate growth initiatives as well.

Nüket Dursun, Purchasing Director at Arkas Holdings SA

Based in Turkey, Arkas Holdings is one of the largest largest container/liner operators in the world. Highlights include: During the pandemic Arkas’ procurement team, led by Nüket Dursun, deployed eSourcing and contracts software to drive visibility, savings, and productivity. The team was also able to dramatically collapse standard process cycle times by more than 90%.

John Sack, CPO Ally Financial

John Sack and his procurement team executed vision to lower the total cost of ownership, increase agility, strengthen compliance and further promote corporate responsibility by moving from a custom coding and integration heavy collection of systems for P2P, Sourcing, Contracting, Contingent Workforce and T&E. Highlights include: Increase diversity spend, efficiency, improve visibility and control over spend Gave Ally Supply Chain the ability to set, measure and track consistent KPIs to benchmark and continually improve over time.

Chuck Stefanosky, Director Strategic Sourcing and Procurement at Independence Blue Cross

Chuck Stefanosky and his procurement operation understand the value of partnering with Accounts Payable and Treasury to directly impact the strategic objectives of the company and that innovation and transformation are critical. Highlights include: Independence Blue Cross utilized new technology to reduce paper, improve vendor data, reduce supplier risk, and gain valuable insights into supplier performance for the benefit of the overall procure-to-pay process.  The technology created an ability to optimize cash flow by offering early payments to suppliers for a discount on their invoice.

Please join us in extending our congratulations to the finalists on their impressive and innovative work!

Want to see who wins?

Register today for

 The CPO Spectacular, CPO Honors webinar on November 16th

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