Since January, 2020, our team has dedicated countless hours to bringing our best ideas and writing to the pages of CPO Rising. The site’s tagline, “The Site for Chief Procurement Officers and Supply Management Leaders,” is something we consider and work towards daily.

As we continue our 13th year of covering the topics that matter to CPOs and procurement leaders, we are excited to launch a new series – “Procurement Experts on CPO Rising”. Today’s article features an excerpt from my Procurement Rising Podcast episode with Sean Park, a Procurement Expert and the Chief Procurement Officer at Splunk (click to listen to the full interview). Note that this excerpt has been edited for readability.

Beginning a Diagnostic with Procurement Expert, Sean Splunk

Andrew Bartolini: So Sean, when you were brought in to Splunk, your first task was complete a diagnostic review of the procurement operation. As a former consultant, you’ve done this many times as the outsider. What tips do you have for CPOs looking to perform their own self-assessments?

Sean Park: One of the advantages of coming from consulting is we’re taught to think in frameworks, and that’s very helpful. It makes our assessments and process very easy to digest, and it’s also very efficient. So to answer your question, one of the first things I look for is, is there a cohesive, overall operating plan? What is the overall strategy? What are the strategic objectives and what are the strategies that are in place to help you fulfill your strategic objectives? Beneath that, what are the tactics for each strategy that are going to help your objectives come to fruition?

I call it a SPOM framework. It’s an ugly acronym for a pretty useful framework. S is for strategy, that’s what I’m speaking about now. Next, I go down to P, which is process and policy, so again what policies and processes do we need in place to execute against our tactics? Which will support our strategies, which will support our ability to win and then achieve our objectives. Then O is organization. Are you decentralized, centralized, hybrid? Do you outsource parts of it, do you outsource all of it? Where do you put people geographically? And how do you organize things, by category, by business unit or by geography, or a mix of all of those? And then beyond that, once you have that figured out, you have to figure out which skills you need to be able to execute those processes and policies. And so that’s where we did a lot of work to really define these skill sets that we needed to fill the organizational structure. And we do have a hybrid environment right now, we do outsource some of the work, we source a large part of it. We’re largely center-led, meaning a lot of our operations are based here in San Jose. But we do have a significant presence in Texas now as well, and we will soon be going international. To carry on with that SPOM framework, beneath the O is M, which is for metrics or KPIs. And so we look to see okay, what metrics are in place, and do they make sense? Do they align with the O for our plan for the organization, for the processes and policies? And do they feed into, and give you intelligence as to whether or not you’re going to achieve your strategic objectives. Then finally, beneath metrics and KPIs are the system. Where are the opportunities to automate?

Through that framework, very often we see companies that might be totally process-focused and doing really well, but to what end? And so if their strategic objectives have not been defined, for instance. Or do their metrics make sense? Are you tracking things that are actually going to help you predict whether or not you’re being efficient and effective in reaching your goals?

And so that’s where the consultant mindset goes. There are some of the drawbacks, but I do feel that there are advantages particularly if you have a relatively immature procurement, T&E, AP function, any or all of those. A consulting background helps because I’ve seen so many different situations so I know the potholes that are coming, the speed bumps that are coming. Of course, there are curveballs that you can’t anticipate but more often than not, you can. And having experience building several of these types of organizations across a few different industries, you develop and can bring in a lot of best practices.

To hear the full conversation, click here – Procurement Rising Podcast – Sean Park, Splunk

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The Procurement Rising podcast is now available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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