“The diversity of thinking and input from procurement is super helpful to us in the [sales] process. It saves us time, saves us cost, saves us energy, and makes us more effective because our hit rate is higher. It just makes us look even more polished in front of them.” –Chet Patel, Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Americas at BT
We often refer to “the business” when we are trying to ensure that we take a larger perspective on procurement’s work. But at the end of the day, “the business” is made up of many individuals, each one of them is a different type of procurement stakeholder. We want to share more stakeholder voices because procurement is always at risk of misunderstanding or misinterpreting what they really need from us.
At Mastermind LIVE Fall 2021, Philip Ideson moderated a session with Chet Patel, Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Americas at BT, and Cyril Pourrat, CPO at BT Sourced, BT’s procurement services company.
Art of Procurement has had a front row seat to watch the transformation of the BT Sourced enterprise procurement team, one that we believe is setting the standard for the future of procurement. In this session, focused on stakeholder collaboration, we got to hear:
What a procurement digital transformation journey looks and feels like to stakeholders observing from the outside
How closely related partnership with the business and partnership with suppliers are for procurement
How procurement can establish themselves as a trusted advisor to the business – even when that means telling them ‘no’
