“That’s what I call advanced procurement. The closer you are to the business, the sooner you get to the business investment and development. When you are defining the new product, procurement should be there, bringing innovation, knowledge, technical aspects, and the economics behind this new line of business. Procurement can impact both revenue and costs.” –Vanessa Pepperell, Global COO and Strategy Procurement VP at Aquanima
In September of 2021, Art of Procurement collaborated with BT Sourced, the procurement services group at BT, to produce a hybrid event called Dare to Discover: Reaching New Heights for Procurement. As part of this event, Philip Ideson had the opportunity to facilitate three executive panel sessions.
In this week’s episode, you’ll get to hear the last of those panels, a discussion focused on the formation of procurement companies. He interviewed three leaders who work, not just in internal procurement departments, but companies that spun procurement out of their organizations to create independent procurement companies.
The panel featured Cyril Pourrat, Founder and Chairman of the Board at BT Sourced; Vanessa Pepperell, Global COO and Strategy Procurement VP at Aquanima; and Beatrice Felder, CEO of BuyIn, who support companies like Deutsche Telekom and Orange. The conversation they had gives all procurement organizations and leaders an opportunity to consider what it is like to think like an external service provider.
Of particular interest are their comments on:
The stories and journeys behind their move from internal procurement lead to externally facing service providers
What suppliers of the companies they support think about the shift in model and how it affects their experience
How they think the model of a procurement operating company will evolve from this point forward
