Last week, Art of Procurement joined forces with Supply Chain Now and Buyers Meeting Point to host the 2022 Supply Chain and Procurement Awards. The live ceremony, which you can watch here, was an opportunity to celebrate the amazing results procurement has achieved over the last year, despite headwinds from the economy, supply chain disruptions, and continued pandemic complications.
We presented awards in a number of categories, but two were specifically dedicated to procurement: Procurement Technology Trailblazer and Reimagining the Power of Procurement.
The winner of the 2022 Procurement Technology Trailblazer Award is HICX.
The ability to digitally transform supply chain performance and corporate outcomes determines who will become a market leader and who will follow. Digital business transformation comes from leveraging new technologies and services to drive tangible business value, accelerate ROI and create a sustainable path forward. Technology trailblazers harness emerging technologies, streamline the user experience, and deliver new business insights. The HICX team won this award for executing against their own vision and delivering measurable results for their clients.
Supplier management is a huge task. Enterprises with tens of thousands of suppliers across multiple divisions struggle to manage supplier data throughout the supplier lifecycle. They will add and remove thousands of suppliers a year, and yet must still maintain extensive information about each supplier, ranging from contact and address details to compliance, financial and risk-related data.
In their nomination, HICX shared the story of their client BAE Systems, Inc. a global aerospace and defense company. The initial aim of this project was to reduce supplier onboarding time and overhead. They were able to establish a single source of truth for 50,000 suppliers across 13 business units in North America. They also onboard around 5,000 new suppliers every year. Now they can handle most of that work – including the information upkeep – without needing to rely upon human communications.
In his acceptance video, HICX CEO Costas Xyloyiannis said, “It’s been really exciting to see how in the last 12 to 18 months organizations are really prioritizing supplier experience and leveraging technologies such as Hicks to set up their suppliers for success.”
Today’s procurement teams need to understand that they are working in an experience economy – and that includes suppliers. Ensuring that their digital touchpoints with the company are as frictionless and transparent as possible will improve the overall relationship between the businesses and maximize the value delivered.
Congratulations to the HICX team!
