Everyone wants to be seen as an innovator, and procurement leaders are no exception. The problem with this desire is that, much like procurement transformation, the definition of innovation can be hard to pin down. We all know it when we see it, but setting out in the morning with “innovation” at the top of your to-do list can be paralyzing… unless you have a master plan.
I interviewed Nancy Nicoll, Vice President of Not for Resale (NFR) / Indirect Strategic Sourcing, Retail Business Services, at ProcureCon Indirect East about everything from reporting to the C-suite to managing procurement through a huge corporate merger.
Although savings continues to be a high priority in the razor-thin margin grocery retail environment, they are not the horizon of procurement’s focus. For Nancy and the rest of her team, savings are the foundation – what gets them through the door and establishes their credibility – so that procurement can go on to deliver exceptional, sustained, big picture value.
In this conversation, Nancy covers points such as:
- Why her organization made the decision not to mandate cooperation with procurement.
- Whether emerging technologies such as AI and RPA hold the key to the challenge of tail spend (and how they might alter our definition of “spend under management”).
- Her three-part focus on collaborative stakeholder relationships, team investment, and demonstrating a consistent, broad value proposition.
- Balancing procurement’s process expertise with stakeholders’ subject matter expertise to gain access to ‘creative’ service spend categories.
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Links & Resources
- Learn more about Art of Procurement’s partnership with Ivalua in support of their Ivalua NOW event series.
- Nancy Nicoll on LinkedIn
