Video

Michael Shaw, Founder and Board Member, American Council of Sourcing and Procurement Executives (ACSPE)

Steve Miller, Chief Procurement Officer and Head of Facility Management, P.F. Chang's China Bistro

Mariano Legaz, SVP and CPO, Sprint

Steve Mehringer, Corporate Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer, AECOM

Kristina Johnson, Senior Director of Global Sourcing, Marsh & McLennan

No matter where you stand politically, one thing is undeniable: rapid and unpredictable changes to the way we do business are imminent in the Trump administration – bigly. So how can procurement prepare and adapt nimbly to the uncertain regulatory landscape? In this unscripted, self moderated CPO roundtable, you'll learn how top execs are dealing with the disruption. Audience Q&A to follow. Topics include:

• How procurement can react to import duties and trade restrictions evolving out of the Trump administration
• How to deal with the new price of foreign outsourced labor
• Preparing for the pros, cons and expenses of bringing more labor back to the US
• What do new environmental policies mean for sourcing?
• How to turn policy change into an opportunity to outpace competitors and disrupt markets, becoming the disruptor, not the disrupted
• How to prepare for risk amongst all the uncertainty - Can you afford the wait and see approach?

Tom Hogan, Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer , CBS Corporation

For long term value and success, and to advance Procurement within the C suite, its imperative the function be in alignment with corporate strategic goals. While this may sound fundamental, ask yourself if all of your team members are truly aware of your company’s strategic goals, with a genuine understanding of how their daily work supports these goals. This presentation will provide an overview of developing a dynamic strategic plan for the Procurement function. Topics include:

• Mobilizing into a strategy-focused function
• The 4 pillars: Financial, Customer, Process and Learning and Development
• Procurement Staff: Aligning individual initiatives with Departmental and Corporate goals
• Translating strategy into results

Cliff Moore, Chairman, COPC Inc.

Larry Wood, Chief Procurement Director , Intuit

Indirect Procurement can be a major spend – often $1 billion - yet the issues surrounding how to build a process that can actually be portable across industries and companies has proven to be elusive – until now. A group of senior indirect procurement executives (including Microsoft; Intuit; General Motors; Rolls Royce; Cisco, and others) partnered with academics from Western Michigan University and with COPC Inc. To develop and maintain the Indirect Procurement Standard to guide indirect procurement organizations. The standard deals specifically with the complexities and issues facing indirect procurement today and balances the usual focus on cost savings with the more recent focus on becoming a “trusted advisor” within the enterprise. The Indirect Procurement Standard consists of five key areas:

• Planning and Leadership
• Key Procurement Business Processes
• Key Support Processes
• People Management and Performance

Michael Van Keulen, Director, Global Procurement, Lululemon Athletica

Leading retailers have long recognized the strategic value and importance of applying procurement practices within their merchandise for resale. In today’s challenging retail climate, procurement transformation focused on indirect spend (i.e. non-resale) can be a source of competitive advantage. In this session, we will discuss how leading retailers have successfully transformed indirect procurement into an agile, value-driven function by implementing best-practices, establishing cross-functional partnerships, and by focusing on fact-based decision-making that uncovers inefficiencies to enable execution of strategic plans.

Doug Van Wingerden, Senior Vice President, Procurement Transformation, Insight Sourcing

For years, procurement leaders have been looking to expand their influence and elevate the role of procurement to the C-Suite. They have increased skills in their organizations and have invested in both the right tools and capabilities. And while these investments have led to impressive business results, many procurement leaders are still struggling to become relevant at the executive level. So what is it that is preventing them from punching through the next level? Their message is either too long, too complex, too confusing and / or not credible or believable. And, it’s often not linked to the mission of the business. In this session, we will explore:

• Common communication pitfalls that procurement leaders encounter
• The key elements of a believable message
• How to “translate” procurement results into a C-Suite level message

Dawn Fritzell, Procurement Indirect Services Team Leader/Manager, Kimberly-Clark

Achieving world class levels of value in Indirect spend categories that are decentralized, with no central owner or sponsor, is difficult. Spend activity in these categories often lacks governance, and stakeholders spend significant amounts with little oversight and without policy controls or guidelines. Procurement often is the only team that has the full and broad knowledge of what is happening in this type of spend category. It is challenging, but with persistence, a drive to ‘disrupt’ the system and the leverage of digital data tools, Procurement can be successful in the diversely distributed indirect spend category.

David Hearn, Former CPO, Juniper Networks

Machine learning has been applied to many functional areas, but is only now making it’s way to procurement. It’s catching up fast. It’s being applied to help us analyze supplier markets, source goods & services, understand and control goods & services demand from company employees, detect fraud, waste, & abuse, and the list goes on and on. Equally important is getting our procurement and supplier management teams ready to maximize the benefits from this technology. All changes in processes and tools require well planned change management. This astonishing capability is coming, so let’s be ready to show additional procurement and supplier management value-add to our internal stakeholders and continue to be seen as leaders in our companies.

• What is machine learning?
• How would a procurement team use it?
• How to get prepared for leveraging machine learning?
• How might machine learning change our processes?
• Will machine learning start the demise of procurement teams

Gabe Smith, Director, Client Development - Americas. Schneider Electric

Joanna Martinez, Founder, Supply Chain Advisors LLC

There's disruption all around us.  From the Amazon Echo in your family room to IBM's Watson, there are new ways to source and old paradigms to topple.  This session is all about ideas: what's going on out there across the globe, and how you can harness it to create positive disruption for your organization. Open your eyes to the possibilities, and disrupt your own ideas about how it has to be.

MODERATOR: Gabe Smith, Director, Client Development - Americas. Schneider Electric

Bonnie Clinton, Chief Procurement Officer, Toyota North America, Inc.

Neil Aronson, Head of Global Strategic Sourcing, Uber 

Rendi Miller, Director, Travel & Procurement, Splunk

Mark Zafra, Head of Strategic Procurement, Twitter

At this year’s ProcureCon Indirect East, we debated the relevance of category management – and people had a lot to say about it. Now at Indirect West, we continue the heated discussion exploring all sides of the intense love/hate dynamic in this complicated realm. Key topics include:

• What does category management really mean in today’s enterprise?
• If you just get rid of it –how would you replace it? What risks would that create – and would the stakeholders really buy in?
• If you keep it - are there new ways to strengthen it, achieve significant cost savings, gain process efficiencies, and enhance productivity?

INTERVIEWER: Julienne Ryan, Founder,  J. Ryan Partners - Be engaged at work   / Executive Director, ISM, New York

Linda Chuan, Senior Director, Global Strategic Sourcing, Salesforce.com

David Hearn, Former Chief Procurement Officer, Juniper Networks

Negotiations with suppliers, stakeholder relationships, closing the deal: When it comes to these vital procurement skills, women and men tend to have different expectations, approaches and experiences, as do the people on the other side. In this frank fireside chat between opposite sides of the gender gap, learn how both men and women can bridge the divide and create a unified procurement powerhouse. Key topics include:

• How to have organic candor with your peers and employees of different genders
• The "go-to" negotiation techniques of men and women, and what they can learn from each other
• Personality Based Management

Atif Meraj, Director Of Supply Chain Operations, Delta Airlines

Procurement is a relationship-driven organizational function, but there are forces at work behind the scenes that will completely transform how practitioners work with their suppliers. In the ever-pressing need to have things better, faster, cheaper and measurable, what does the procurement organization of the future look like, how can you prepare for these advancements, and how will they affect your relationships? The future is closer than you think! Q&A to follow.

• The impact of Robotics Process Automation on procurement processes and headcount
• What skillsets will need to change to succeed where robots and algorithms are the norm, not the exception?
• Can Alexa replace your secretary, or Watson replace your lower-level analysts?
• Will Bitcoin become an acceptable (and preferred) method of payment?

Joanna Martinez, Founder, Supply Chain Advisors LLC

Jeff Devon, Former Senior Indirect Procurement Director, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

Aditya Talwar, Director of Indirect Procurement, Charming Charlie

Heather Grewe, Business Leader, Sourcing and Supplier Management, Mastercard

Myles Peacock, CEO, CreativeDrive

You think about it everyday - how can I increase the value I get from key suppliers? In this panel, go beyond the traditional rate discussion and learn how partnering with your strategic suppliers to reduce their cost instead of reduce their margins can have major benefit for the bottom line. Key topics include:

• Where is the waste in supplier processes that could be eliminated?
• What reporting do you require of your suppliers and how effectively is it used? Reducing the reporting requirements and/or changing the frequency can take cost out.
• SLAs requiring immediate delivery of products make the supplier stock a full inventory - reduce the SLA to only key products, reducing inventory requirements.
• Examine your contracting requirements to see what Ts and Cs could be increasing your supplier’s costs – see what could be modified to take cost out!

David Spence, Assistant Director, Strategic Sourcing, University of Chicago Medicine

The University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, one of the nation's leading academic medical institutions, has been at the forefront of medical care since 1927, when it first opened to patients. Today, it comprises the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine; the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division, a section committed to scientific discovery; and the University of Chicago Medical Center, consistently ranked among the best hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Twelve Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine.

The University of Chicago medicine is a 617-bed adult and pediatric hospital with an operating income of $1.5B. It's 800+ faculty is among the Top 5 U.S. medical schools know for generating federal dollars per faculty. In this session, you'll learn about how The University of Chicago Medicine:

• Improved Contract Lifecycle Management
• Fostered a culture of collaboration with suppliers and sourcing staff
• Boosted Compliance to Policies and Regulations

Luis Alvarez, Global Sourcing Indirect Lead, 3M

It's hard to put a cost on risk - but mitigating it is nothing short of priceless, and needs to be incorporated into the value equation. So how do you know if your new vendor has the right programs, controls, metrics, and data controls in place? Will they steal customer data? Do they have the right back up systems? And what risk do you need to apply to what suppliers? In this invaluable presentation, learn the latest techniques for vetting suppliers.

Join this webinar to learn what procurement leaders should be thinking about as they seek to advise the business for the year ahead. Topics discussed include:

• Impact of today’s progressive solutions across all relevant procurement processes
• Strategies to align finance and procurement in the era of digitization
• Procurement and sourcing trends in creating an optimal procurement technology
• Trends in improving accountability throughout the P2P process
• Technology's impact on P2P and the emphasis on cost savings

Speakers:

• Ari Perlman, Sr. Director, Strategic Sourcing & Procurement at TEGNA
• Tyler Chamberlain, WW Head of Spend Management at Coupa

In this webinar you will learn:

• Learn why more than 70% of U.S. companies use a Vendor Management System (VMS) to source and manage their extended workforce
• Understand the 5 core benefits of a VMS – for both Procurement and HR
• Learn what to look for in a VMS for the most capability, usability, and configurability

Speakers:

• Christopher Minnick, Executive Vice President at Brightfield Strategies
• Benjie Hanson, Director, Consulting at Beeline

In this webinar you will learn:

• Implementing a multidisciplinary approach to prequalification and auditing
• Addressing the challenges of managing contractors in multiple regions with varying cultures
• Best practices for Negotiating Oracle ULA and MS EA

Speakers:

• Michael Ford, Global Director of Audit & Safety Services at BROWZ
• Brett Armstrong, Vice President of Marketing at BROWZ

Viewers will learn:

• A New Playbook for Procurement ROI
• A Radical Strategy for Pitching Procurement Internally
• A Way To Use Spend Analytics to Know The Score

Speakers:

• Kirk Poucher, Procurement Thought Leader, Insight Sourcing Group
• David Kurkjian, Effective Sales Consultant, MasterMessaging

Viewers of this webinar will learn:

• A precise framework around supplier risk management and why and where it’s needed
• How IBM manages supplier qualifications, compliance, financial continuity and supplier code of conduct
• Common mistakes made and solutions to supplier risk management

Speakers:

• Bill DeMartino,Practice Executive, Spend Analysis & Supplier Management, IBM Emptoris
• Lou Ferretti, Project Executive, Product Environmental Compliance & Supply Chain Social Responsibility, IBM Integrated Supply Chain

In this webinar we will discuss:

• Risk mitigation strategies that help you prevent supply chain disruptions, maintain compliance, ensure quality, and give you a leg up on the competition
• How to create real transparency in your end-to-end supply chain and provide unprecedented visibility
• Integrating risk management seamlessly into the existing organizational systems and processes
• What factors lead to the deployment of a risk management solution

Speakers:

• David Church, Senior Director of Supplier Performance at Leggett & Platt
• Bill DeMartino, General Manager of North America at riskmethods

Tune into this webinar as our industry experts discuss:

• How CMOs are allocating spend to get results with marketing procurement
• Insights into cost savings and productivity improvements seen across 175,000 companies
• Overcoming the top 3 issues in marketing procurement that can derail projects

Speakers:

• Enrique Cordero, Global Director of MArketing Services, Procurement at Merck
• Glen Livingston, Chief Revenue Officer at Noosh
• Chris Rand, WBR Insights Senior Analyst, ProcureCon

At some point, if you don't have some sort of technology to help you out, you can lose track of these things. You can lose track of the different scenarios you can have with a contract or with your relationship with your supplier.

That's exactly where I think AI can help, getting this organization, getting everything under one roof, so you as a procurement professional can take advantage of that, get more organized and get more advantages by using technology and getting your process more in control.

Melissa: That's interesting and I know, Gaston, you're coming at it from a procurement perspective in the organization. Toby, you're coming at it from a very different perspective. I would think that you might have a different way of assessing what should procurement organizations look for when they hear a contract tool is going to have some AI technology in it.