In the newest episode of Talent Talks, Martin Smith, Founder of Talent Drive is joined by three procurement leaders in the tech and digital area to discuss these key questions.
How is AI, Automation and Blockchain sweeping up the more tactical and transactional activity in procurement? What is the best way to engage with new emerging tech partners? How can you effectively implement new technology within your organisation?
- Dave Jones – Indirect Procurement Senior Leadership Team at John Lewis Partnership
- James Meads – Consultant & Host of The Procuretech Podcast
- Dr. Thierry Fausten – Consultant at Informed Decisions
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- Developments of AI, Automation & Blockchain
- Engaging with new emerging tech partners
- Which tech areas will be expanding in the future
- Implementing new technology in-house
Links & References:
- Dave Jones – Indirect Procurement Senior Leadership Team – John Lewis Partnership: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dohjones
- James Meads – Consultant & Host of The Procuretech Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-meads/
- Dr. Thierry Fausten – Consultant – Informed Decisions: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thierryfausten/
“So you really had good transparency a long time ago. Now we see with the new systems is when your data is correct and you face a big challenge, you know what you’re buying. It’s a rearview mirror. However it also enables you to allocate resources where they are needed and it also gives you some insight on where your efforts can be coming in the future.” – Dr Thierry Fauston
“With the AI powered technology that’s out there, there is a lot of supplier scouting and market scouting that can be done if you’re going into a new category and you don’t understand the lay of the land and the supply base that’s out there. And the other one that is a really exciting proposition is the ability for AI to negotiate on behalf of the buyer by using machine learning. And that one, albeit it’s in its infancy, the companies that are investing heavily on that, are still fairly small startups at the moment, but I do see that gaining ground to.” – James Meads
“The decision you have to make is do you go ‘best of breed’ or ‘specialist’?” -Dave Jones
“I don’t think there’s a choice really to invest in tech. For us, we’re kind of leap frogging our competitors, including Amazon who are really advanced in AI in tech. So anyone who wants to survive in retail needs to be investing in this space definitely.” – Dave Jones
“So, essentially, what blockchain does is it certifies and it ensures that the data that is transferred along a chain that can be 1 or 50,000 points is absolutely trustworthy. So it has not been altered. But beyond that, by using this “pipeline” to transport information that is certified, you can attach a lot of things to this information. For example, if you take transportation documents, when you see all the paperwork that’s usually associated with shipping something from say mainland China into Europe, all of this can be purely electronic, which means somehow when you know your documents are good from the start, they will remain good to the end. They can’t be altered.” -Dr. Thierry Fausten
“It’s going to essentially eliminate the need for administrative or transactional procurement roles. So a lot of the lower end, more junior buyer roles or procurement admin roles that have been done these days, and indeed a lot of the spadework that procurement managers get dragged into that they don’t really want to do and they shouldn’t really be doing given their salary can all be automated.” – James Meads
“Boohoo had a billion pounds has wiped off their business because a subcontractor of one of their tier one suppliers have been illegally paying people less than the minimum wage. So that provenance of product and source of product will be massive.” – Dave Jones
“Small companies are going to deliver something that’s different because they can create that by directly talking with customers.” – Dr. Thierry Fausten
“I think a lot of organisations fall for the sales approach of “all bells and whistles” “end to end” solution and they’ll spend loads of money implementing it. But then the end users of the solution will go “It now takes me three minutes to buy my product today instead of 30 seconds.” – Dave Jones
“We have acknowledged in recent weeks that we are missing out on a lot of innovation, speed and agility and new ideas that can come from smaller suppliers.” – Dave Jones
“My piece of advice to procurement leaders would be to identify someone in your team who could implement it and nurture them for that role.” – James Meads
“You don’t have to do everything at once. Start small. There’s a lot of tech out there that you can very easily overlay, potentially a spend analytics tool or a data visualisation tool that can really transform how you do things today with minimal investment, quick implementation, and will really improve the reputation that your function has.” – Dave Jones
