“Leading with a discussion around sustainability and an organization’s overall impact on the planet and on society is a way of opening doors.”
Episode show notes
“I love transformation, because you can make a profound difference to organisations if you get it right.”
With broad industry experience that proves he’s no one trick pony – BA, Three, Estee Lauder and the Home Office to name a few varying examples – Tim Snow is a fine example of why procurement professionals shouldn’t be pigeonholed. After all, in what other industry can you work on security for the 2012 Olympics, then help launch rockets into space…?
Currently enjoying a scintillating CPO role at Inmarsat, Tim shares the wealth of experience behind his passion for commercial transformation, breaking away from the ‘outdated’ practice of category management, and building confidence in your vision from stakeholders and staff alike.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- The secret sauce behind commercial transformation
- Breaking out from the pigeonhole of category management
- Tim’s two cents on the pertinent ‘cost vs value’ debate
- Building confidence as a reliable procurement professional
- How automation will set up more personal interactions
This episode of Talent Talks is sponsored by 4C Associates – a leading European procurement and supply chain consultancy, who work collaboratively with forward-thinking clients to deliver real business value across a wide range of transformation and cost optimisation service offerings. Visit https://www.4cassociates.com/ for more information.
Episode highlights
“I love transformation, because you can make a profound difference to organisations if you get it right. You don’t always get it right, of course, but it makes a massive difference if you do get it right.” – 4:00 – Tim Snow
“I’m continually finding that I’m adapting my leadership styles, not only to circumstances, but to culture. Quite frankly, that’s one of the reasons I love working in different companies and across different industries. There’s often loads of similarities that you can leverage across them, but it’s different, and it’s really good fun, that kind of learning process.” – 8:00 – Tim Snow
“I think category management’s quite old fashioned and quite out of date, I think it’s really restrictive to the team you’ve got if you pigeonhole them into just one category.” – 11:00 – Tim Snow
“I don’t think procurement needs to worry about having the same level of knowledge as an IT person. The IT person does that. We merely need to be strong in commerciality. So we bring the commerciality, they bring the IT experience, we marry them together, and you just need to know enough to be dangerous.” – 14:15 – Tim Snow
“Do what you said you will do. If you promise to do something, deliver on that promise. You need to do that so the team continues their belief in the journey to the vision. You also need to do that so the stakeholders in the company and the suppliers see that you absolutely do what you say.” – 20:44 – Tim Snow
“Whilst I’ve mandated green electricity – we’ve hardly anything in the office that draws loads of power and got rid of stationary – I’m interested in how I can drive sustainability and a ‘green-ness’ in the supply chain. This is really tricky, because as soon as you start meddling in the supply chain, then there’s a kind of cause and effect.” – 23:45 – Tim Snow
“Value for me is a number of things rather than one thing. I don’t think savings are something to lead on as a procurement function, despite what a CFO often thinks. Savings run out at some point, from an OpEx perspective – not always, but they do reduce.” – 28:55 – Tim Snow
“What I think will happen is there’ll be much more collaboration, person-to-person interaction, and much more outward facing thinking because automation will do some of the tasks that were dragging back and eating into the time that you’ve got available. So I think there’ll be more time out there with suppliers and out there with customers, and less time sitting at a desk.” – 35:29 – Tim Snow
Links & references
- Tim Snow, Vice President / CPO, Commercial Contracts & Insurance at Inmarsat
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-snow-5027b111/
- Inmarsat
https://www.linkedin.com/company/inmarsat/
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
