Episode show notes
“In general when you’re buying services, it won’t have such a complex supply chain. But in terms of what you’re buying, it’s infinitely more complex.”
Pinpointing the value of procured services on more metrics than pure cost is an issue worth solving, given the trillions in annual global spend that go towards services procurement.
Zivio are leading the way with their SaaS platform – their CEO Jonny Dunning is our guest on Talent Talks this week discussing how technology is altering the procurement landscape.
We dive into digitisation attracting talent, automation allowing higher level strategies to be employed, why data is power, and much more.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- Trends in perception of procurement, currently seen as a relatively young function
- Growing sophistication in the design of procurement roles
- The talent shortage, and how candidates recognise digitisation regardless of category
- Consistent demand for automation, visibility and control
- The evolving landscape of procurement, with its increasing focus on data
This episode of Talent Talks is sponsored by Nutral. Through their neutral vendor managed service, Nutral offers an easier, streamlined way to achieve better fulfilment, improved quality, 100% visibility & control of expenditure, less risk, and bottom-line savings. They place the interests of customers first when selecting suppliers – every time. Find out more at https://nutral.uk/
Episode highlights
“We enable customers to create smart supplier ecosystems, which then allow them to automate and manage the full source to pay process for anything they procure, contract, and is delivered under a statement of work. So it’s quite specific. It’s an exciting time to be in this space. The procure-tech area is something that’s really expanding at the moment.” – 3:10 – Jonny Dunning
“There’s growth in the recognition of the importance of procurement as a strategic function within organisations. That’s partly due to the increasing complexity of supply chains, but it’s also due to, I believe, just a generally faster rate of innovation & change, and also volatile markets.” – 6:40 – Jonny Dunning
“Whether it’s FM, packaging, or CapEx, it doesn’t matter the category area – digital is gonna be part of that. I think the new generation of procurement talent are really recognising that as well as the sustainability agenda.” – 13:30 – Martin Smith
“It’s not just about salary, things like technology come into it. How sophisticated is the tech stack within your organisation for a procurement person? They don’t want to come in and have to deal with a load of manual carnage, they want to come in and have smooth processes so that they can actually use the higher level procurement skills.” – 17:35 – Jonny Dunning
“Is technology going to change my ability to carry on in this profession? My opinion is absolutely not. You should be automating the things that need to be automated, and using the broader, complex skills that procurement people are developing and possess, to actually work at a higher level.” – 20:30 – Jonny Dunning
“There are different flexible approaches, but the underlying commonalities are that, when dealing with the problems that they’re addressing, automation is required, visibility is required, control is required. So that’s the kind of the practicalities of what procurement departments want to do.” – 26:00 – Jonny Dunning
“In general when you’re buying services, it won’t have such a complex supply chain. But in terms of what you’re buying, it’s infinitely more complex, far more nuanced, yet ephemeral, difficult to tie down in some ways, and therefore difficult to measure.” – 28:10 – Jonny Dunning
“From procurement’s point of view, knowledge is power, and data is knowledge. So for procurement to have that strategic input, and to really provide the most effective insights to an organisation, they need to be driving data-based decisions.” – 33:15 – Jonny Dunning
“Circling back to the ESG side of things: for all types of organisations, this is growing and growing and growing in importance, but you need data and visibility to understand how this applies to your supply chain.” – 40:30 – Jonny Dunning
Links & References
- Zivio
https://www.linkedin.com/company/zivio/
- Jonny Dunning, CEO of Zivio
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnydunning/
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
