Intro  
Welcome to the Procurement Unplugged Podcast, the podcast for procurement professionals. Great to have you with us today.

Fabian Heinrich  
Very warm welcome from my side to another episode of Procurement Unplugged. I'm extremely happy to have Bob Booth here today from IBM who is a well-known procurement veteran and who's happy to share some knowledge and insights today with us. Welcome, Bob.

Bob Booth
Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, Fabian. Thank you.

Fabian Heinrich 
Yeah, maybe it's interesting to understand. What was your way into procurement? I mean, you've been around since quite some time, I would even say two to three decades, you've seen a lot. So what was your first entry road into procurement? Or is or was it always kind of your dream to work in procurement?

Bob Booth
Yeah, no, actually. So I started my career as an accountant in practice. And I spent the first 10 years in it working in the accounting profession, and also in, in, in industry. And then I read an article by a company I'd never heard of called Andersen Consulting, about a piece of technology I'd never heard of called SAP that was going to fully automate finance within five years. This was in 1997, right? So I thought, well, I better go do that. So I, I joined Ernst and Young as an SAP consultant in finance, and then did my first vice finance implementation. And then I heard in sort of 99, about something called B2B. So I said to my, my colleague, I want to do B2B. And he said, well, there's this piece of technology we've never heard of called Ariba. We're implementing it at an insurance company. So I went along and then implemented sort of version five of Ariba, induced 2000, for a UK insurer, and kind of went from there. And kind of found it, you know, challenging, and dynamic, and interesting. And then for the sort of 15 years thereafter, I've been implementing systems, transforming operating models, fixing data, driving change, but all the way through looking for kind of interesting and new pieces of technology. In the early 2000s. It was RFID, and E POS technology. And then as I went through and and went into a sort of more sort of organisational transformation, it was more about automation, and analytics. And then as I as I then reflected again, and at the end of my career in Accenture, then as I joined IBM, I started to focus on on AI. But actually, all of that AI technology just sits on top of the core enterprise systems. Interestingly, you know, it's, it needs to be to be added to something that is already well, well founded. And so for me, that's what that's what I enjoy, I enjoy understanding client's problems, and then working out what all the ingredients are to help solve them around those around those dimensions.

Fabian Heinrich
No, I mean, that was a very interesting journey, I'd say. And I mean, you've pretty much described that in the kind of mid late 90s, it was a huge disruption to have a digital automated P2P process. So apart from from from that beginning of the journey, what would you say were like the biggest changes or transformations over over the last 30 years since then?

Bob Booth
I think I think I mean, some things have kind of moved forward dramatically. But I think some things are still the same, or things we're trying to solve 2000 and sort of decade thereafter, right? So the the heart of this thing is that the core enterprise system, the SAP or the Coupa, or whatever it might be, but actually getting it to be usable by someone is continues to be a challenge, making sure that the experience they have when when they when they received this piece of data and you know, kind of corporate experience on systems like procurement compared to the Amazon experiences a vast gulf between the two things. Data was always a challenge. And it continues to be a challenge. I think I think the thing that's really different is, I sort of see some of my sort of peers in the industry talking about the future of procurement. And I think in procurement, the future of procurement is kind of now because the thing that's really changed is, you can now join together technologies, make them genuinely interoperable, connect them and integrate them almost seamlessly. It was it's actually really, really easy. And that means if you think about the things I talked about, you know, the end to end experience, think about the things that are going to drive value that really make a difference. And then you get the data, right, you can actually deliver that sort of, you know, kind of beyond Amazon experience in corporate systems as well. I think that's different. This is a problem experience is problem. Systems are a problem, as they always were. But the technology gets to layer on top of it. If you go and solve those core problems. You can have some kind of exquisite experiences to really reinvent procurement process.

Fabian Heinrich  
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that to solve the clients' problems, and you just mentioned a tonne of problems and being verbal, you say in the last decades, you can you can put a checkmark and say, Okay, from those 100 clients we solved the problem. And actually, I mean, for sure P2P automation, but I mean, probably there are a ton of other topics in the intersection of finance and procurement where you can say, okay, that is solved now. And, yeah, that will be interesting.

Bob Booth
Well, I think I'm actually all the things that I talked about organisations are solving, we worked for a foreign company recently and implemented an e-procurement solution there. And they got someone who really thought about structure or strategy for the technology. Our role then was to, you know, make sure the data was right, go through all the contracts, cleanse them, and then sort of create all the different bank channels to make sure that sort of insight that within the contract converted the things they could buy. We also then kind of did the human-centric change piece to make sure we thought about the personas that were going to be that were going to be receiving this, the people that people in accounts payable or requesters or approval of suppliers, and then made sure the whole piece was seamless. So so all those things are getting solved. And the and the sort of new plugins of the technology makes a big difference. And I think again, it's just about having thought about the how to solve them in a holistic way thinking about all the aspects of the transformation programme, not just the technology.

Fabian Heinrich
Yeah, I think it's very interesting to to understand the different layers, that you have the data layer, the technology layer, because I mean, like you hear many people are saying in procurement, like garbage in garbage out. So I think the foundation about that analytically, and AI driven procurement centre needs to be the cleansing, as you just mentioned, and the Master Data Management, I think, to build that fundament, I think it's, it's a key.

Bob Booth
Yeah, and I think I think the key thing is that you start with the experience of the persona, if you understand what actually and then we do, we ran a session for a consumer company a couple of years ago, kind of when they started, we brought in accounts payable, we brought in this strategic sourcing people we brought in the accounts payable when they started, they were kind of in all in separate corners, like a wrestling match, right, ready for kind of, because they were sure that the all their problems in terms of their process were generated by their colleagues. But then as we started to do some persona exercises to understand, you know, what does someone say, think feel and do and then sort of say, you know what, I can't get access to this particular data, because there's contracts not properly loaded. When you then sort of mapped all their problems on to the end to end source to pay piece, you can see that everyone had problems all the way through. And so everyone understood that all the problems were cumulatively created. And actually that if they just worked together on the five or six things that were really key the elements of data, the appropriate pieces of workflow and approval, they could solve them together. And they kind of went from being three corners, right? Like, like a wrestling match to forming into a family photo. And it's really nice using the persona based approach experience based approach, you can not only holding on the really critical things you need to do. But you can also kind of bring people together and align around the fact that you want to transform, it's a really powerful, powerful transformation.

Fabian Heinrich
Yeah, I can imagine that because I mean, that method will also force the collaboration and would also sync from top to bottom about the end to end experience. And I think only if you if you build upon the end to end experience, you can you can drive value, because I mean, just was fragmented technology and system breaks you you don't drive really that that incredible value.

Bob Booth 
Exactly. Exactly.

Fabian Heinrich
And with regard to the personas, do you think of your differentiate by the different sourcing categories? Do you think all personas have been served? Or do you think some somewhere kind of underserved were certain sort of inefficiencies or under digitization is still happening?

Bob Booth
Well, I think there's probably from a persona perspective, I think there are kind of, we typically break into two, the sort of, you know, the buyer of complex services is often a kind of frequent buyer compared to the sort of you know, the occasional shopper and need to make it relatively intuitive as kind of Amazon like as possible and then and then how to how to self serve around the around the, the systems in the learning and everything else, right, so that just kind of like that, that tranche of people can can be can happily shop and get on with their job. For the for the regular buyers, the frequent buyers who you tend to be a commodity and more a commodity expert as a as a requester, where IT services, you kind of have to think differently. And I think you have to, because Services offers so much complexity, right? There's complexity and the dynamic nature.

Fabian Heinrich 
Why why is it so complex with regards to services?

Bob Booth
There was, so I think there are sort of three parts, right. So it's, there's, there's a sort of dynamic nature of what you buy in that drives complexity. There's also some risk in in services, right, which doesn't, it doesn't have with goods. And there's a piece around the fact that it just really kind of doesn't fit into a P2P system, which is really a P2P system, it's kind of almost based upon the requisitioning process, kind of for the army or whatever, you went to the stores and said, I need a BMC. And that's turned in, in in kind of modern ERP systems into a PR and an appeal on a receipt, that really, really doesn't matter. So. So just to talk about,...

Fabian Heinrich
If I may ask you, I mean, many people these days talk about the supply chain risk. But I haven't heard much people talking about the risk with regards to services, maybe you can elaborate on, on that topic a bit.

Bob Booth
Yeah, maybe just talk, just talk a little bit about the kind of dynamic nature, right. So of course, with the service you, you don't fully understand what you want until you've co created it with a supplier, ideally, you're in control of that process and scope is controlled. And then as you start to execute it, things change. So you need a mechanism to be able to manage the change. And then as you consume it, of course, you've got different dimensions you might have, you know, different different people have different times at different rates, different periods, partial delivery of milestones, a whole bunch of complexity around that, that's one dimension. But then if you look at the risk, I guess we've all kind of been in the consulting, buying sort of situation where you think you're buying somewhat at a certain grade, and a certain experience, but actually, you get a different person at that kind of wrong grade, right. So there's risk around key resources, making sure you actually get the people you really need to do a particular piece of marketing, advisory or whatever it is. And then there's risk around, you know, the commercials around it fixed price, or TNM, or milestones. So actually, the whole component of risk and the risk there, of course, because you just don't get the quality of service, you need to be able to deliver what you need to take your business forward. At that the price you're expecting to pay.

Fabian Heinrich 
Yeah, that's, that sounds about right. I mean, like, listening to you, the dynamic nature itself feels like a huge risk. Because, like, only if you if you if you navigate it in a certain framework, I think you're able to later on mitigate the risks if I understood you correctly.

Bob Booth
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think there's a couple of parts here, right? So the first one is, are you maintaining control of something you looking to buy and make sure that you kind of, you know, identifying it, specifying it controlling it. But at the same time, you don't want to stifle supplier innovation, right, you want to make sure that you get the best ideas from, from your suppliers in a controlled manner. And to get really a case of how you combine and combine those two things, and sort of kind of jerry rigged that into into a sort of ERP solution.

Fabian Heinrich
Yeah. And and I mean, if you look on a on a more broader scheme of things from the macro economic level, I mean, of course, there's a massive trend from goods to services. So you would think that that persona you've just described is gaining more and more attention. How, how do you see that in the current ecosystem?

Bob Booth  
Yeah, I mean, I think I think services are critically important, right, you know, the the right people to help people transform their business deliver on their, their marketing asks? Absolutely. So I mean, there's a, there's a sort of a real - I cannot kind of give advice around elements of securing goods across the supply chain. So I do think it's, it's more important than ever, and kind of, it's almost like there are sort of two or three ways of dealing with it, right. So on one hand, some people are just accepting as complex and raising their million pounds blanket order, and they're relying on colleagues and their colleagues and their supplier to deal with it through offline Excel mechanisms, right. And then some people are trying to use solutions like Fieldglass. So to solve that next, so it gets somewhere around around round temporary labour and contractors, and then there are kind of an evolution of kind of technologies that are being kind of much more specifically designed to solve this problem.

Fabian Heinrich  
So you kind of think that now that more and more providers coming up, which goes beyond the traditional template, but focus on the more complex services in order to cater to those personas to deliver an end to end experience.

Bob Booth
Yeah, I mean that there are as well, I mean, there's kind of there's I think there's a clear leader in the market so so Globality have taken a really a really strong position. And but there's also you know companies like Mercanis who have also kind of startups are going fast and making progress. And those those companies have really embraced the sort of dynamic nature of, of services, they make an easy to use sort of AI conversation tools to be able to have a conversation and chat with a system to understand what you need and properly gather your requirements, actually, you know, collaborating with multiple requesters. And then you can go into a process with suppliers where you can iterate the solutions and sort of run a dynamic tender where you get the best of all of the above. They're also offering, you know, some really nice diversity features where, you know, offering extra extra extra options in terms of suppliers, particularly where there are some, you know, diversity targets, which happens in you know, certain countries like the US or South Africa, and you know, generally is a good idea. And then when you have then agreed to service, then they've sort of got really kind of clever ways of then consuming the service that these people in control, but offers flexibility. And then at the very end, you can kind of get feedback. So you sort of building up a kind of Glassdoor, or Amazon rating type sense of you know how well they're performing. And that I think is great for ongoing supply management, because actually supply management around service providers are really hard. It always ends up being a bit anecdotal, you get a net promoter score, maybe at the end of the six month period, but it's really hard to assess individual pieces of work. And so tools like Mercanis, make it really good to engage, work with suppliers, generate collaboration, competition, and then understand where they're doing a really great job.

Fabian Heinrich  
Yeah, I think that was very well described. And to me, come across two major topics. And the one topic is collaboration across the buying bubble, partly maybe the supplier relationship journey. And the other topic as in what many people tend to forget is the challenges which usually occur in the delivery phase of a service. So like, how do I track the milestones? How do I make sure a service is being delivered? Because a lot of fraud is also happening at that particular stage or when the risk is not being mitigated properly? So what do you think about the delivery stage of a service, which may be kind of where your expertise lies at the intersection of finance and procurement.

Bob Booth
I think it's really important to actually, we're starting to see, kind of don't want to make it too much just about the UK, right. But in the UK, and other places, we're starting to see some really major capital projects coming through, right, so we're sort of starting to reinvest in areas like nuclear. So this whole increasingly numbers of highly complex services that have milestones against them. And it's, it's, it's really important that the organizations, both organisations, are clearly collaborative. And that the tool allows you to capture that progress deal with partial milestones deal with, you know, complex commercial services, like, you know, you might have a time and materials, payment mechanism with some sort of, you know, discounts and increments. So I think it is the, the setting up the relationships initially been able to collaborate around, sourcing is really important. And by the way to do that, you've really got to go back and solve the data, I referred to it before, you've got to go back and understand your services suppliers, you've got to classify them properly, you've got to make sure the contracts you've created properly reflected in the system. But then, as you say, I think these technologies are making really good progress in terms of allowing you to manage milestones, but I think there's still more to do in terms of technology. And there's still a lot to do for organisations to understand how best to use it right, the best way to do is to kind of get used to it, start to consume it, and then can actively focus on how to continually improve to make sure we're using this this technology as well as possible.

Fabian Heinrich  
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned already kind of some some other trends like diversity or sustainability. So, if we if you look beyond the complex service bank persona, again, what kind of trends do you see in kind of procurement land?

Bob Booth  
I think that I think the really big thing now is is sustainability. So, so measuring your your emissions and kind of most most organisations, I mean, I was working with a consumer goods company recently that that had you know 95% of this of their emissions was scope three right so generated through the supply chain. So as a minimum organisations are looking to put in sort of reporting systems that allowed them to understand, you know, what is my scope three emissions across my supply base and to understand for individual suppliers, what their emissions rating are within mixes.

Fabian Heinrich  
And with regards to visibility, I also feel like that that is mainly been taken care of for big supply chains, but not really for service providers. Do you see that also as an important topic for service providers?

Bob Booth 
Well, yeah, I do. I think there's a couple of things. Right. So I just come on to sort of answer that question in a second. But maybe just just come back to my point, I think on one hand, reporting is the minimum, you know, what is my my scope for reporting and my existing supplier base, where am I, but the more leading organisations are starting to make decisions around, and actually, therefore I'm going to make some different sourcing strategies. So I'm actually going to choose suppliers based upon their their emission levels, and I'm going to start to pull it, it's going to start become a really key criteria for my for my selection of suppliers, both of the contract stage and the MSA stage, and then subsequently, so definitely for soft materials, good suppliers are also seeing services suppliers also actively taking steps to reduce their so I think it is important, and I think it will be an important component going forward. I mean, there are some obvious things around, you know, reducing travel, which has kind of some impact on this. But I do think it's an important topic, and organisations are, are thinking it through. And the great thing about a solution like a Globality or Mercanis, you can build that criteria straight into your into your selection criteria, and you can then manage it dynamically.

Fabian Heinrich 
Yeah. No, I mean, that's that's kind of what is the topic of our time, I think, like, going to go into net zero and I think it's great that finally, the awareness everywhere came, but I feel the same like you that many people tend to forget that like for the many professional service or complex service engagement, that also should matter and it should be incorporated in the respective solutions. Then my last question will be I mean, like, probably there are not many people in the whole world like you who work like for like three decades and consulting companies like E&Y, Capgemini, Accenture now and one of the leading tech companies with IBM, who have seen so many different procurement buying centres, but also financial organisations from the inside. So what would you advise organisations, organisations with regards to transformation with regards to technology? I mean, everyone talks about digitization, organisation hires CEOs and CIOs, but what is kind of your practical advice or words of wisdom from all your experience?

Bob Booth
Yeah, I mean, I agree with your conclusion that I'm much older than anybody else, I think. I've been I've been lucky enough to kind of work with some some great companies and some great colleagues. Yeah. So I think I mean, for me that, I think you've, you've talked about it all the way through, right. So and I've sort of talked about it, I think, as people are designing their sort of their journey from here, I think they've got to think about all the dimensions, they've got to think about. What's the experience in the process we're trying to drive? You know, what's the content and data we're trying to convert? What are the skills of the people having identifyied the key personas? What are their skills? And how do we need to serve them? And then how do we kind of make that kind of enduring, and as part of the sort of service that sits around it like the help that service? And the way I'm actually designing this, the way we go about that is really to sort of just kind of simple, it's actually in two parts, on one hand, is a capability model saying, you know, what, other sort of five or six areas that are really important, you know, maybe it's supply risk for a consumer business, maybe it's commodity pricing, maybe it's a sustainability, the one of the five or six areas, maybe indirect procurement, compliance, other things that are really important. What are those critical areas that are need to be differentiated to allow you to deliver your your business strategy? And then were indeed on the same chart? Where are you spending your time? Where's the where's the effort to? Oh, yes, okay. It's in mismatching accounts payable, it's in help solving helpdesk queries that's on one hand, and then by doing a sort of persona exercise that we talked about the pain points, that allows you to understand actually, here's all the things that are difficult. And quite often those sort of two things kind of tied together. And then using this sort of this approach, you can then and actually once you start to analyse the issues and analyse what you need, they fall out neatly into an experience problem or it's a data problem or a system problem system problem. And then you can put it down on a, on a roadmap over time, having worked out whether those things are short term, medium or long term. Actually, I've, I've sort of written this down, because I've been developing it for kind of all those years that you talked about a fair bit in terms of my career has sort of the last 10 years or so. And I've written it down in a, in a paper we just published with, with Procure Tech 100, which actually calls out some of those, some of procurement technologies that are up and coming. And we'll we'll post the link to that in the end of this podcast. And so those organisations, keep it simple. Work with the personas, understand what you really need to enable, and then focus on the pain points, and then build yourself a roadmap and then use the process and you alluded to this to actually get everyone bought into the transformation programme, get everyone agreeing they're going to prioritise it, and that the rent intending to progress against the plan you've agreed.

Fabian Heinrich
I think there was a great final statement and a very wise piece of advice for many organisations. So thanks a lot for the very exciting conversation. I think we could go on for hours. It's super interesting to pick your brain and to to dive into such challenges and topics. Thanks a lot for your time. And yeah, maybe maybe we see ourselves in another episode and in the future.

Bob Booth
Thank you, Fabian. Pleasure. Thank you.

Outro  
This was the Procurement Unplugged podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. For more podcasts and expert content, visit us at procurement unplugged.com