Guest Blog by Mai Nguyen, TealBook Business Development Representative
Highlighting Key Takeaways from Forge: Blue Sky
At Procurement Foundry’s Forge: Blue Sky Conference on November 18th, procurement leaders from around the world gathered to discuss their strategic priorities for 2022, and our very own CTO and CSO were panelists at the event. Here’s a quick recap of their panel discussion:
“Data as the True Connector”
Arnold Liwanag, TealBook‘s CTO, Shachi Rai Gupta, Global Head of Strategy at Bristol Myers Squibb, Brenton Walton, VP Sales, North America at Per Angusta, and Ryan Young, CEO + Co-Founder of ACLIVITI gave an intimate session on “What’s Happening in Technology, Engagement in the Technology Sector/Digital Transformation”.
The panelists shared their insights on how good supplier data can be used to connect procurement functions with the larger organization, to give procurement a permanent seat at the table. Through good supplier data and good integrations, procurement functions can help empower the organization to bring together organizational insights.
As a use case, Shachi spoke about how her organization was able to achieve over $1B in savings by creating synergies across the organization through massive integrations. As the panelists echoed, “Good data is king!”
Shachi highlighted her 2022 Blue Sky roadmap for procurement transformation with four key drivers and emphasized Bristol Myers Squibb’s partnership with TealBook:
- Driving business intelligence
- Creating a diverse and sustainable supplier base (partnering with TealBook in this strategic priority)
- Risk and compliance across all areas (cyber, financial, legal, business, etc.)
- The end-to-end experience for all stakeholders involved in the organization whether that’s the business or suppliers.
To summarize the theme of this chat, Arnold used this infamous quote from the Netscape founder, “There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle”.
“Garbage In, Garbage Out”: Get the Data Right
Matt Palackdharry, Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer at TealBook, and Martin Ruane (MBA), Data Scientist, gave an engaging session on “What’s Next for Data”.
The panelists discussed the future of robotic process automation (RPA), cleaning data, bringing meaning/classification to data before applying technologies such as RPA/AI/ML, and the state of supplier data classification. They also emphasized getting the inputs right for quality data before applying innovative technologies, such as RPA and machine learning, in order to get the output you’re looking to solve for.
When it comes to classification for supplier diversity, there are only five certifications you can get in the United States to qualify for the billion-dollar round table, and this can be very expensive for small businesses. For example, a high majority of women-owned businesses do not go through with certification due to the cost burden. TealBook enables inclusive procurement by allowing suppliers to self-certify as a diverse business through our platform — the process is very brief but even includes a legal attestation and legal recourse for bad actors.
Additional Speaker Takeaways:
- Innovate by understanding your organizational processes first so that technology can augment these processes, such as leveraging AI, in order to achieve good outputs. (Joseph Martinez, Global CPO Retired at Bank of New York Mellon)
- The supply chain crisis brought on by COVID uncovered issues that already existed and COVID merely brought them to light. (Brett Healy, CPO at Sterling)
- Supply chain demand and supply challenges are due to demand fluctuations that do not align with the slow reopenings and unanticipated fluctuations of the opening and closing of economies. (Stacey Taylor Chief Supply Chain Officer at TriMark)
- Some companies have completely transformed their supply chains during COVID by becoming much more diversified and more localized to avoid a single choke point. Many businesses are diversifying with smaller suppliers for a competitive advantage and de-risking their supply chain (Matt Tichon, VP of Industry Strategy at Coupa; Sudeep Banerjee, VP of Procurement, Americas at Unilever)
- Dr. Elouise Epstein predicts the procurement disrupting trends for 2022. She spoke about the Procurement Garage, smart contracts, turning to AI and robots to increase recycling capacity, and all the money flowing into procurement through acquisitions and exciting ventures happening in the space. The greatest time to be in procurement is now!
Unleash Procurement Possibilities with TealBook
Supplier diversity and bringing agility to your supplier base in light of supply chain disruption were key topics at Forge: Blue Sky.
Book a meeting with TealBook today to learn how we can help your company regionalize and diversify your supply chain for competitive advantage and support your supplier diversity strategy, no matter how global your supplier diversity ambitions are.
