Discover how AI agents are reshaping the manufacturing operating model
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Joe drives digital innovation as the Director of Digital Innovation at 4C Associates, where he creates transformative solutions to enhance commercial, operational, and supply chain capabilities. With over 14 years of leadership experience in transformation, procurement, and supply chain, Joe ensures technology and organisational change are seamlessly integrated for his clients.
An MBA graduate with a focus on high-performance leadership, Joe’s research explores human-centricity in the age of AI. He is a Fellow of both CIPS and the Chartered Management Institute, actively championing digital literacy for leadership and guiding organisations through the complexities of the AI-driven landscape.
Next-Gen Procurement
How are generational shifts and the pace of technology changing the way we work? Why is it so important that procurement is tech curious?
The way that we work on a day-to-day basis is profoundly changing. Organisations, whether they want to accept it or not, the reckoning of that generational difference is happening as we speak.
That’s really being brought about by technology providers because the way that we work, the way that we live and the way that we as consumers buy is fundamentally changing. It’s mind-blowing the speed at which we consume stuff and that’s from a data point of view. We’re bombarded with data. The number of decisions that a human has to make these days because of the way that we’re pushed information, it’s around 30 to 35,000 micro decisions every single day.
The human mind is constantly bombarded with choice. The nature of how we are bombarded and the way that we have to consume data at the moment, the only way we can do that is through technology. Because there’s no other way that a human mind can appraise all that information. We need something to screen a lot of that on a day-to-day basis. To take a lot of that noise away.
That’s why I think that the exponential pace of technology, the change element is the biggest problem, right? The speed at which humans change is the problem, not the exponential pace that the technology is moving on.
That is fundamentally going to change as the newer generations want change.
For most procurement teams that we speak to, it’s still very manual. They’re overworked, overwhelmed, stressed. What are your thoughts on procurement being seen as an operational bottleneck?
The operational nature of procurement is not new. There’s been lots of discussion over the last, three, four, five years around the procurement shift to becoming more of a strategic function, right? That’s not new. And I think that’s happening. That’s accelerating, especially, you know, the world is moving at such a fluid pace.
Massive economic and supply chain volatility and blips have happened over the last three, four, five years. We’ve gone from recession in early 2008, huge massive downturn, we’ve had Brexit challenges, we’ve had supply chain challenges, we’ve had the Suez Canal challenge, we’ve had COVID. We’ve had significant blips that happen on a three and a half to four year typical cycle of when those supply chain disruptions happen.
The expectation is that you know we push it to procurement to fix but at times we (procurement) don’t necessarily feel like we’ve had the recognition for finding a solution fixing a problem. The bottlenecks are still happening. But operations are becoming a little bit leaner in terms of the utilisation of technology and the way that we can capture real-time information.
Relatively mature organisations on top of the spectrum have got a lot of this technology deployed. They are more at the forefront of it, right? Naturally, because if you’ve got more investment, you’ve got more technology, you’ve got more opportunity to drive the change. You are going to be naturally more lean as a business process, more process efficient.
The lower end of that, they are a lot less mature. They’ve got a lot less technology. They’re still working on a lot of paper-based ways of working, very manual processes.
The Change Journey
What must organisations understand when it comes to buying procurement tech?
Organisations must fall in love with the problem, because the solution’s easy at the end.
There’s a reluctance in organisations to really do that because we need to be a bit vulnerable here, right? We need to put a hand up and say these are all the problems we’ve got, right?
When you’re going through your blueprinting phase, which you should also do absolutely before you even think about buying a piece of technology, you create what the vision and the future looks like. Understanding things like, How is this going to fit with a wider enterprise ecosystem? How am I going to take my IT folk on? And fundamentally, all that must be underpinned by a change journey that doesn’t start at the point you signed the license agreement with the technology provider. If you start your change journey there, the change will fail. It’s too late. The change journey starts 6, 12, 18 months before a piece of technology is chosen.
At times subconsciously people are thinking this is going to cost a fortune. It doesn’t. It doesn’t cost a fortune. What this means, is that whatever you deploy in six, 12, 18 months time, we can almost guarantee you it will pass.
Then, you need to change your ways of working.
We often work with clients where they say, “We’ve had X technology provider for many years, everybody hates it.” What reason? Often times, in the defence of technology providers, it’s not the technology. It’s the business’ way of working. They will use their 5, 10 year old ways of working, 10 year old business processes to then try and force that into the technology. It doesn’t work and therefore they say the technology doesn’t work. No, the technology works. The world has moved. The business processes haven’t been iterated.
Human Centricity & AI
Is there a misconception around procurement regarding humans and AI?
There’s a blurred line between what the AI is going to do and what we’re all going to do. I’m actually more on the optimistic side.
We need to try it, we need to be willing to fail, yeah? But at the same time, we have to put humans first. The human will be the differentiator, not the AI.
We want to apply artificial intelligence to mundane centric jobs that people fundamentally don’t want to do. There may be people doing them by the way, but don’t want to. That gives us a chance to re-skill those people into other activities.
What excites you most about the future of procurement and supply chain?
People, people and more people.
As procurement professionals, the expectation of us is getting more and more. Some days we’re project managers. Some days we’re supposed to be risk experts. Some days we’re contract management experts, we’re a legal function. Some days we are process excellence experts. We have to wear this dual hat.
Because of our cross-functional nature, we touch many different business stakeholders, probably one of the only functions that does that outside of HR from a people point of view.
We have got an opportunity to really ring-fence the way that we work going forward and that is more driving innovation and growth to the top line.
Procurement are really entrenched with the suppliers. They spend a huge amount of time with the supply chain, so they’re preempting a lot of these shocks that are coming. Only we can do that. We must keep supporting other business functions. We must be the eyes and ears of the business into the supply chain.
I think it’s a wonderful time, right? It’s a really great time. We’ve got a voice. I think we should shout it.
Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Deana manages community efforts and creation of thought leadership material at Kavida. For inquiries, reach her at deana@kavida.ai.
