The Procurement Software Podcast

Expenses for items such as individual company mobile phone usage, printing and copaying is typically billed centrally against a centrally negotiated contract. The costs incurred, however, are often both a mystery and black hole of unaudited, unchecked invoices. They needn't be. All organisations can access individual employee expense data if they so wish. The reality is that few of them do. Which...

Larger organisations tend to use enterprise level ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle, neither of which are particularly user-friendly. In fact, the average person who only uses them to request, approve or receive goods and services will usually find them cumbersome to the point that they find ways around them. Organisations typically react to this by offering solutions such as punch-out catalogues...

While many solutions providers in the procuretech space have focused their efforts on automating or simplifying operational procurement, my guest this week is from a company who have used this technology to bring AI-driven benefits to the spend analysis process. Instead of just providing a spend dashboard, Simfoni is seeking to distinguish itself from an increasingly crowded marketplace by offerin...

Preparation for negotiations has long been something that we as procurement professionals know is vitally important, but all too often we're stuck in the weeds with firefighting and process-related administrative work to do what we should be doing. Add to this the difficulties we also face in obtaining the necessary market data. Maybe your organisation has stopped subscribing to commodity price da...

Accounts payable issues are something that we as procurement professionals shouldn't really need to get involved in but inevitably we do. In these instances, our role is usually the equivalent of a fire extinguisher. It performs no added value and very rarely do we receive any recognition for it. So why does it land in our inbox? Because, well, where does the buck stop when the supplier hasn't bee...

Although it may not seem that way as we emerge from Covid-19, the war for talent is just about to get real. The thing is, it's the war for the right talent. If you're in a fairly generic, operational procurement role then I HIGHLY recommend you listen to this episode and take ACTION before you find yourself in a role that's becoming obsolete, thanks to the unstoppable march of technology and autom...

Procurement has an image problem. We're often seen as the department our stakeholders and business partners run to when they have a problem that requires an immediate reaction. We're often brought in to extinguish the fire extinguisher, but rarely to prevent them from happening. So, how do we move from being a reactionary department seemingly in servitude to our stakeholders, to a better respected...

We've often spoken about different software solutions and certain, specific areas of the Procurement flight deck which can be automated or digitised. Here, we're taking a step back and looking more holistically at dissecting a project from the conception, right the way through to after installation and commissioning has been completed and managing the performance of the vendor throughout the durat...

Technological capabilities are changing fast. While it can sometimes sound like a cliché, there are tasks which can be aided by robots now that can massively expand our knowledge and remove what previously would have been many hours of administrative work. In this show, we dig into what artificial intelligence (AI) can do to aid sourcing and buying teams, and how machine learning and cognitive buy...

Marketing spend is one of those areas which often goes untouched. While many larger companies don't have a policy of having procurement manage this spend, smaller companies and especially startups don't have in-house procurement teams but nonetheless, they still have a considerable marketing budget as they grow and scale as a business. Enter Sarah Scudder, my guest on this podcast. Sarah is a mark...

Managing contracts can be a massive time suck but also an often under-utilised way of mining for gold when it comes to discovering savings opportunities. In this podcast, I speak to Daniel Barnes of Ikaros Consultancy. Daniel is a law graduate and also recently launched his own podcast, World of Procurement. We talk about how the human touch, combined with automation of repetitive tasks, is the be...

Before you can go out there and run a tender and select a provider for all of your digital transformation and procuretech requirements, you need to have an overview of what's out there, and what differentiates the different providers and types of software, right? So, that's why I invited Joël Collin-Demers on the show to give us a Source-to-Contract 101 lesson so as you can get a broad knowledge o...

Anthony is the CEO of Una, a US-based group purchasing organisation from Kansas City. He joins me on this episode of the podcast to explain how digital procurement initiatives don't necessarily need to be complex. It's all about leveraging technology + expertise to hit the sweet spot of saving client organisations both time and money when it comes to managing tail spend with vendors where the buye...

Sarah from Let's Talk Supply Chain and Shipz joined me for a great chat about how digital trends are shaping the wider supply chain industry, and how procurement fits neatly into that. We both agree that increased collaboration and the developing trend of both functions reporting into the same line can only be a good thing when it comes to better alignment of business objectives and delivering val...

Susan Walsh is The Classification Guru, bringing you affordable solutions to clean up your data before undertaking any digital transformation project. Dirty data is the scourge of most organisations, both large and small. We discuss the approach, the root causes of poor data, what to do about it, and how maintaining key data is the key. Doing it once and then washing your hands of the problem is a...

Stephany Lapierre from rapidly-growing supplier data startup Tealbook joins me on this week's episode of The Procuretech Podcast. We talk about all things machine learning when it comes to getting clean, meaningful vendor data without the need for "push" based solutions from vendors or master data analysts. With poor data and lack of in-house resources or capabilities often cited as a major object...

Eddie McGeachie from Seaforth Analytics and Accelerated Insight joins me on The Procuretech Podcast today to discuss how data and supply chain analytics have shaped his career over the years. We dive into how his company now helps boutique procurement consultancies and direct clients to understand the data from disparate systems and formats, and how understanding data . I've long been a proponent...

Tarmo Saidla joins me from Procurement Flow, an Estonian startup focusing on: Making workflows more visible for procurement and requisitioners Keeping budgets under control for CFOs Allowing project managers to keep track in real time of what in the process their requisitions for materials and services are at. The classic "to do", "doing", "done" kanban interface of the tool allows buyers and stak...

Joining me on this week's podcast is Pieter Kinds from TenderTool. TenderTool is a freight sourcing platform with a difference. Pieter claims that both buyers and freight forwarders alike see the benefits of using such a tool. If you've tried to source freight using a traditional provider of e-sourcing software (like I have), you'll soon realise that these tools are not well equipped for transport...

If you've just found us and want to learn more about what The Procuretech Podcast is all about, our inaugural episode does just that. It's a solo episode with just me, outlining what to expect from the series and from future episodes. Technology is having an ever-more important impact on our lives. It's a golden opportunity for us in the procurement function to have our moment in the spotlight and...