Category Archives: People

Think global, young procurement person!

Peter Smith - April 10, 2013 12:33 PM | Categories: People

At the recent Procurement Talent conference, we heard excellent presentations from a number of truly international firms, including SABMiller, AstraZeneca and Rolls Royce. The two latter of those firms have a British heritage, but see themselves as global citizens, with income coming from all over the world, and growth prospects stronger in developing markets than in Europe or the US. We got into interesting discussion around what this means in terms of the people we will see working in our procurement functions. Of course it varies by firm; SABMiller, with a South African heritage, are incredibly international in their approach, [...]

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Leadership the Booby Moore way

Peter Smith - February 27, 2013 1:31 PM | Categories: People

This week saw the 20th anniversary of the death of Bobby Moore, England’s 1966 World Cup football captain. He has been rightly held up to be a great ambassador for the sport and a true gentleman. I can vouch for that, having had the pleasure of meeting him in 1992. I used to play golf (20 handicap) before setting up my own business (and by the way, anyone who thinks “going out on their own” will give you lots of time for golf or other social stuff – didn’t work for me! Haven’t played for 3 years now). By sheer [...]

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Where have all the (procurement and music) Mavericks gone?

Peter Smith - February 21, 2013 1:29 PM | Categories: People

The media reviews of the Brit Awards show last night have been a little grudging this morning. Yes, most of them say, it was very professional. Yes, it’s great to see British acts as varied as One Direction, Mumford and Sons and Emilie Sandé, all doing well in the US and indeed globally.  But, they say, wasn’t it all a little dull and predictable? Where’s the excitement, the danger, the passion? I was lucky enough to get a late invitation to the event, in the ordinary seats, not down on the floor at the dinner tables I should say, but [...]

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Spend Matters Netherlands – Jason Busch interviews Gert van der Heijden

Peter Smith - February 19, 2013 1:31 PM | Categories: People

(I had the pleasure of recently hosting both Jason Busch and Gert van der Heijden, editor of our new Spend Matters Netherlands site. Whislt I was choosing and opening the Gewurtztraminner to celebrate our new venture, Jason asked Gert a few questions). Jason: Why do you think the Netherlands needs Spend Matters? Gert: The Dutch sourcing and procurement community is always open for new and high quality information. Although the Netherlands are pretty small, we do have six professors of purchasing and supply management and a very active sourcing and procurement community. This means there is room for a source [...]

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SABMiller – recruiting for a truly global procurement organisation

Peter Smith - February 7, 2013 4:10 AM | Categories: People

sab Chris Taylor is an example of a new breed of procurement recruitment managers who are playing a truly significant and strategic role in developing their organisations’ procurement capability and capacity.  With a previous career as a “head-hunter” no less, for the last few years he has been in-house with SABMiller, producer of iconic drinks brands such as Peroni, Miller, Coors and Grolsch. He’s been building a global procurement team, and has recruited “over 100 professionals” for Trinity Procurement (as the procurement operation is called) in that time. Taylor is one of the speakers at the Procurement Talent conference on March [...]

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Procurement Talent event – a special offer for our readers

Peter Smith - January 31, 2013 1:28 PM | Categories: People

On March 6th,  in London, I’m chairing what we think is the first ever conference dedicated to “Procurement Talent”.  I agreed to do that because it seemed to me a good idea that someone was doing something constructive in that field, when there is so much talk about the topic these days. There’s a strong agenda in place, with speakers from leading firms such as SAB Miller, ABF, M&S, AstraZeneca, Fujitsu, and delegates from organisations such as Mars, Associated Newspapers, Aviva, Trelleborg and the MOD.  And as Chairman I’ll make sure we get time for some real discussion and interaction [...]

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Spend Matters welcomes Pierre Mitchell, procurement analyst extraordinaire

Jason Busch - January 22, 2013 1:31 PM | Categories: People

(I’m delighted to welcome Pierre Mitchell into the Spend Matters family. Pierre is principally working with my US colleagues, but I’m sure we’ll be featuring his wisdom here regularly. Here’s Jason Busch to introduce him properly… Peter Smith) We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Pierre Mitchell has joined Azul Partners as a Managing Director and Chief Research Officer of Spend Matters. Pierre will be leading procurement research activities and also has broader solution development responsibilities for intellectual property creation and firm strategy. This includes spearheading efforts to build new types of interactive and social communities, including overseeing the evolution of [...]

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Procurement careers and the category dilemma: to specialise or not?

Guest Contributor - January 16, 2013 12:00 PM | Categories: People

We’re delighted to feature another guest post from James Gherardi , who specialises in the supply chain and procurement function at BIE Group, an executive search and interim management consultancy. A familiar sounding introduction to a candidate brief goes something like this: “I need someone with five years procurement experience of hard and soft FM but with a few years in broader professional services; a bit of travel would be great as well. Strategy development is important but I also want someone who’s happy to get their hands dirty.” Information like this rarely imparts very much until I start digging [...]

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Andrew Forzani moves to Department of Work and Pensions as David Smith’s no.2

Peter Smith - January 14, 2013 4:00 PM | Categories: People

In 2005, pre blogging days when consulting was my source of income, I was asked by the Head of Procurement for Epson and Ewell Borough Council to chair a supplier workshop he was organising for the most strategic suppliers to the borough. I was rather impressed with this, as there weren’t many large Councils doing that sort of thing, let alone a relatively small borough council in suburban Surrey. My client turned out to be rather demanding. He wanted to see my presentation and actually made quite a few comments on it! The cheek of it… We had long discussions [...]

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Paul Morrell – real insight into Civil Service jobs and people

Peter Smith - January 8, 2013 10:31 AM | Categories: People

(Here’s a taster of another new article we’ve got on our jobs website, Spend Matters search4 procurement.) Paul Morrell was the chief construction adviser to the UK Government – well, two governments to be precise – from 2009 until late in 2012. That came after 40 years in the private sector, latterly as senior partner of David Langdon, the international construction consultancy. Having moved on now, he’s written an article for Management Today which contains some of the most perceptive analysis I’ve seen of the strengths and weaknesses of the Civil Service and the people within it.  I’d thoroughly recommend [...]

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Barbara Kux and Siemens’ Procurement Plans

Peter Smith - January 3, 2013 1:31 PM | Categories: People

In December, the Financial Times had an interesting report about Siemens, who announced a €6bn cost-cutting plan after a fall in profits and new orders. “The group also surprised investors by revealing that Barbara Kux, board member for supply chain management and sustainability, would leave the company when her contract expires at the end of next year, half way through the two-year cost-cutting programme”. Kux was the architect of a major procurement change programme, which she kicked off when she joined Siemens in 2008, known as “60:25:20”. That was based on three key objectives; More central or collaborative contracts within [...]

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BravoSolution Real World Sourcing dinner – and the winner is…

Peter Smith - December 21, 2012 9:45 AM | Categories: People

On Wednesday evening BravoSolution kindly hosted the “winners dinner” for the delegates who scored the best on post-event on-line tests, following the Real World Sourcing events this year (presented by Guy Allen and me). We had a tie for first place, but after a tie-break question (“how many views did Spend Matters UK/Europe get in November 2012″), the winner was John Tipper of Rexam. Just as exciting was the smokers in the group meeting Harry Enfield and Damon Albarn in the hotel lobby! Congratulations to John who won the £2,500 bursary from BravoSolution to spend on training and development activities [...]

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Steve Morgan (MOD) and Gail Roberts (Proxima) take up new roles

Peter Smith - December 20, 2012 10:30 AM | Categories: People

Congratulations to Steve Morgan who has been appointed to the number 2 commercial / procurement role in the MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support organisation. (We had the scoop on the role back in July). Morgan, a native of Ohio I believe, will report to Les Mosco even though the job is graded at the same (SCS2) level. Morgan has worked in the UK for some years, most recently as Capital Director at BAA, the airport operator, and before that as of Sellafield as director of Commercial Management. He also previously worked in the US Defence Logistics Agency after a career [...]

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Thanks for your support – and more great jobs from search4 procurement!

Peter Smith - December 18, 2012 10:30 AM | Categories: People

As we approach the end of the year, I wanted to say many thanks to everyone who is supporting our new jobs site – Spend Matters search4procurement.  That’s advertisers, both agencies and direct clients, job seekers and casual browsers alike. We really appreciate your support. Over the holidays, why don’t you have a look at the site, and remember, if you register (which takes literally 2 minutes), you will receive a free copy of our unique e-guide, “Great Procurement Interview Questions (and how to answer them)”!  Lots of useful advice for those really tricky moments … On the site, we [...]

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Steve Bagshaw leaves Supply Management – what is his legacy?

Peter Smith - December 17, 2012 3:58 AM | Categories: People

Hey! No-one told me until last Thursday (when someone told me…) that Steve Bagshaw, Managing Editor of Supply Management / Redactive has resigned. He’s gone to run the European arm of Leading Authorities, a substantial US based speakers bureau who provide famous / successful people for speaking engagements. I understand he has some connection with that business through his partner. Leading Authorities seems like a really interesting business – pretty substantial by the look of their website, and probably an under-developed market this side of the Atlantic. So good luck to Mr Bagshaw with that. It’s hard for me to [...]

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New Year, New Job? Use procurement techniques to make the right decision

Peter Smith - December 12, 2012 4:43 AM | Categories: People

The end of the year is a classic time for taking stock, making the new year resolutions, and perhaps even thinking about changing jobs, employers or even careers. And if you are in that situation, don’t forget to register on the Spend Matters search4 procurement jobs site and get a FREE copy of our e-Guide, “Great Procurement Interview Questions – and how to answer them”. Now, as procurement people, we all know how to run tender evaluation processes. So one option you might consider if you are thinking about a change is to run a formal evaluation process to assess [...]

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