882: Reengineering Procurement for Greater Impact W/ Polly DeSouza

0:05Hi there, my name is Philip Ideson. I want to welcome you to the Art of Procurement podcast, the podcast that helps you, a forward-thinking procurement professional, position yourself and your team to proactively take advantage of the revolution that's taking place in procurement today. By interviewing industry trailblazers and sharing insights from our own experiences, my team and I pull back the curtain and shine a light on the strategies, tactics, and tools that procurement teams are using to elevate their impact. And today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome Polly D'Souza. Polly has more than 21 years of procurement experience built across roles at companies like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Capgemini, and most recently, Head of Procurement Excellence and Transformation at Grab, and with a career-spanning consulting transformation and operational leadership.

0:53She's worked with more than 25 clients across multiple different industries, traveled to over 18 countries. Polly, I love your commitment to travel there. That's probably my passion beyond procurement. First and foremost, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Philip. Thanks for having me today. It's a pleasure to meet you. And I'm going to start with asking you, where's your favorite country? My favorite country that I've traveled on work so far or personally? either either i would have to say portugal yeah there was uh something just beautiful about portugal that was enchanting and and possibly because cristiano ronaldo is from there so all right we can get into a messi versus ronaldo debate i'll bring my two kids in who will take both sides of that debate um but uh no i i've said on the show before one of the reasons why i got into procurement was um because so it meant that somebody else would pay for me to be able to travel around the world so that was one of the the benefits um for sure um and i always start with the question uh which i will ask you is is did you find procurement or did procurement find you i would say procurement found me philip so i was happily you know working in finance transformation meeting a multitude of clients across geographies leading operating model designs sharing best practices on process doing technology transformation and my manager you know comes up to me and says hey Polly we need you to work on a procurement transformation for a large MNC And I would say that was my first stepping stone into procurement.

2:48I got to be exposed to sourcing, to supplier management, to savings, to the downstream part of procurement as well, which is accounts payable, the payment terms, DPO, and all of the good things in the entire procure-to-pay continuum. So it's been 15 years. Yeah. And I've worked in finance transformation, I would say, for close to 18 years. And my last four years was at an organization called Grab, headquartered in Singapore. So I've done both sides of the coin, Philip. You know, been a consultant and been in an organization as part of the procurement transformation, in the procurement transformation arena.

3:38So good learning overall. and excited to be part of that journey. I'm interested in the finance side for a moment. I think that the finance and procurement relationship is probably the most critical relationship for procurement leaders to build. And it's something that we don't always, you know, do an effective job at. Any tips based on being on both the procurement and the finance side of, you know, from a procurement perspective, perhaps finance's view of procurement and also on the flip side things that procurement can do to help build a healthier and a stronger relationship with finance i know there's kind of two questions in there absolutely so you know in some of the organizations that i've consulted on procurement reports directly into the coo and in some of the organizations of course they still report into the CFO.

4:37What I've seen across both organizations is it's, and in my purview, and I've read a lot of white papers as well, it's always better if procurement still continues to reside within the financial organization, only because there is so much changing in procurement with today's scenario of bringing more value to the table, bringing more EBITDA savings. So to me, procurement needs to understand the financial language, needs to understand the business language in order to provide a more valuable and meaningful conversation while dealing with business users or even dealing with finance. so i think that's important uh in my perspective um it's interesting that you got both sides of the table experience as both a consultant and um you know a procurement leader what um did that experience in consulting like how did that inform how you approached being a leader of you know of um procurement excellence and transformation so being on the procurement side of the table?

5:52Were there things that you brought that you thought were particularly helpful because you had that consulting background? Absolutely. I think finance transformation consulting played a very big role in how I actually dealt with, you know, working in transformation within the organization. But there are two differences that I'd like to highlight, Philip. So in the consulting organization, while dealing with a lot of transformation across different clients, we always work within the guardrails of the project scope, within the guardrails of the MSA. And we try to ensure that the deliverables are met on an untimely basis.

6:35Yeah. And your responsibility per se just stops there. Yeah. But when you join an organization, the accountability you know is just all-encompassing right across the life cycle, right from the ideation phase to the business case phase, to the implementation phase, to the you know user adoption phase, to actually realizing the transformation benefits. I would say the accountability is a little bit more when you're part of the business, when you're part of the organization and to me that was a game changer because I found that I was bringing more value across the end-to-end continuum. I'm going to give you a small example Philip and I love finance transformation, I love procurement transformation but as a transformation consultant you're more like a nanny.

7:41You have the best interest of the baby at heart you come in you do your you know your job based upon the job description but if there's something out of the turn that needs to be done you're going to step back and say hey that's not part of my JD but in an organization when you own the transformation the baby is yours until the baby can crawl walk run fly you've got to be you know hand holding that baby and So I think that's what I've seen being on both sides of the coin. The second difference I'd like to bring to the table is while I was in finance and procurement transformation, you know, I always had the tag that I'm a consultant.

8:28Yeah. And organizations used to listen to me, be the CFO, the CPO, senior business leaders. but when you're inside the organization no one's paying you to hear your point of view so you've got to have a good sales pitch ready which is backed by data which is backed by analytics as to why this business problem needs to be alleviated so in my opinion you've got to be a good salesperson within the organization to really sell the transformation that you want to and articulate it well to actually solve a business problem and bring those benefits to the table. That's a great point. The other thing that I think, and I'd love your perspective on this, because this is what I experienced when I was on the provider side and came back, is when you go into a consultant role or a service provider role, you say you're measured by the MSA, you're measured by the SOW, you're also measured by results and impact.

9:30Because if you don't create the impact, then your contract will get terminated. And that's not necessarily the case when you're in a procurement team. It made me be a lot more aware of having to focus on the customer experience. And the customer, when you're in an internal team, the customer is your stakeholders, you're the people within the business that fund the investment you know that your team can grow you know your daily stakeholders I didn't really think about that so much before I thought well procurement has a right to exist within an organization because it has policy procedure regulatory requirements all those things we show up and do our job but then my mindset changed to we have to compel people within our business to want to work with us and if they don't that's our problem it's not their problem exactly you've you've got to bring in the value you've got to bring in the value um you how much are relationships a part of that you know i think that um i just talked about policies and we we kind of rely on policies a lot um we've obviously kind of moving to more of a relationship based um you know way of setting up our procurement organizations.

10:47Where do you think about that in terms of how to get success? Like how important are building those exec level relations to you for you to be able to do your job as a procurement leader? To me, Philip, that's a really interesting question. I would say policy and relationships are equally important. Yeah. Especially if we want to build a high-end procurement function, we need to give adequate focus to both the policy and towards relationships. So policy is basically to me the law of the land. We need to ensure the policy is not just policing the organization or not just adding more bureaucratic processes.

11:37But is the policy actually bringing the right set of suppliers with the right amount of controls, with the right amount of competition, and with minimal risk. Because at the end of the day, we want to ensure as procurement, we are creating value and at the same time protecting the interests of the organization. So to me, that's where my take on policy is. there's one more point you know with respect to the the COVID and with respect to all the wars that are going on around us unfortunately the supply chain has just had to become so resilient we've got to search for you know go into supplier diversification and as a result I would like to call procurement in today's day and age the guardians of resilience yeah all right so so philip what do i mean by that it's with the procurement actually has a harder job of creating a supplier ecosystem to work with an environment of uncertainty and still provide business users with what they need in an ever-changing environment.

13:03So to me, I believe procurement can now also have another tagline as the guardians of resilience. On the other hand, when we look at relationships, a lot of time you would have heard this on your podcast, and I've heard this in all the clients that I've worked with on procurement. hey Polly we don't get a seat at the table. So how do we get a seat at the table? So I was listening to a podcast or an interview by Indra Nooyi who was the former CEO of Pepsi and she says if you want a seat at the table you've got to pull the chair but when we pull the chair Philip we need to make sure that we sustain that check and how can we do so by providing value so to me i mean there's an interesting book that i was reading value as a service by rob yeah yeah what he basically says is he takes a very good example and he says uber provides online, groceries and meals.

14:16So customer essentially orders online and the online meal or groceries are delivered. But what's the value that the customer is getting? It's convenience. And that convenience is what makes the customer have a repetitive purchase with Uber. and that's the value that Uber brought to the table. So if we just extract that analogy and apply it on procurement with respect to relationships, the value that procurement needs to bring to the table is what's going to make them sustain the seat of the table. Market intelligence, ensure the supplier has been adequately checked for risk before bringing it into the organization.

15:06supplier innovation I think this is what the business wants to be a trusted partner alongside procurement now you can say okay Polly we've done all of this but how can we truly track whether procurement is a trusted advisor and partner the true test of this is and I'd seen it in one of the transformation projects that I'd worked on how early is procurement brought into the conversation with the business do they only come in at the last stage when they've selected the supplier and they now want procurement to do the contracting and the negotiation or do they want procurement much early on in the conversation where procurement is now saying hey if this is the type of product you want to launch maybe these are the type of suppliers you need this is the type of supply analysis that we can bring to the table this is the market intelligence so to me that's value that business users want business leaders want and you know both policy and relationship to me literally go hand in hand that's a long answer to your question philip no it's a really really interesting and thought-provoking answer that can take me in a bunch of different directions you know i i think that um when you say about guardians of resilience uh i think if we're i i look at procurement more and more and more as being a risk function probably which not to you know not to you know forget about all the innovation but you know we ultimately want to create a function that drives top-line growth as much as protects bottom line because you know that's really where you get the investment to continue to invest as if you're helping for and I think that's kind of our holy grail is how do we drive revenue um but there are you know when you think about how do we want people to compartmentalize for oh that's procurement they do this and therefore i should absolutely be inviting them to an early conversation uh you know there's a couple of things i wrote down was um you know we we bring peace of mind you know so you want peace of mind like insurance or being a protector or something that you know you've got something that you have in mind and you've got all these visions but how do you protect against uh you know the the actually you being able to implement what you want to what your vision is or i think i don't know if that's the answer but i think there are things that we can think about that help us pitch the role of procurement in a different way then we're here to show up to get you some savings when you need some savings and um help you beat up a supplier when they need to be beaten up or you know be the last line of defense when you're not getting what you want and suddenly you call procurement to go and sort it out you know there needs to be a much bigger and a narrative that sticks where people immediately think procurement they do x and that um kind of pays for itself and and bringing us you know into the conversation yeah so uh let's see um

18:20when uh you know you you have obviously worked across a number of different transformations and um we probably can't have many conversations today about ai and how that's changing procurement and the future role of procurement um do you see the the teams that you work with what's their relationship with ai is there enthusiasm or is there fear? And how should that kind of drive how we as procurement leaders think about talking about AI with our teams? So AI is inevitable. And, you know, all the all the procurement teams that I've worked with do realize that AI is going to actually give them more time back so that they can go back and do more value-added work.

19:21So what do I mean by this, Philip, is today I was, you know, I was watching a very nice session by Zycus. It was just posted around six days ago. And there's this gentleman, Akshay, who talks about how Zycus has improved the entire sourcing and selection process with Zycus. And I found that particularly interesting. I watched it just around 15 or 20 minutes. But the amount of work that AI is doing for the sourcing guy is just going to give that much time back to procurement to actually go back and work on those projects which they never had time to do in the past so what i've heard usually from procurement specialists and leaders is hey paulie we know our spend is fragmented we know we have a lot of tail spend we know we've not rationalized our suppliers but we don't have time because there's so much sourcing work there's so much business as usual work that now you've got AI to actually come in and do it for you.

20:30So you can actually get that time back to spend time in upskilling for sure. I mean, upskilling is one of the easiest low hanging fruits, Philip, which is available with the amount of podcasts and conferences and white papers that there are. There's a dearth of information. the second is to actually go back and start using the newly acquired knowledge and skill to work on those projects which you never had time for and to actually bring value to the table so a lot of times when i talk to procurement they say hey paulie we know there's money being left on the table but there's no time guys this is the time when you can actually recover the money from the table and, you know, change your conversations to, I brought in this amount of cost savings to now I was able to uplift my category management.

21:24I was able to reduce my supplier base. I was able to, you know, increase my payment terms. So what happens in all of this conversation is we're now actually moving the conversation to Epidida savings. We're moving the conversation to more P &L. And I think that's the benefit that AI can bring to the table. Yeah. What is the time to take a look at the capabilities you do have on your team to ensure that you have the, whether it's the capabilities or the environment where they can work on those projects that have always been delayed. And the reason I ask this is, and this is something we've talked about on the podcast a lot this year, is that for many, many, many, many years, we've always talked about the fact that if only I could work on the strategic stuff and not the tactical and transactional stuff.

22:20And yet we found it really difficult to make that leap. And we've talked about bandwidth, and that's true. You know, you look at research report after research report that says that we're having to do more with less every single year. But, you know, I talked to other CPOs who will say that at the end of the day, my teams are really comfortable doing sourcing projects, or they're really comfortable doing the things that they've always done. And so I can restructure things, and I can create more, you know, I can intentionally create more space for my teams to work on more interesting things, but they still kind of come back and still rely on doing sourcing.

22:59And so I feel like we have to solve that before, or at least in parallel with freeing up the time through efficiencies where we're using AI so that we can actually use that spare time to great effect once we have it available to us. I absolutely love this question, Philip. You're absolutely right. And I'm going to give you two points that I have seen throughout my procurement transformation projects, working with over 20 clients, as I'd already told you before. the pattern is the same. Whether it's a mature organization, whether it's a low maturity organization, the pattern of the senior sourcing professionals within an organization is A, averse to change.

23:56And B is, I would attribute it to a growth mindset. So just let me articulate both with respect to averse to change it's everybody it's a human tendency to be in a comfort zone and to continue to do the same thing for over a period of 10 to 15 years they get used to the process they get used to the technology they get used to the workarounds and sometimes the workarounds end up becoming the process yeah so when we say hey now you you go out of your comfort zone and start working on these projects, they don't know where to start. So the first is, you know, try to equip people through that change phase with enough skills and knowledge to start working on those projects and move up the value chain.

24:47Because if the collective consciousness of the organization is to not challenge the status quo and to remain in the same you know lane then we aren't actually pushing people up the curve to challenge themselves and to bring in that value. So I would say first is to you know to get out of our comfort zone and accept change. The second and the most important one is the growth mindset. So there is this amazing book written by Carol Dweck where she says we you know it doesn't matter how old or young we are if they say older people it's a little difficult to accept change and all of us are now at that you know where it's a little difficult to deal with AI but we've got to just accept it and embrace it and if we have the growth mindset then we are willing to put ourselves out there we're willing to as satya nadella in his book hit refresh says it's not enough to be a know-it-all it's you need to be a learn-it-all so we've got to put ourselves out there and learn it philip when you and i had started our career we did not have access to this much information right you know ai just you talk to ai and it spits out information in a structured format it gives you images in seconds so there is no reason why we aren't able to put upskill ourselves and grow up the value chain and put ourselves in difficult positions because only when we put ourselves in difficult positions are we going to find movement and positive movements so I would say that's that's going to be imperative for the next uh coming years yeah or we will be redundant I know Well, that's the thing.

26:38I think, you know, I don't like to be hyperbolic or anything, but I think that it can be existential for some organizations and it can be the greatest opportunity they've ever had to stamp more influence, let's say, on the organization that they've ever had. And both can be true depending on how you approach kind of the change journey that we're going to go on in the next few years. Exactly. And we've talked in the conversation today about systems, mindset, skills, processes. When you're looking at a change journey, is there any one that is required before the others? Or are they all, you're kind of pushing all three or all four dimensions along at the same pace?

27:25Like how do you balance kind of those different elements to driving change? I would say change needs to come by first trying to articulate what is it that we're trying to solve we don't want to change just because we want to change because the whole world is running towards change and sometimes it's the mentality of the crowd mentality we always want to run and do what everybody else is doing but it's we need to take a step back and ask ourselves the important imperative question. What's the business problem that we're trying to solve? Or what's the enterprise value that we want to bring to the table?

28:08From there, we have to actually scope out what is it that this particular project aims at fulfilling or alleviating. And then, Philip, I would say the four usual transformation dimensions, people, process, system, governance. Yeah. So I think, you know, we need to then look at how can we streamline processes? How can users update themselves in technology and actually use the different technologies that are available? There's Coupa, there's Zycus, there's now High Regis that's come in, which is going to do autonomous processing for you. there's so there's a wealth of technology platforms in the market then from a governance standpoint what are the controls that can actually i mean we're in the we're in a day and age where we do not expect our business users and our business leaders to go on to a system intranet within an organization to look at the policy yeah we have to have the controls embedded into the process and the process bolted onto the system so that it becomes a very seamless experience for our user base our business users and and and that's what we need to start seeing more value you know being driven from procurement teams and last i would say is um of course we we went through process we went through governance we went through system and people people is you know have to improve your competency i think that's that's going to be the game changer so these four levers are addressed always keeping in mind what is the business value that we need to bring to the table or what's the business challenge that we're trying to alleviate i think that's where we have a very meaty transformation agenda ahead of us so i have one last question and then we can wrap up and it's on the people side and it's actually you know there'll be a lot of people listening to podcasts who aspire to be procurement leaders, but they're not at that level yet.

30:11And they're looking at this and thinking, what is it going to do to my career as I kind of look to grow? Or is it, do I need to be looking outside of procurement? Or, you know, I'm sure having all these kind of conversations with themselves about what does this mean for me? You talk then about, you know, obviously the need to continue to invest in developing yourself and learning. Like, any advice on how to even frame what that could look like as a procurement professional today who is perhaps in a sourcing or a category management job of like what do i need to know what do i need to learn or what where should i even start my development journey because probably a lot of it's going to be self-learning i think that that's the case for for most of us is we're on this journey of self-improvement do you have any tips on how to prepare yourself as an individual at that level to to to be able to take advantage of the change that's coming Absolutely.

31:04My first advice would be, you know, procurement's been in existence for the past, from 10 ,000 BC. Yeah. Right. It was, nobody knows this, but procurement actually came into existence when the Egyptians were trying to build the pyramids and they needed to buy sand. So it's been in existence from then and it's going to be in existence, you know, for a long period of time. we first got to have faith that it's going to be a department that's here to stay because we are providing strategic value now if it's going to stay and we need to get agile and you know conform with the ai that's coming out around us number one is we need to understand that there's a wealth of information in terms of as i mentioned earlier philip the podcast yeah procurement conferences I mean, there are so many procurement conferences that have come up and mushroomed over the years.

32:00We can always sign up and, you know, attend them. There are so many white papers. Hackett and Deloitte and PwC have committed themselves to, you know, publishing research paper after research paper. In fact, there was a very good research paper by Hackett, which said that they interviewed around 400 CPOs who actually said that with AI, they would want their teams to move up the value chain and do more work which requires human intervention, like supplier management, which requires judgment, like category management. So, but there's so much of information out there in terms of white papers, in terms of research papers.

32:44As you said, we can spend a little bit of an amount to subscribe to this information to keep us up to date. And fourth, I would say is, you know, just putting yourself out there on LinkedIn, writing those articles, writing those posts. To be honest, I'm somebody who is a believer of procurement transformation and the entire P2P continuum. And I still find myself in lack, for lack of a better word, lack of time to go in and put in those articles. So when I see people putting those articles out there and just, you know, shamelessly saying, hey, this is what's there in procurement and whether they're right or wrong, they're at least being noticed.

33:24You know, it's hats off to them. It's kudos to them. So that that would be my advice. And that helps you. I think the practice of writing, I'm not a good writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the practice of writing helps you articulate ideas and helps you kind of formulate thoughts in your mind. And for that, it's helpful. And one thing I'd say on LinkedIn, I don't post on LinkedIn half as much as I should do anymore. You know, the business in the early days was built on LinkedIn and folks getting to know us on LinkedIn. But it only takes one person to view something that is somebody who is influential, impactful, who may look at something and want a conversation.

34:03You know, you don't need to write and think, I need to get 10 ,000 views on this or I need to get 100 likes on this or 1 ,000 likes on this. It only takes one person. And that's what I've experienced as well throughout kind of my career of sharing some of my thoughts on that too. so. So yes, so it's time to wrap up. Polly, I want to thank you so much. Such an interesting conversation. Lots of really thoughtful insights that you have shared with the community today. What I'll do is for anybody who'd like to reach out to you directly, talking of LinkedIn, I'll put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes for today's episode.

34:36So that will be at a procurement.com slash podcast. That's at a procurement.com slash podcast. And long as time, Polly, thanks so much for your time today.

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