888: Remove Friction, Build Trust: Prioritizing the Partnerships Behind the Data

0:05Hiten Parmar: Hi there, my name is Philip Leidson. 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 be joined by Heaton Palmer, the Chief Procurement Officer at Beasley, and Pernod Duan, the Chief Product Officer at Burrow, to share a case study about partnering to remove friction from the procurement process and build trust among stakeholders.

0:50Hiten Parmar: So first of all, thank you very much for joining me and welcome to the show. Thanks, Phil. I'm really enjoying speaking with you and looking forward to this conversation with Prima. Likewise, I think there's a lot for us to get into. And I'll start off, I'll start actually with you. It's a question I always ask at the start of every episode. And it's, did you find procurement or did procurement find you? It's definitely procurement found me. My background is running tech. I used to do that. and what that led into was building partnerships with new tech providers. And that took me into business change.

1:28Hiten Parmar: Business change took me into actually we do this thing called procurement. I ended up running that and changing businesses, and I've been doing it ever since. It's a happy accident. And I often talk about this topic, where is there career paths into procurement? And I say, actually, it's so multifaceted. there's no downside to falling into it because you've got a natural leaning into it and the talent for it yeah you know i've been asking this question for 11 years now doing the show and i would hoped at some point that you know we would get more people saying you know what i i sought out a career in procurement but we all answer it in the same way we all end up falling in and um you know for a lot of different reasons just kind of loving the profession and sticking with it and then building careers in it.

2:18Hiten Parmar: And I haven't really seen that change over the years. No, I mean, there's very few professions where you get a line of sight that affects the whole business. And you can really affect it in a very positive way if you frame it that way. And it really is a challenge in your toolkit. You've got to know how to do a lot of different things really, really well to realize the outcome that the company is seeking. So that, for me makes it fun challenging you've got to be curious about wanting to be better and partnering with other people to do that and that's I suppose brought us to this conversation today yeah no two days are the same either which is always fun um Pruna how about you how did you find yourself in

3:04Prerna Dhawan: procurement yeah I I was thinking about this question and it's definitely procurement found me but I was reflecting back on when where that happened and I actually remembered that and this is nearly 20 years ago I used to work with a research advisory business and mostly working with commercial strategy marketing teams on helping them with their strategies and what they should be doing and there was this one assignment I was on for a big global beverage business working with their brand teams and marketing about point of sale materials. And as part of that study, I had to actually do interviews and kind of figure out for the marketing group, why procurement never listens to them.

3:53Prerna Dhawan: So this is my first interaction with procurement. So obviously, I was interviewing all the big, you know, brand bosses in this beverage business. And they were like, you know, explaining what their goals were and about the brand and so on so forth and on the other side and they basically felt that every conversation with procurement was the unit cost and can we buy this from this country and can you know we source this here and there so then I ended up talking to some of the procurement managers etc and and it was a very fascinating discussion which was they it wasn't like I kind of realized it was more about they just didn't understand each other's language right and it was like marketing was thinking about it more from a customer perspective and brand and procurement of course looking at it from their vantage point which is savings and the KRAs and the goals they have and yeah here I am 20 years hence and I think we're still having some version of that conversation across the business, which is why I think I do find it interesting.

4:59Prerna Dhawan: And I think like Hiten, you said, it's about how you frame it and how you kind of think about the relationships that procurement has with every single function in the business. So yeah, that's my foray into procurement.

5:12Hiten Parmar: No, it's interesting. As much as things change, things stay the same as well. and especially marketing. You know, one of those categories where the differences are probably the most pronounced in terms of expectations of stakeholders and what perhaps procurement was built to deliver or has been trained to deliver, you know, if you don't kind of take a bigger picture view of the value that you can create. So I guess if those challenges weren't still true, then there'll be less need for all of us to do what we can to try and, you know, help the profession in building those relationships.

5:45Prerna Dhawan: Absolutely. I think they have just compounded, right, over the last many years. And I'm sure, Hiten, you'll have more to share on that.

5:53Hiten Parmar: Yeah, sorry. I was just going to jump in. Forgive me. Really, marketing is a fantastic example of the sharpness of focus of the message you're trying to communicate and the business problem you're trying to solve or an opportunity you're trying to create. and that's very much what modern procurement's about right you're trying to really understand the business problem or the create the new opportunity and solve it across the whole business yeah and and where where the the legacy sort of view of you know you've got one-dimensional thinking one-dimensional outcome that's not enough anymore yeah and and good companies thinking the round make decisions in the round get value in the round and i think that's very much where procurement brings a lot of gravity and a lot of common sense and expertise to the table you as you think about how procurement is evolving hidden are the things on your list as a cpo that you focus on or that you need to be able to deliver that weren't necessarily on the list you know a few years ago yeah it's a fantastic question because you're often challenged with doing more with less so what does that really mean that suggests that there is a perception that you have assets that you're not leveraging effectively today so definitely that is a sweet spot and data often is that asset yeah five years ago you're probably still trying to grapple with the data you're going through a journey of mastering the data and keeping it trustworthy right Well, there's methods to do that and there are partners who do that better than you'll ever can do that.

7:39Hiten Parmar: So how do you get value from that asset is something that is high on my list. Related to that is at what pace makes sense for the organization and what business outcome. And related to that in the third dimension is can I do that in a simpler way? can I remove some of the barriers, inhibitors, to make that happen at pace but sustainably? And that friction removal is a topic that people weren't talking about five years ago. They were, if you're black belt, you're talking about process incrementation. But now actually it's about operating model and business decision and leveraging someone else's idea to get value for you.

8:22Hiten Parmar: but you need the right talent to do that and the right collaboration and operating model to be really effective with those things so that's very much front of mind with solving the right business problems with the use of the assets you already have but actually accessing someone else's ability to help you do that quicker and that's where the ecosystem comes to comes to play for me in my agenda today. Yeah. When you feel, because in my background, I worked both on the practitioner side, but also as a service provider too, and also ran a captive, a shared service center. And sometimes it can be considered a weakness if, oh, I can't do this internally.

9:05Hiten Parmar: I can't do this with my internal resources. I need to go external, or I need to go and get some help. Like, how do you think about that in terms of the capabilities that you have, but how you want to augment those? with whether it's additional data, as you said, whether it's additional people, whatever that might look like to actually build an operating model that allows you to deliver on the promise that you want to give to the business. Yeah, I actually quite view it quite simply. Is it the core competence of my business? Is this really how I'm making money? We're going to make another dollar nine times out of ten.

9:35Hiten Parmar: It's probably a no question, no answer. So then who's best best in the world to do it? Right. And A.I. is a fantastic example of that. I don't need to turn my company into an AI tech company or an insurance company. But there are others in the market who absolutely, that's their sweet spot. And the skill is in finding the right ones that make sense for you. Similarly, if I want to break into new territories or into new product lines, there are many ways of doing that as opposed to having for me to organically create it. and others have had great ideas that you can connect to and leverage and optimize that's very much how i view that question these days five years ago i view it slightly differently and when you've got real scale of company my background is working in tier one global companies where you've got a footprint in most developed countries across the globe there's talent and creativity all over the place.

10:34You need the skill is in accessing it again and again so you can make

10:38Hiten Parmar: best use of it. Yeah you know as you look Prenner across all the different organizations that you work with is this something that you see kind of across the board in terms of challenges but also the opportunities for CPOs today or is it tied to company sizes or maturity of procurement organizations?

10:55Prerna Dhawan: Yeah I would say I mean the challenge is quite similar in many ways but it's also a little bit different. For example, you know, when I work with some of our larger customers, you know, including with Hitin's team, the challenge is more that it's a massive organization and it's not like the capability does not exist. It's probably somewhere else. So for example, what risk, it's not like you may not have the risk data, it's just that it is not in procurement. You may have the legal team or, you know, another team that has access to the data is just not available to procurement whereas in a mid-market smaller business it doesn't exist in the first place right so there is I mean the challenge like Hiten said everybody I think is expected to do more with less any and especially given AI I think the topic you know every company any function even me and my product team it's like you know and technology can I build more product can I you know release new features much faster with the same resource I think it's the same for all of us But I think the way I look at it, I think it's about simplification and removing that friction ultimately.

12:06Prerna Dhawan: I mean, I come from a business advisory sort of background. So while I'm in technology, I think there is a trap that we tech people get into, which is we over-engineer, right? We don't want to over-engineer and build the best, most advanced, feature-rich product because sometimes it's the unglamorous stuff that really needs change. So that's the way I look at it. And I think this is the challenge most of the companies I see are grappling with, irrespective of their size. how do you simplify and focus on what's important, what's going to move the needle, what's going to get you that next dollar of revenue rather than getting the latest technology, the most data sets or whatever else it might be.

12:55Hiten Parmar: I think that's an important point. I think as I don't want to trivialize this to say building is easier because building is not easy, but now we have some tools that allow us to build in ways that we can. I have personal experience of feature bloat. When you start going down a rabbit hole of, well, I could do this now and I could do this now and I could do something else now. And all of a sudden you get something that's so far removed from actually what you needed to do in the first place. It's actually harder. It's harder to stay disciplined.

13:23Prerna Dhawan: Exactly, because the end of the day, and I think this is something that I've kind of been talking about with many of our customers. I think we're in at a point as a species that we have cognitive overload, right? With all the data, all the technology, all the AI. And the example I use is, you know, see, you can create like a very fancy, like, I don't know, ketchup, right? Using molecular gastronomy, you have ketchup molecules, but if it doesn't taste the same, and I go back to my marketing example, the marketing team doesn't care about anything else except for does the customer still feel this is our brand do they feel the same taste and so on so forth so it's about the basics at the end of the day and feature bloat is probably the biggest example in the tech world especially now that everybody can build right everybody can build software um you know it allows us to uh all these ideas we've had all

14:23Hiten Parmar: these years that we can do nothing with and all of a sudden um you know kind of uh have something come to life but um even when you think we talked about you know you kind of thought process in terms of uh when uh either bringing in support to help you build an operating model that takes friction out the process that helps you build trust with your stakeholders how do you think about um um like who are the partners like who who are you wanting to bring in along with that uh along that journey with you what do you look for yeah yeah it's a really nuanced um decision process yeah so on the surface you think transactionally can they do something i can't commercially is it at the right point etc but actually that is a first step and often if you think in that way then that's the misstep so you've got to think slightly differently so the question then becomes what are characteristics of a great partner a great relationship do we get each other so that do the cultures align yeah are they looking for perfection or revenue or are they willing to iterate and learn and be curious with us yeah yeah what capability do i need to align and optimize the capability that they i see in them yeah and vice versa do we trust each other are we going to get mutual uh um win-win out of this so i'm looking at all of those things in the round where if you don't have the components of trust i'm never really going to be very vulnerable in the conversation and open and vice versa they're going to tell me they can do everything but they know full well they can't right so you're going to misalign create frustration and that becomes a different problem so i'm looking for those things and how do those core competencies complement each other so we both grow yeah if you're looking for perfection then that's going to be where you're going to find failure if you're looking for iterative experimentation and a culture of that rewards that curiosity um which is what everyone talks about in terms of ai adoption especially at an enterprise level today ironically then you're going to have to get it learn how to get it wrong and what to do with that outcome and that learning yeah um so those are the characteristics i really look for phil and and if there's alignment at a business level on what that win-win looks like it could be that product um becomes something which is viable from many clients or that product or that outcome opens up a new territory.

17:13Hiten Parmar: Then, or you both learn and it creates something different, it turns into an M &A. That's very much some of the examples I call on in my previous professional life that gives me confidence to just be authentic about what we need to solve now, keep it simple to a fairness point, and learn fast through that journey. And from, you mentioned iterating and learning, I wrote that down as you were talking. From your perspective as a partner, what does it look like from your perspective in terms of how you take on board feedback or even scope new capabilities based on direct feedback from your clients?

17:57Prerna Dhawan: yeah yeah uh so you know my i run a product organization here and obviously uh you know we're also an enterprise sales team uh and i think it's a very common place that obviously from a sales perspective you want to say yes we we can do this and you sell a lot that doesn't exist in the product so once it's done it then comes to me and my team and i think the approach we follow and also you know with the customers like Hiten mentioned is we have a customer advisory board centrally where we ask for you know feedback we try to understand what customers pain points are what are they getting not getting and then of course we pool that all together and to some extent that reflects back on what Hiten was saying if you were doing this internally as an individual business, then you're kind of missing out on that learning and the experiences from a wider customer group that a third party would have access to, right?

18:57Prerna Dhawan: So the ideas and the new features come from our customers. And I kind of always tell my team that let's not sit in an ivory tower and keep coming up with what else we are going to build because then it's feature bloat we'll get to. Let's listen to real users, real customers. And the second principle that I really talk about internally, at least from product and as a business as well, from a philosophy perspective, is it's not about monetizing every single interaction with a customer at every first opportunity. Because it is, I think for us, we are in the long game. Customers who stick around, they will ultimately pay us more.

19:35Prerna Dhawan: They'll buy other things from us. And as an example, with Hiten and team, we started with market intelligence. We then extended to risk. But that doesn't happen just because we're trying to think about ourselves. We have to build that trust relationship where, you know, we have delivered on something and you trust that we will deliver for you, we'll be transparent. I think the other piece to this is, you know, and especially for the team, I don't want to get into specific features, but there was an example where through, because of our data licensing with our partners, we were not allowed to, you know, unlock more suppliers and so on so forth without having charged the customer again then we built a feature which was through joint discovery with the team here which was like okay let's build a feature where some of the users can follow a supplier which means that you are not you know going through some of these restrictions or bypassing the restrictions but you're also giving the customer the capability and the requirement or you're meeting the requirement without charging them more so for me ideally i could have just said no no you have to unlock more suppliers increase the consumption pay me more but that is you know the first point at which the trust breaks because then next time you're not going to trust me uh to be open and you know build something together so yes so i i guess in summary uh we talk to our users all the time our customers but i also want to be clear that uh we don't just build stuff that people ask us to because sometimes that's also not the right answer because and that you have to trust that we will work with you and we will do what's right in terms of a better solution overall so yeah let's just jump in here

21:20Hiten Parmar: because what you just said at the end is really really important for an organization like Beasley so one of our core values and I touched on this earlier was around culture and value alignment one of our core values is doing the right thing another one is being bold right and if you think about what how Brenna just sort of concluded that insight it is about doing the right thing right solving the right problem has an onus on me and articulating what that is has an onus on um Brenna and her organization being really trustworthy and open to the idea of something different so i can influence or vice versa yeah and then realizing creating that and having the judgment to go you know what that's that's something that others could benefit from or it becomes something different yeah um is really really valuable right really really valuable and that does um generate positive trust and momentum and suddenly you're opening up and thinking about something else complete yeah and with that if you view it in the transactional way then that's the outcome you're going to get if you think and the adage is if you think differently then something might change and actually if you're doing that with the right partners and culturally you're curious in in an aligned manner then you can actually grow both businesses and that's very much how i view things and and the outcomes that we've had with prena and the team yeah i think that mindset's really important is how you go in.

22:52Hiten Parmar: I think on both sides, because, you know, on one side, you know, I've had a lot of experience where you need the pragmatism, let's say, of what it's like to work day in, day out as a procurement leader or as a category manager or a sourcing lead to understand like, this is what my daily workflow looks like. This is what I'm up against. This is why, you know, I always struggle when people say, well, procurement should do this or procurement must do that or procurement must do something else like yes that might look good on a piece of paper but it never survives reality of what it's actually like to do the the job every day and so that input is really really important but on the flip side this is where the mindset comes in if we are to to evolve our value proposition as procurement professionals we need to listen to different ways of doing things and so we also have to be open to is the way that i do things today the best way to do it or should i be redesigning as you talked about your operating model you know and the processes around it based on capabilities that i can bring in from external partners rather than just try and fit them into my way of doing business you've got you don't have a choice candidly because your board is already moved on they're already thinking and asking different questions right so if your um approach is a legacy one as i challengingly put it then how how often are you going to hit that target you're just going to build frustration right and they're going to look somewhere else so you have to move on and understand the business and its priorities understand how your ecosystem that you are responsible for can help you solve those solutions create those solutions sorry and grow your business that's on you that's the privilege that you have as the custodian for being the procurement leader right and it's really really challenging in a mindset way and culturally in your organization but also how you engage and have your talent on the front foot so simple example today where everyone is talking about ai and experimenting experimentation what are you trying to do you're trying to get your organization and those in a legacy mindset to move forward and be a little bit fresher and curious right Get it right, get it wrong, but move it forward and learn.

25:10Hiten Parmar: What's the difference? If I can do that with that mindset and pick up the phone to a partner and team or someone else or vice versa, then you're solving aligned problems in a pragmatic way. That's a talent challenge because you're asking people to be comfortable evolving as opposed to staying where they've been. I know I'm going off topic a little bit. um how do you encourage your team to embrace that yeah i mean an energy i have in my team is we've got to know where we're going and whatever the size of the step is you take going forward it's got to go forward right um and if you're aligned with your stakeholders and your uh business priorities internally that's great speaking those terms don't speak in procurement terms second if your finger is on the pulse with the suppliers that you have responsibility for for your category in or for your business area then really understand what they're up to yeah bring them and their perspective into your organization and let them connect with your stakeholders and be a facilitator an influencer in that sense um the third dimension is I explicitly challenge and reward by doing that yeah so you've got your day job but this is part of your day job yeah if you want to just transact then an agent's going to do that in tomorrow's digital workforce if you want to be bedded in your organization understand where it wants to go and actually enable it to get there then that's much much more rewarding than being able to negotiate you know five transactions a day um i want to dig a little bit into data and the data that you're um you're you're pulling together that you're leveraging in your team as you continue to kind of remove the friction from the procurement process but also helping you build that trust that you're building with your steep call group and one of those areas is around suppliers and supplier data but you talked in preparation for this conversation around this idea of blocks and one block i wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that is yeah sure and a simple way of understanding this is that you're missing a trick or missing an opportunity right so if i just engage as printer said earlier if i just engage with printer on what I've bought from her and her organization.

27:45Hiten Parmar: And she does so much more. Baro does so much more. I'm missing a trick, right? That's what I'm talking about in terms of blocks. Yeah. And that could be a data block. It could be a that's what the contract says block, or that's what your stakeholder says block. You've got to think in the round. And the reason why I call it a block is that if you build them together, you're building something that is solid, can weather a disruptive event because stuff happens. You're going to have solid trust and you'll solve problems together much more readily than just thinking about it as a siloed activity or a transaction.

28:38Hiten Parmar: So when I talk about blocks, I see it as a real 360 view of something, but building on something solid because Prennus just is likely to give me a call and say, you know what? We've had this idea. You interested? Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? And that's what I need externally in my ecosystem, just as much as I discover internally with my stakeholders or my team. Yeah.

29:03Prerna Dhawan: If I can maybe just expand on that a little bit, I think, I mean, I guess 20 years ago, data was the problem. You didn't have access to data. I think we've come to a point where the problem's now too much data, right? The volume, the velocity, the pace, you know, the variety of data is the problem. And I think because of that, we have all these different data sets and data types and this and that, whether it's risk, whether it's cost, price, whatever it is from a procurement context, but in any, you know, function actually. And then Then you have your spend, you have your contracts and so on and so forth.

29:40But when you're making decisions, you're not making decisions in a silo.

29:45Prerna Dhawan: For example, if you changed a supplier or if you did something like you are launching a new product and you went and you found this is the ingredient that should go into it. You cannot be making that decision just based on is it available and what does it cost? You have to consider the supply chain risk. You have to consider your ESG and sustainability footprint, right? You have to consider all of that. So when we talk about data blocks, at least when Hiten and I discuss this, we're looking at this in context of as a procurement professional, as a category manager, how do we bring to you all those pieces and the interdependencies are called out because you may be buying this, but then you are exposed to other parts up and down the value chain.

30:35Prerna Dhawan: Anything is not siloed anymore. Everything is an ecosystem. For example, lithium. How is a bank or an insurance company exposed to lithium? Nowadays, you are. All of the AI infrastructure, all of the tech infrastructure. It's something that I think is where these blocks concept comes together as well. So I just want to add to that.

30:57Hiten Parmar: just going to just add to that what we often talk about between the two of us is you know i mean i'm trying to make a decision right we've got lots of data and often the data block is one element of many data blocks that allow me to make a decision with confidence in that place yeah so it's Apprentice is absolutely spot on in terms of I'm flooded with data, but I need decision grade data that allows me to really make good decisions today, tomorrow and beyond. Yeah. And you can only do that. And do that if you've got trustworthy data, good practice. There's a reason why elite sportsmen, and I say this to the team often, an elite sportsman every day practice the basics the fundamentals whatever the sport right they don't just go you know i've got it i'm going to work on something else you've got to remind yourself that you have to do the same as a procurement professional yeah and it's the fundamentals that allow you to create headspace insight to make data-driven decisions either at category contract level but also as a business level could be mna could be new products could be new territories you're going to need someone to help you do that and that's where this concept of the block and thinking in the round really brings brings value to an organization and interesting so in the context of uh of both your relationship like who's who do you look at as being the filter because you now we're talking about there's so much data and you're wanting to access more data so that you can make broad decisions and understand second order effects and not just make decisions in isolation like we might have done before when we look at well this is cheaper than that so I'm going to make that decision you know do you look to to your partners such as Barrow to help you think about that filtering of the data or do you say give me everything and we'll kind of figure out what's important or not i'd love to know kind of how you collaborate on that yeah i think it's got sort of two angles there's there's a there's a timing question around the business problem that you see in the business problem that you can solve right but one bring one often creates the second one which is actually the direction of travel that and the line of sight that printer has and her organization has in the market with other clients and what they're innovating creates another challenge, another opportunity for me.

33:35Hiten Parmar: So it's bi-directional, right? And that's very much how we started this and have developed this capability and Burroughs being one of the key strategic partners. And that's the difference between having something which is transactional and a commodity. And I'm not drifting into SRM land here. It's the reality of the nature of strategic aligned opportunities and outcomes that build the trust and create the outcomes. That's the difference. So Beasley, for example, my remit was to build from scratch and grow the business with tomorrow's partners in a safe way. And whilst you're risking us in lots of different regulatory territories that we operate.

34:22Hiten Parmar: right because we're becoming more famous for what we do i needed partners to do that and the foundation of insurance is strong data analytics great judgment right and relationships so i leverage those characteristics if you like and how we make money into how we spend our money yeah and to find the right partner with some of those assets and the alignment of curiosity and culture, you know, I deliberately went to Barrow to allow us to ask the question, figure out how the options could be, and start to deliver those answers. Yeah. How do you think about that from a product perspective, Pranay, and actually being able to, you know, productize, if you will, and deliver something that is able to deliver on those client requirements?

35:17Prerna Dhawan: Yeah, so I think I probably covered this as two parts. So one is, I think, like you asked, what is Bero providing and in this relationship, so we can get you the different data sets, we can get you the interdependencies from an outside in perspective. But what Beasley or what any customer organization has to provide is the context, right? So if you mix the two, which is you have the data and you have it in one place you have understood the interdependencies and the connections which is our job and also by the way provenance right in today's day and age what has ai done it's made what what is scarce it's the provenance can i tell you is this data the correct data is it where is it coming from can you trust it right decision grade as we call it that's the provenance and that's the trust we bring with the data and we bring all of what you need but then we layer on the context so you know an example you know which suppliers are less or more critical to you where do you have less exposures all of that has to come from the customer organization so that's the part one now from a product perspective how do you get avoid getting into customization territory right that's where i think for me personally and that's what i tell my team that's where the beauty of ai is right so it's about how can i give every single customer something that is in their language their context but as a product which is where you can actually say use ai so for example you know uh hitain's team might be referring to a certain capability or a supplier information in a certain way somebody else calls it something else now traditionally it was a mapping problem and how do you do this across companies but with ai you can actually give everybody their own surface if you may right so i i think that's how i look at it uh so in fact i mean i think ai is great uh you know because every customer i have i can give them that custom feeling without building custom solutions for every single customer i think that

37:23Hiten Parmar: for me is the power we have to leverage interesting and yeah you can't build custom for everybody as much as we might want to just from a product management perspective. But we're able to at least provide things that are more fit for purpose for individual clients within the frameworks of what the underlying product are today.

37:42Prerna Dhawan: I would say, I mean, I'm in the UK, so very much somewhere between ready-made and bespoke, so made to measure. I think AI makes made to measure products very, very easy, at least theoretically so far. We're on that journey. we're doing it but it's uh it's where we're leveraging ai as well and at barrow you've you've

38:04Hiten Parmar: grown uh pretty rapidly over the last few years both organically and through acquisition um you know how does that kind of impact how you um continue to grow product you know when you're acquiring you're obviously bringing in different features and capabilities that exist somewhere else and making sure that you don't lose what made that special while integrating them into your car you know how do you think about that challenge yeah that's the toughest question you've

38:30Prerna Dhawan: asked me and I don't know if our team would approve but no the reality is uh I think there's definitely like Hiten said he's at you know the way to grow is not always everything you do yourself so from a product perspective we've looked at you know opportunities where we have something complementary where we don't start from scratch so yes we have grown both through acquisition built our own and I would say we are still on that integration journey so when we acquired a company day one we had more products have they all been combined and do they seamlessly fit into one flow for my customers not yet but we are on that journey we have examples so we you know acquired NAMU last year for negotiations and game theory so we're launching our new negotiations product for bilateral negotiations, which is a combination of the bearer market data and intelligence and our capabilities, plus what we got from the NAMU, you know, legacy and heritage.

39:28Prerna Dhawan: So that combination is what I think creates more value for customers as well. So that's how that integration is happening. But yes, I would say it's not easy. It's something that keeps me up every night actually still still there still integrating and I think it's a constant journey they'd have something new every few months to add to the mix yeah I think from a client's perspective

39:56Hiten Parmar: what you see is you know what I saw was the vision of Baro and I recognized it yeah and the journey that Baro were on is to connect the dots that they see their clients grappling with. And as a result, I see that he's created a different and new market dynamic, yeah, and it had real trust in its assets and adding to that and getting more value from them in a more connected way is part of everyone's opportunity right um and that doesn't happen overnight yeah the second thing i would say is from a client perspective it happens at pace so it's a very collaborative listening ear type of relationship where you align on the priorities not customized because then that doesn't help everyone um but you can influence on the priorities and go, actually, you know what?

41:00Hiten Parmar: The order of play could be this. And that's really rewarding. And you can do it at pace because it's leveraging today and tomorrow's tech as opposed to legacy footprints, yeah, where a number of incumbents really struggle with the pace of change in line with technology today and data. I advise a number of other procure techs and insure techs and fintechs and i really see the ones who get that and make an investment in that direction to help and be transparent and others who don't and have a very legacy way and i know which ones are winning yeah that conversation um so i see that and then that allows you to have an aligned strategic alignment conversation with with from a client's perspective to get the payoff which is accelerated value, whichever one wants, right?

41:55Yeah.

41:57Hiten Parmar: Well, I've really enjoyed the conversation, especially kind of talking a bit more in detail about how partners and collaborations can help transform the procurement operating model. And, you know, in doing that, transform how you're able to support all of your stakeholder groups internally at Beasley. I have one question just to wrap up for both of you. It's a different question. But just as we kind of come to a close on the conversation, Hitton, I'm going to ask you first, could you name an underrated skill that cpo would actually need to build something and build something special with a partner yeah my philosophy is i really see procurement as an art and a science yeah right and what i mean by that is there's real art artistry in leading with vision yeah because it's imperfect um but there's real and real creativity off the back of that which is artistic but you know it's grounded in science because it's driven by data and fact right so if you might the underrated element is that there's a drift towards just the science the underrated element is being creative and that's the artistic piece and that's really where tomorrow's leaders make the difference in in the boardroom and and the outcomes that businesses are looking for the function that is procurement to deliver um but you've got to back it up with action and you need the right ecosystem to make that reality and that's where you know that's how you build something different with the supplier um thank you and uh perna from your side is there something that like a question a procurement team something like hidden and his team have asked you and challenged you with that most don't that you think would really help to kind of um strengthen the relationships or strengthen the kind of value of the combined

43:48Prerna Dhawan: partnership that you have with your clients yeah i think uh i think one of the questions that uh or maybe i think the key question uh you know procurement team should be asking suppliers like ourselves or actually any supplier is how important are they uh to us right what sort of risk do they foresee from a perspective of if tomorrow I had to make a choice between whose ideas I prioritize as an individual customer or if I didn't have enough bandwidth where would I put for which customer then would they be on top of that list I think that's a question I don't think you know customers ask enough I have not had that question and I would wish as much as they want to see how, you know, that what's the risk with me as a supplier, it should also be the other way around that are they at risk from how we perceive them as a buyer and as a customer and actually as a partner, is it truly a partnership, it is truly a you know relationship or is it just supplier management, right, are you engaging, are you engaging because otherwise there is that trust the collaboration and all of those good things we talk about is all kind of for marketing speak not really in practice so yeah that's I think the question.

45:16Hiten Parmar: Interesting and I can speak you know from somebody who's been on both sides of the table as well you know sometimes we may dream up supply relationship management programs and they were just a nicer way of you know ever provide a feeling as though they were important but a way for us to get more leverage in negotiations. And so you can tell as a provider if the words meet the actions. And I think that that's really what drives the difference. Hidden talked earlier about actions. And that's what procurement folks can definitely do with their partners. It's spot on, right? And that's why I said earlier about the importance of the human, right?

45:49Hiten Parmar: And the judgment and the trust element. You've got to be authentic. So, because people can pick up on that a mile. Yeah. Right? I'm doing this because we have to do it. Yeah. But actually, if I'm authentic and I'm curious about where you're going next and I'm authentic as wanting to be the client of choice, that I can make a priority call and be the one that gets your help and we solve problems together, that's deeply rewarding. And that's very much, you know, front and center of my mind when I'm making these sorts of decisions.

46:19Prerna Dhawan: and I think I think from a provider perspective and you know I've had too many conversations I think it's hard but being honest and authentic like this doesn't work in my product I do not have something that I can solve I think like I said if we only look at how do I monetize and how do I keep giving something more that this customer is going to pay us for that that's not going to work in the long term i i think that honesty about what's still you know so we launch a new product a new data block whatever it's the honesty it's still rough around the edges you're one of the first customers to try it and please don't expect it's going to work beautifully all the time i think it's it and there will be customers who'll run away they don't want to try they don't want to do the risk but then there will be customers who are willing to be ahead and who want to you know say okay how do i get in early and maybe shape how this thing progress so i think that authenticity and honesty on both sides is uh is something we can all talk about it doesn't happen in practice uh in all cases but yeah well well hidden and i want to

47:32Hiten Parmar: thank you so much for joining me uh on the show today what i'll do is um i'm going to put links to both of your LinkedIn profiles in the show notes for today's episode. So if anybody's listening in, they would like to reach out, connect directly. There's an easy way for them to do that. Those are gonna be artofprocurement.com slash podcast. That's artofprocurement.com slash podcast. One last time. Thanks for joining me today.

47:57Hiten Parmar: If this episode struck a chord with you, please do send it to somebody. We grow here at Art of Procurement through word of mouth and that would be really appreciated. you can also support us by giving us a thumbs up a star rating or a review wherever you listen to your podcasts since 2015 we've built the world's largest free resource for procurement professionals looking to elevate their impact our resources span podcasts like this videos blog posts papers and events to join us on the inside and to ensure you never miss an episode a webinar event or a post, please do subscribe to our weekly newsletter This Week in Procurement.

48:35Hiten Parmar: You can do that at artofprocurement.com slash subscribe. That's artofprocurement.com slash subscribe. Thank you for joining us today and I look forward to seeing you again soon.