889: Why Standing Still Is Procurement's Biggest Tech Risk W/ Cyril Wasem

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 Cyril Wassam, the Chief Procurement Officer at the Vita Group, a global leader in polyurethane foam technology, doing some research before the show.

0:44And I think you show up in all kinds of places I'd never have imagined before. So we'll talk about that a little bit in a moment. Cyril is also one of our judges on the ProcureTech 100 program and deeply involved in the ProcureTech space. So first of all, Cyril, welcome to the show. Thank you, Philip, for inviting me. Now, I always start the conversation with that first question of, did you find procurement or did procurement find you? So how did you find your way into this profession? I would say I'm one of the exceptional cases, most probably, that procurement found me. I was raised with procurement professionals.

1:24So my father was working in the procurement space in the finance sector. And that's why I could already feel what's behind the job. And I always like to see the different topics and the interaction with different functions and stakeholders. and that was somehow the way that I chose to try my best in the procurement space. So I think that you are a very, very, very rare exception. But I was having this conversation with Kelly, my partner at Art Procurement, only this week about how many people we know who are second generation procurement professionals and there are not very many of them at all.

2:09so so growing up in that environment didn't scare you away from going and doing procurement then no i i really saw the the nice challenges behind um and uh i i knew i wanted to go actually more in the industrial space so i was not really interested to go in the finance sector and there's a swiss so then it's either chocolate or watches and i ended up first in the the chocolate business and there I did actually a commercial apprenticeship and saw different departments and I really had nice insights in in procurement and I was then actually lucky to get at a very young age the responsibility for the indirect procurement yeah so that was a for me a nice It's a nice initial challenge.

3:06Yeah, I was looking at your kind of career arc before we started and noticed that you had Lyndon, you had Giardelli early in your career. And I looked at that and I'm thinking, I'm not sure if I'd have been able to get much further than that, if I'd have been working for those organizations. So, you know, kind of good, and probably it would be bad for my health as well with all the freebies that you probably got access to. I'm still a chocoholic. so uh i agree you just need to skip the other uh food then then it should be okay stick with the dark chocolate as well exactly i'm more into milk chocolate but uh of course i mean many people um ask me why would you ever leave the chocolate business and trade it with the chemical environment and I have to say it was a great move and the procurement in the chemical space is very dynamic and very complex with all the value chains so I never got bored and that was one side and the other side it's also chemicals are used in every kind of industry so you get to know a lot of applications in that yeah and you mentioned you know Switzerland known for its chocolate and known for its watches and actually the industries that feed off the watches so one of my very first jobs and i had no idea what i was doing at this point but i was responsible for actuators in automotive and a really small stepper motor so back in the day when you would use motors to drive all the uh the gauges on your dashboard and my big supplier was based in um just a village in the middle of it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere in switzerland in a a place called Sansa Bo, which was just outside of BL or BN.

4:55And so every day I'd drive past the Rolex factory on the way up to, uh, uh, to the supplier and pretend to watch them knowing what I was talking about. You know, when there was quality issues without really having any idea whatsoever, but at least enjoying the view because I couldn't, you know, take away from the view while I was there. Yeah. I think that's the art of procurement is as well to, uh, pretend you understand the technical details. that was what I had to learn early in my career in in CapEx negotiations for example for production lines and equipment I didn't have an engineer background but it's the art to find a way to collaborate internally with the other functions to have a clear game plan behind 100 % those relationships for me was what drove everything because I knew what I knew and I knew I didn't know.

5:48And I would never understand what they would understand. So, you know, having them feel as I was there for them was really what helped, you know, certainly in those early days. Now, you've also worked internationally. So you've worked in San Francisco, you worked in France, in Tokyo, Singapore. What did all those international experiences bring in terms of how you think about procurement today? yeah the procurement is a lot about people and collaboration and the cultural aspect is is extremely important to understand so for me it was always switching my mindset and my approach as well where i would go and in the end i was lucky to live in different places um then on top i think the the procurement job if you work in an international environment also brings you to regularly to different cultures and places and i still enjoy that part today um because i believe it brings the world a bit closer together um and it also as a global company you need to understand how to be successful and there is different ways how to approach it and there's also the even though we like near shoring meanwhile we we also need to understand how do we really develop supplier collaborations that there is trust and that there is a similar understanding of expectations do you also feel it gave you because i had this similar experiences and for me it helped me realize that there is not there's not necessarily such a thing as a global strategy or a strategy that you do that you can push in the same way globally you have to regionalize things within the context perhaps of a global strategy did you see that as well that things that you may design you know you may dream them up in hq are not necessarily going to be implementable when you're talking to somebody in a manufacturing site in singapore for example or you know a travel provider that you nominate as a global travel provider that isn't really global and you know you have to take those things into considerations as you're building these strategies i fully agree i was saying to japan as a global category manager for a big mna and it was a very local japanese company totally different approach and what what What I learned also as I had a dual responsibility also locally is exactly then you view the direction from a corporate level and global strategies a bit different.

8:44And I think this is important then also to be proactively knocking on the door to say how to amend to make it workable locally. And this is also still a philosophy I have today. I want to be flexible enough to understand what works for the companies. There is different needs by business units. There's different needs by country. Of course, it's always important to have streamlined processes and to also have a clear direction where you want to go. But business is still about people and copy-paste. What we think is correct in Europe or in the U.S. might not work in other places. Yeah. I mentioned at the beginning that you're one of our judges on the Procuratech 100 program.

9:40And I know that technology is something that you've invested a lot of your time in and kind of understanding the landscape. and in figuring out how to most optimally use technology, you know, as you're thinking about your procurement operating model. I'm going to start at a high level. What's your general kind of feeling just around procurement technology? Here we are in 2026. And what the environment that we're in today means for chief procurement officers like yourself. I mean, it's an exciting stage we have reached that so many solutions really bring added value. And I realized a bit more than two years ago that CPO position can fully absorb you internally and with suppliers, and you don't have time to interact with startups.

10:33And I purposely changed my approach. I reserved time, especially on Friday afternoons, to have one or two pitches from startups and connect and also trying to understand what is possible and also give them maybe guidance from a theoretical approach to what would be required to make it practically work. And so that helped me to build up the network. And over the two years, I have seen incredible developments. Of course, we have seen AI, but it's not only AI. It's also the whole space has attracted actually really smart people. And that's so helpful for the function now that you have this ecosystem available.

11:24And that's why for everyone in procurement, not only the CPOs, if you close your eyes and you're not part of the ProcureTech environment, I think it's very dangerous. because now you're in a phase where you can influence how to develop solutions. You can be an early adapter. And also those solutions, it's not just you implement it and it's rigid as maybe as we have seen in past solutions. Now every week there is new updates, new opportunities. And that's why you gain speed and you gain efficiency for the organizations. and you can create tremendous value for the company. How do you keep track?

12:14I think that we all see an explosion in different providers, some of which you look at and think, I'm not sure why we needed another one of those. And others you look at and think, wow, this is something that changes the game or has the potential to change the game. So as you're kind of just looking out and evaluating the world of procurement technology, and it may not be because you have a specific need but you're just trying to keep informed I'd love to know kind of how you think about going about doing that yeah it's twofold so for the CPO position I would say I really think about what do we need what makes a big change for the company so quite specific have a roadmap to investigate and be a bit more structured Then on a personal side, I think the exchanges, ProcureTech 100 is a good guidance.

13:11But then also with peers to exchange, there are great events where you can participate and learn. I would say just my personal advice is carve out one or two hours per month at least to dedicate to maybe new companies that you have not interacted with. And if you do this together, then I think you have at least a good understanding. And I found the procurement community extremely helpful. So it's only about asking your peers and they will also guide you. And there is enough good solution providers around. So most probably that's even the challenge nowadays to find out who is the best. And I would say my focus here is more if you select to work with one, make sure it's not just a one-time implementation.

14:12It's rather a start of a joint development. That makes the difference. What kind of questions are you asking them to get a sense for whether that exists or not? whether you're just buying something and it's a transaction versus you're really bringing in a partner. You're investing in a partner that's going to grow what they do with you as well. So that it's not just, and perhaps when you're doing that, it's not that their solution is 100 % fit for purpose today, but they've got a roadmap and you're kind of investing in that roadmap at the same time they're investing in you. Like how do you identify partners who you feel you can work with in that way yeah it's with these first exchanges normally i have a lot of ideas so it's just they will pitch and then i will it creates let's say the curiosity to understand what can it do and maybe i would reflect it what problems do we have in in our company or what I'm aware of and how can they help.

15:17And then it's normally a process. Can you do this as well and how to combine? Because nowadays, as we know, it's more about how you combine your data layers and your functions, processes together that make a totally new framework. and yeah so that's a a bit my approach in in in collaborating and that was also one of the reason i accepted to to be an advisor for a startup um then to be really early involved and that helped me as well i'm i don't know the the technical details and uh the and so i get um simple explanations and i can of course bring value in terms of i know what problems need to be solved and how to make a good value of those solutions and so it's it's a give and take in the end you know the outcomes you know the outcomes and the outputs that you're wanting um and they're able to kind of share because that's something that's sometimes missing is a technology might be a great technology that does really interesting things but at the end of the day it still really only matters what the outputs are because that's what you need and what you work with correct and and there is uh critical differences to recognize there is a lot of features they sound nice um but it needs to be something that you really can turn into to value together and that's why um yeah i've normally liked to my category leaders um a lot of ideas and questions and I think that's also a bit the the job of a CPO to be more the pilot and also to to bounce a little bit the boundaries and to understand what is possible and then define the priorities.

17:19How do you feel about experimentation with new tools and technologies because on one hand you know you see there's a lot of proof of concepts but a lot of proof of concepts don't necessarily go anywhere on the other hand you know we had a speaker at our catalyst event this week that was saying ditch the proof of concept you kind of need to be all in to make something actually work and that's one of the reasons why proof of concepts don't work because you're not all in enough how do you think about evaluating you know taking that next step from this seems interesting to I want to put this into production and I want to go live with this you know in terms of scoping in terms of you know do you go small and then expand I'd love to know kind of how you how you start to work a little bit more deeply with providers when you see them and think you know what this is something that I think is really has a lot potential for us and i'd like to try yeah i think one of the important uh aspects is to really not only select an existing product but also select the partners you want to develop it further so that the people behind and and their mindset and the company culture it's extremely important and if you see in most of the the startups it's very refreshing there is never a know that there is a will and strive to try and do it at pace.

18:49And I also changed the approach coming from, let's say, all the ERP implementations where you had to test and plan. This is a new environment where you need to be more bold. Do you go at speed and you course correct and you add? And we did the same. we implemented an orchestration solution within eight weeks. So we said we want to set the record, and we knew it's not going to be perfect, that everything is fully integrated and all the features are developed. But that was phase one, and we had already, I would say, 80 % of the benefits. So the process was running. And then we went into phase two.

19:36We integrated remaining ERP systems. Now we're in phase three also to look into additional features. And there were features not really available yet. So we get it also tailored to the needs because we believe it's also value for other companies. And so nowadays, it's actually, if you stand still, that's the biggest risk. I think you need to try, of course, with the focus, but time is extremely crucial. Did you need to get any internal or feel like you need more internal buy-in to go into an eight-week implementation deployment of a platform? Did you have to convince your stakeholders that this was a, who may also be risk averse, that this is something that was worthy of implementing and implementing in a really sharp timeframe.

20:39I'd just love to know kind of the internal dynamics behind going and putting something in place where, as you said before, we're used to this being a year and focus groups and workshops and all the change management and change management is super important. But of course, you don't get as much time to do change management when you've got an eight-week implementation. Exactly. Initially, I mean, it helps if you work in a private equity-owned company. So we have to support. We like to do at speed. If you're convinced about a business case, then we go quick. On the other hand, it's correct. We were used internally to have very detailed contracts, very detailed deliverables, implementation plans.

21:26And that's not really required anymore. because it's also most of the solutions, it's not very tailored and it just works. So that was a bit an internal discussion. How do we speed up and required a lot of, let's say, push from my side to say, now let's start working because it doesn't add value to think about concept and to have a detailed implementation plan. and it also doesn't mean that we were just blindly starting because we knew it's possible and we knew what we wanted to do so yeah and I think the speed is is changing in the AI environment so that's why the only way you need to adapt I want to jump on that speed thing because the first thing that came to my mind was things are changing so quickly that in two months time something that you bought you know you implemented now in two months time not that that's obsolete but what it can do has probably grown in increment either incrementally or exponentially because of the underlying technologies that they have access to behind it you know for some leaders they may look at that and think, I'm going to wait until we get to more of a steady state before I think about where I make my investments.

22:54But on the flip side, I'm not sure if we're ever going to get a steady state, at least not for a while while the pace of change is so fast. So how do you manage that? Like the regret that you might have that you make an investment in something and three months time you look back and say, well, that's already out of date. yeah you need to select a provider who is has a clear vision where they want to go when they continuously push it as well on the other hand we also internally we have had several sessions with stakeholders who get their feedback and input and then basically we still have every other week week, we have a follow up and we discuss what should come next.

23:40So I think it's about the provider that they are willing to go further and that you also be involved to understand what is the North Star of those solutions and that you can also bring it together because that's now the, I think the next phase where you combine your different solutions together even if it's let's say with with claude or chat gtp in the environment and and then it becomes finally connected again but actually still very tailored to the different processes and i mean we had a very immature environment we came from very decentralized setup we had different processes or no processes so that's why we took the decision let's design it from scratch yeah we did that quite quickly and now with these orchestration solutions the beauties you don't have to ask them for changes you're actually really able to design it yourself and make small tweaks and over the past weeks we we have already improved on the processes so i said okay can we maybe make simplify certain steps and it's two three clicks and you implement it.

25:02And so then it becomes extremely dynamic. And before, maybe just to reflect on that, before we had such a solution, the market environment has changed and we wanted to have closer control for our indirect spend. So the only way I could do it is I implemented a spend control tower where they had to submit requests and then we had a weekly discussion and approvals. So very time-consuming, broken processes, not nice for stakeholders, not nice if you have to organize it this way. You've got to wait for another week or two weeks for the next governance meeting to decide whether something gets approved or not.

25:49Exactly, exactly. And a lot of manual data preparation as well. So now it's just flowing and you get insights which were not accessible before. And I think this is the added value. Of course, then it's still the question. You don't want to be just policemen. You want to also bring some added value back to the organization. And so it also matters what are you doing out of those requests. Are you able to run sufficient tenders? Are you able to see the big pictures where you can streamline? and that's very normal in small medium-sized companies you have everywhere too many suppliers no strategy no scope of work so you still have to do the work to get the data together and to get that foundation but now you can do it in an accelerated way yeah you you mentioned about being able to change processes quickly you know one of the things i love about orchestration technology and the low code kind of no code environments as well is that you can go and test you know in the marketing world you'd say a b testing but essentially you can test two processes or test a process but with different steps one for this operating unit for example and one for that operating unit and you can see which performs best you know whatever best means whatever outcomes you're trying to drive and then you can implement that one across the rest of the business but you only need to experiment and test it in one particular use case based on how you know one kind of product type or service type or whatever it is flows through the process and that has such an opportunity for us in terms of optimization of processes and the other thing I was going to ask you about that as you're talking about process you know do you think about we have this technology so let's redesign our process because the technology allows us versus in the old days it may be let's just try and shoehorn our existing process into a technology and hope it kind of works together.

27:52Yeah, that has certainly changed. In addition, that you can run the processes much more efficient. So I think that combination is nice. And then as well, the next step is, of course, that there is more work behind the scenes with agents. there is a much better capabilities to utilize the data. Just thinking about, for example, in the chemical space with 30 different sites, you have either a lack of raw material specifications or you have it just locally. And then different description if you don't have a proper master data governance in place. And that makes it very difficult for you to explore also new chemicals in the market.

28:48And if you have a platform that helps you actually to bring this all together, digitalize and work in the background and matches new supplier or gives you benchmarks or gives you a direct connection, how to interact with new suppliers that you don't wait for samples two months and 70 emails and no visibility so there is a lot that is possible now so I think procurement organizations still need to be a bit more brave to bring it up what is possible because maybe not yet fully visible in all the management teams what you can do with new technology. Just one last question on the technology side and it's related to the data you know what's what's your kind of approach in terms of where the data sits so you're bringing data from lots of different sources into a singular location which then you know the the technology and the large language models and everything can access or is it kind of in disparate places but the the technologies that you use are able to access it in different places so it acts as if it's all in one place.

30:03Yeah, at the moment, it's still very fragmented and it's also still very unstructured. But there is good solution with MCP to connect data, to enrich data. I'm a strong believer. Of course, it's nice to have structured data and to bring that in order. but you really make the big leapfrog if you enrich the data and if you have it regularly or systematically updated all the time. So if you have, let's say, market industry data, import data, you have also supply chain metrics linked with the suppliers and so on. So it gives you a cockpit where you actually then finally can utilize the data because I have seen companies that have invested heavily in thousands of reports but nobody has used the data yeah and so the solution for me is only if you can make it work autonomously instead of trying to to bridge it and connect it because we hear sometimes well my data isn't good enough and that's an objection whereas I try and encourage people that that should never be an objection because your data is never going to be good enough compared to where you want it to be.

31:27And also you talked about the cockpit. I think my own experience, I'm using apps to build our own orchestration layer, let's say within the small business that gives me dashboards and views based on data that's in different places that I would always like, I wish that tool would give me that. And I wish that tool would give me that. and they never did. But now I have the ability to bring all that information together into what I actually want to see. And then that helps me kind of with decision making. And I think that's a big opportunity. It's like build your own dashboard, essentially, of what you want to see that helps you make these decisions that I could never really get out of the tools when you're just using their off-the-shelf reporting.

32:10I agree. And it also attracts the new generation. They are much more agile in applying this and finding a new way. And that's also one of the reasons I like to hire young graduates with the right mindset, but to also break the status quo a bit and also show what is possible. And yeah, I'm just very satisfied that we went this way because you truly see a difference. and pushing internally that we also open up of being too risk averse about AI, but it's more, okay, how can we also guide our organization to use it, of course, in a safe way, but also to raise the expectation that you need to use those tools nowadays to be competitive and fast enough.

33:08Do you feel that your use of AI is a, you will be judged as a hirer, as a hiring company, as an attractive place to work or not based on how much you're investing, not from a financial perspective, but how much you're investing from a process and experimentation from some of the tools that are available? People want to work in companies where they get access to that environment. And that becomes an advantage for you when you're looking to hire. Exactly. It's also vice versa. I would like to hire people who are curious and motivated to drive change. and then if you can also prove that the company is ready to to invest and that you have of course the the sufficient budget and visibility to do it and that's why you need to be proactive to bring it up as a case but you make the i think the difference that you not only attract but also retain these high potential people in that environment so they want not just to do maintenance of status quo and this was the same for me that's why i like to to remain in the procurement space it's always new challenges a lot about transformation um and that's so important and you see it, I think, in many studies.

34:42I'm a strong believer of it. For many companies that have dedication to procurement and they leave a procurement environment and see procurement not as a back office, but rather as a business function, they have better results, top line and bottom line. Well, I know that the time is upon us. So I want to thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's been a pleasure for us to be able to speak on the podcast and just learn a little bit more about kind of how you're thinking about approaching technology, because that's, I think, something that a lot of CPOs are wrestling with right now, especially where, as we said, there's so much complexity in the market.

35:27There is so much that's changing that you don't necessarily want to make a decision that seems like it's out of date. And then how that connects with talent. It does seem like those are the two overarching kind of topics of our immediate future here is how do we make sense of the technology? How does that impact our operating model? And what does that mean for the people that's in our business? So if anybody would like to reach out and connect with you, I'm going to put, if that's okay, a link to your LinkedIn profile in our show notes. so that will just accompany this episode which will be at a procurement.com slash podcast Cyril thank you so much one last time for joining me today thank you what a great conversation and I know we only covered the digital side there is many different areas in procurement so look forward to continue our discussion in the future 100 we'll have to make sure that because each one of these kind of layers of conversation is a podcast in its own right so we'll have to start working on our podcast number two as soon as we finish here perfect thank you very much thanks so take care 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.

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