The revamp: A playbook to revolutionise your procurement function to achieve high maturity and sophistication
Abstract
Procurement has long traditionally been characterised as tactical and focused only on cost reduction in the function’s pursuit. Today’s procurement teams, however, are expected to play an increasingly more strategic role. As senior leaders in sourcing and procurement enhance visibility into (and control over) spend, as well as develop greater sophistication and agility to meet the rapidly changing requirements of enterprises, the need for change is present. This paper describes how one of the world’s largest lottery and gaming companies revolutionised their procurement function by putting new structure, processes and technology in place, aligning procurement skills/talents with changing business needs, measuring procurement performance to business values, optimising value from spend categories through strategic sourcing and category management, and tapping into supplier innovations to drive revenue generation. The author takes you through their journey and shares key learnings gleaned, three years into her revolutionising of procurement transformation.
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Author's Biography
Angela Zou is Senior Director of Global Indirect Procurement at Schneider Electric. She is a supply chain executive with over 15 years’ strategic sourcing, category management and procurement operations expertise across management consulting and industry capacities, with a consistent track record of procurement innovation/ transformation, cost optimisation and process optimisations. In her 2.5+ year tenure at IGT, the experience of which was highlighted in this paper, Angela implemented an indirect procurement transformation (from tactical indirect procurement to strategic sourcing and category management) and established foundational infrastructure for procurement operations in IGT. Her leadership responsibilities include strategic sourcing strategy and execution for indirect, procurement transaction centre design and operations, buy channel optimisation strategy and execution, procurement policies and process improvement, procurement systems/technologies deployment and adoption, procurement/spend analytics and procurement programme (MSP) implementation and management. Angela has an MBA in global management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. As a Chinese native, she deeply appreciates diverse cultures and is an avid Latin dancer, with a lifelong passion for global travels.
Citation
Zou, Angela (2020, June 1). The revamp: A playbook to revolutionise your procurement function to achieve high maturity and sophistication. In the Journal of Supply Chain Management, Logistics and Procurement, Volume 2, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.69554/SARF2507.
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