Heroes and Storytelling - changing the game in Services Procurement
The role of heroes, villains and storytelling in managing spend on services in large organisations.
With Nick Williams, Chief Services Procurement Officer, Hays
00;05;13;00 - The core simplicity of services procurement
00;18;01;24 - Who should be worrying about services procurement?
00;23;41;00 - How are organisations managing services spend?
00;30;36;17 - What sets apart organisations that have a handle on their spend on services
00;37;49;29 - Where does executive support come from?
00;41;39;06 - The benefits for effectively managing spend on services
00;46;24;07 - When there are heroes, there are also villains
00;56;38;03 - Storytelling
01;08;22;13 - The living statement of work document and supplier adoption
01;19;26;09 - Summarising the opportunity for procurement
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;09;19
Jonny Dunning
Cool. So, Nick Williams, Pleasure to have you join me for the podcast today. Thank you very much for, making the trip down from north London to the London Bridge studio here.
00;00;09;21 - 00;00;10;24
Nick Williams
In north west London, north.
00;00;10;24 - 00;00;13;15
Jonny Dunning
West London. Sorry. how are you?
00;00;13;18 - 00;00;14;20
Nick Williams
I'm good, thank you.
00;00;14;24 - 00;00;15;08
Jonny Dunning
Yes.
00;00;15;09 - 00;00;16;01
Nick Williams
Very well.
00;00;16;03 - 00;00;16;19
Jonny Dunning
Good, good.
00;00;16;19 - 00;00;17;17
Nick Williams
Beautiful day.
00;00;17;19 - 00;00;40;05
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Well, I'm glad to have you here for this conversation. You and I have had some some interesting chats, about this, this kind of topic and this area of the procurement world. You've got some fantastic experience on the procurement side, which we can delve into and no doubt draw forth some kind of examples, with what we're discussing today.
00;00;40;07 - 00;00;53;04
Jonny Dunning
and what we're discussing today is a nice kind of like title you proposed around all areas. You're looking at around heroes and storytelling. I like that. looking at changing the game in services procurement.
00;00;53;09 - 00;00;55;15
Nick Williams
I wasn't suggesting that I was aware of any time.
00;00;55;16 - 00;00;57;05
Jonny Dunning
Well, we'll we'll have a look at that. I will.
00;00;57;09 - 00;00;58;24
Nick Williams
Just make that clear from the we'll.
00;00;58;27 - 00;01;08;21
Jonny Dunning
We'll make the judgment on that later. so, so first of all, do you want to just give a little bit of background? You're currently chief services procurement officer at Hays.
00;01;08;23 - 00;01;09;19
Nick Williams
Great title.
00;01;09;21 - 00;01;11;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Very cool.
00;01;11;03 - 00;01;12;05
Nick Williams
I made it all myself.
00;01;12;06 - 00;01;30;18
Jonny Dunning
Well, you know, that's one of the things I wanted to discuss with you, actually, is in terms of that title and, and and the market and the recognition of services, procurement as a thing. but before we come on to that, can you just give a little bit of background and context as to how you became the, XPO Hays.
00;01;30;20 - 00;01;32;06
Nick Williams
That's when it becomes a bit of a mouthful.
00;01;32;08 - 00;01;33;18
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;01;33;20 - 00;01;52;25
Nick Williams
well, it's a good question. I don't know, really. if you really ask me the answer to that, then I would have to say, I've taken a path that is, just about helping people. But it sounds a bit trite. I know, but that's the thing that drives me. I started off in engineering. I went into sales.
00;01;52;28 - 00;02;12;27
Nick Williams
I went into, education for a bit. Did some training and teaching. I went into consulting, and then I ended up in procurement. but the thing that's driven me all the way through is just, you know, helping people to do things better. I don't know why that drives me, but. But that's what it is. So whatever, path that I've taken has always been about.
00;02;12;27 - 00;02;32;03
Nick Williams
Okay, how can I help you to do things better? I'm telling you something that's going to help you in your business. whether I'm training and teaching you to help you be better at a certain thing. whether I'm buying stuff for you that makes your business better. or helps you to engage with procurement function. yeah, I think that's what it is.
00;02;32;03 - 00;02;41;09
Nick Williams
And now I'm helping. Hays, if you like to relaunch, reinvigorate, refresh services procurement on a global basis. That's fantastic.
00;02;41;12 - 00;02;45;01
Jonny Dunning
And is that kind of like is that a personality trait in a sense?
00;02;45;02 - 00;02;46;05
Nick Williams
Yeah, I think I think.
00;02;46;05 - 00;02;49;22
Jonny Dunning
Maybe if there's something that's not being done right, can you just leave it?
00;02;49;28 - 00;03;08;27
Nick Williams
No, I can't exactly. That's the point probably. yeah. I do like helping people, whoever they are. you know, my personal life, I spend a lot of time helping my kids, so I've got four kids. My wife got two kids. so between us, we have six, and we're helping them all the time. And I think that's just something that that drives me.
00;03;08;27 - 00;03;26;07
Nick Williams
And that's just my mentality. And you're right. I don't like to see if I feel that things could be done. in a different way. That is perhaps better for the people concerned. I feel that, I'd like to try and help them. And that's what. That's what drives me. Yeah, I think so.
00;03;26;10 - 00;03;50;17
Jonny Dunning
One thing I find quite interesting about the, the kind of core what I would class is the services procurement community, people that are really focusing on this as a thing. it's it's problem solvers. Yeah. Very much that problem solving mentality of a complex issue, an emerging area where there aren't just completely prescriptive solutions that are just, you know, decades old and very much run of the mill.
00;03;50;20 - 00;03;52;20
Jonny Dunning
It's an area for problem solvers.
00;03;52;23 - 00;04;14;14
Nick Williams
Yeah. And I have been called a problem solver, amongst other things that was a more polite thing. That was good. you know, amongst being an interference. Go away. Leave us alone. yeah, I think you're right. That's what really fascinates me about this bit of of business. The services became of it because it is so complex.
00;04;14;15 - 00;04;36;21
Nick Williams
It's really simple, but it's also so complex because you have different people involved for different reasons, with different challenges. And every almost every deal that I look at, is different for different reasons. And people are doing things for different reasons, whether it be financial or whether it be related to to risk or compliance or governance or whatever it might be.
00;04;36;24 - 00;04;48;10
Nick Williams
Everyone's got a different challenge, and that's what makes it fascinating. There's no one size fits all. Buy one of these and they'll solve all your problems. And that that, you know that that gets me up every day. And keeps me interested.
00;04;48;12 - 00;05;13;29
Jonny Dunning
I think. I'm sure people would definitely agree on the complexity side of it in terms of, you know, tying down what somebody's buying and a service, defining it accurately, measuring it, capturing it, tape, making the intangible tangible. There's a lot of complexity around services procurement. But you mentioned it's also quite simple as well. Where do you see that kind of core simplicity?
00;05;14;01 - 00;05;21;13
Nick Williams
Well it's about the data right? kind of sounds awful when I say that. So everybody says, okay, so.
00;05;21;16 - 00;05;22;26
Jonny Dunning
What I was going to say.
00;05;22;28 - 00;05;43;10
Nick Williams
But did it, but it sort of is. Right. It's just about the data and what the data tells you. And I'm not I'm not a huge, sort of data analytics person. Right. But the data tells you what's going on in your own, in your organization. And the more data, the better your decisions can be, because you can use that data, help them.
00;05;43;12 - 00;06;01;10
Nick Williams
So I think it's as simple as that, right. Services procurement is fundamentally about getting the data back out of those, the those deals that you're doing with service providers to then guide you in what your next deal should be. if you don't look at that, you don't know whether you made a good decision or a bad decision last time.
00;06;01;12 - 00;06;20;26
Nick Williams
And so how are you going to guide your next decision? and it doesn't matter what the data is, but getting to that data and looking at it, understanding it and it isn't, isn't difficult. It's pretty pretty pretty simple data to to to get hold of. Once you understand how to get hold of it. And pretty simple to analyze.
00;06;20;26 - 00;06;24;24
Nick Williams
You don't need a computer to do it. You can do it almost by hand.
00;06;24;24 - 00;06;51;24
Jonny Dunning
So yeah, I mean it's when you break it down like that, the process of buying services, the underlying process, it's not, as my friend always said, it's not rocket surgery. it's it's, so, you know, it's it that process exists. It's not the most complicated thing in the world. And actually the ability to buy service effectively, if you've got the data, if you capture the process is actually fairly straightforward.
00;06;51;26 - 00;07;11;07
Jonny Dunning
but it feels like it's been made very complicated or people have felt like it's too complicated to try and address. because it's not the same as buying goods, materials. it's not the same as working through that kind of process that's grown from the ERP into the kind of like procure to pay and source to pay world of data.
00;07;11;07 - 00;07;13;11
Nick Williams
We're going off into procurement language. Yeah.
00;07;13;11 - 00;07;16;27
Jonny Dunning
Well, maybe it might be a little bit, but it's.
00;07;16;29 - 00;07;19;00
Nick Williams
Yeah. And that's part of the problem in my mind by the way.
00;07;19;02 - 00;07;19;12
Jonny Dunning
Right.
00;07;19;13 - 00;07;34;13
Nick Williams
So it's interesting you say that and I was partly joking. But also that is part of the problem that I have come across since working in procurement that there is this language. And then you start talking to the business, the client who you're trying to help and they don't know what you're talking about.
00;07;34;16 - 00;07;56;23
Jonny Dunning
But it depends who you're engaging. So it would you say the and we kind of coming on to the topic I wanted to talk about of like who should care about this? do you think in the minds of, you know, when you're looking at the business and solving a problem around this? so first of all, let's, let's define what is what is services procurement.
00;07;56;26 - 00;08;09;29
Jonny Dunning
do you feel like that's a thing that most organizations, if you spoke to the CFO, said, look, you know, I'm interested in looking at how you guys manage your services procurement. do you think the CFO is going to understand what that is? They're going to have a clear box.
00;08;09;29 - 00;08;30;17
Nick Williams
Oh, no, they weren't. And that's again part of the problem using language that they wouldn't understand. So, one thing that's procurement is very good at is coming up with their own language and then wondering why the stakeholders can't get engaged or won't get engaged. so no, I think the services procurement is, literally that is procurement of services.
00;08;30;17 - 00;08;50;23
Nick Williams
Everything there's not a physical product is a service as long as it's delivered by a person, obviously not by a machine, but as long as it's delivered by a person. it services procurement. So it doesn't matter whether it's a piece of marketing work, piece of legal work, a piece of audit work, piece of consulting work, a piece of security guarding work could be to some reception.
00;08;50;25 - 00;09;03;10
Nick Williams
Manning work. It doesn't matter to me. It's it's it's just a service that is being provided by people. And that's the way I look at it. And that's the way I encourage everybody to look at it.
00;09;03;12 - 00;09;19;06
Jonny Dunning
It's funny, actually, because, a chap that I've interviewed before, he's a well known analyst in the kind of like procurement and contingent workforce space guy called Andrew Kapi. He always used to very much try and impress upon me. Gianni is not services. Procurement is the procurement of services. Yeah.
00;09;19;06 - 00;09;30;10
Nick Williams
He's on his right. That's that's that that's effectively what I'm saying it is because as soon as you try and label it, everybody thinks it's this weird and wonderful, complex thing, which frankly, it's not.
00;09;30;16 - 00;09;39;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Yeah. And and obviously the way that most procurement teams are set up is based around categories. Yeah. And that's where.
00;09;39;02 - 00;09;39;19
Nick Williams
The other problem.
00;09;39;19 - 00;09;46;15
Jonny Dunning
That's where you, I think you get some complexity as well in the terms of the remit. Yes. Of where this kind of spreads.
00;09;46;18 - 00;10;08;20
Nick Williams
So yeah, absolutely. Again, procurement has I feel like I'm lambasting the profession here. But you know, in some cases it needs lambasting because. Yeah, sure. If you look at things in the category, category is effectively a silo. But the business doesn't care about that. Yes. I will appreciate being a procurement professional and consulting on this for a number of years.
00;10;08;22 - 00;10;28;27
Nick Williams
Yes, there is a great deal of benefit from specialism in a category. Having category people who really know how to buy stuff in a category. But that's not that's only one part of the problem for the business. The business problem is I need this done. I need it done next week. Right. And this is my business plan and these are my objectives.
00;10;29;00 - 00;10;56;20
Nick Williams
And this is my strategic imperative. I don't really care how you do it. Just get on and do it. So if you requirement as this responsibility to recognize that say okay, yes, we have category expertise. but it's a good point because most of the meetings, I attend now, have somebody from the HR category and from the consulting services category and perhaps from the talent part of the business, from the h.r part of the business, all in the same room.
00;10;56;22 - 00;11;16;21
Nick Williams
Otherwise, I don't bother really attending the meeting because we're not going to get very far. We're going to get stuck when we start talking about other services or other parts of the Nonpermanent workforce, let's call it, where nobody is represented. So you're not going to get the right answer. You're not going to going to solve the problem.
00;11;16;23 - 00;11;39;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And in terms of solving the problem, we're talking about the procurement of services that goes across categories. some people would define it as being lumped under, engagements that are carried out under statement of work. so that's where you get the kind of statement of work terminology being used within it. what's your view on that side of it?
00;11;39;11 - 00;12;02;25
Jonny Dunning
I'll just put the context around that. The recent staffing, the journalists AWS Summit in London, Peter Regan was putting forward, I saw an article he put out on this as well. he put on a forward an argument to say the contingent workforce industry talk about will management spend management statement of work, contractual vehicle. And he was like, we shouldn't be talking about that.
00;12;02;25 - 00;12;26;11
Jonny Dunning
We shouldn't be talking about services procurement. We should be talking about outsourcing. and it was interesting to hear some people kind of latching onto that and saying they agreed with it, and other people saying, well, you know, outsourcing is more that kind of outsourcing going entire function, offshoring IT or other methodologies around that, whereas actually procurement of services covers a broader range, and there's a broader range of engagements that would sit under statement of work type contracts.
00;12;26;13 - 00;12;34;20
Jonny Dunning
do you think that needs is that something that needs people in the industry to try and define it more clearly, or do you think it's going to work itself either way?
00;12;34;20 - 00;12;53;03
Nick Williams
Why do we spend time trying to define it? It's just a it's a thing, right? There's two main things. If you think, about a business, if you run an organization, you have your permanent workforce, and then you have your nonpermanent workforce, right? And, in my view, personally, you're talking about the non permanent workforce. End of story.
00;12;53;05 - 00;13;15;11
Nick Williams
I don't care if you're a lawyer or a consultant, a receptionist, security guard, driver doesn't matter a marketing expert you're the non permanent workforce. So why do we need to categorize it as anything. It's just that it's people who work for your organization in some form. They're either changing your organization, building your organization, transforming organization, securing your organization.
00;13;15;11 - 00;13;21;08
Nick Williams
Whatever they're doing they're not on your payroll. So as far as I'm concerned, they're in scope.
00;13;21;10 - 00;13;33;26
Jonny Dunning
And so let's let's look into that a bit further. So when we talk about the people providing the service obviously I'm assuming you're including the contractor and temp workforce within that. Are you saying they're on the payroll.
00;13;33;28 - 00;13;55;25
Nick Williams
No I would say that they, they are nonpermanent employees in the same way. but the difference is they might be doing stuff on a, on a, on a time basis versus then something that is put together as a service. So you do have to then differentiate, I think because they are different models and you have to govern them in different, slightly different ways.
00;13;55;25 - 00;14;13;07
Nick Williams
And there are other also regulations around, you know, what you can do and what you can't do. So yes, when you when you start dropping down to the next level, yes, you do have to start doing some element of segmentation, of course, but generally we should talk to a CEO or a CFO. There's the perm stuff and the non perm stuff.
00;14;13;10 - 00;14;27;20
Jonny Dunning
Basically they want to understand pardon me, they want to understand how can I get things done. What's the total capacity of my organization. Yeah. What what's my what's my overall capability when I include my supply chain.
00;14;27;23 - 00;14;28;16
Nick Williams
yeah.
00;14;28;18 - 00;14;35;27
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's getting more and more important for organizations as the dynamic of that internal versus external workforce. Yeah. Shifts.
00;14;35;28 - 00;15;05;04
Nick Williams
There's a lot of reasons why that's happening. Right. So it's very much more difficult today to recruit the right staff on a permanent basis. business changes very quickly. Needs the demand on business for specialist skill sets or developing business in different areas. Globalization. We don't have a, you know, you want to jump into Southeast Asia or you want to jump into a practice and you don't have a, you are in business there.
00;15;05;04 - 00;15;27;22
Nick Williams
It will take you time to do so. You might want to, employ some, services to help you get up and running in those places. Right. And that's that, that's that's normal. and yes, on top of that, you've got the difficulty of recruiting people and retaining people, because the job market is very fluid. People, if they're any good, will move from company to company.
00;15;27;24 - 00;15;41;20
Nick Williams
So, yeah, the permanent the nonpermanent workforce is much more important to, the C-suite than there's ever been. And for, for for those reasons and many others. so I've lost a thread of what we were, well, where we were going.
00;15;41;20 - 00;16;04;09
Jonny Dunning
We just know we were just talking about the kind of like the bifurcation there. So when you drop it, you say, okay, you procuring services, it's effectively your non, nonpermanent. Yes. Capacity. Yes. To do work. so you can, you can get work done in different, modalities. You can get your permanent staff to do it. You can get contractors and attempts to do it on a, on an individual time basis.
00;16;04;09 - 00;16;18;11
Jonny Dunning
You can get gig workers to do stuff. You can. Yeah. Freelancers to do stuff. Yeah. or you can get a service provider to deliver things on an output or outcome basis. so that all fits into that overall work.
00;16;18;11 - 00;16;51;08
Nick Williams
That's your non. Well I recall your non perm workforce that you've talked about there. And yes you need to manage each part of that carefully. within within the realms of your business rules and regulatory rules. But I think it says as I genuinely believe it's as simple as that, particularly if you're at that level of the organization, if you start looking at the spend on services across any company, mostly at 60 to 70% of the spend is related to services in some at some point of view.
00;16;51;11 - 00;17;17;16
Nick Williams
Yeah, this country as a as a massive service industry economy. So we buy and sell many, many services. so I would think that most annual reports will suggest that the amounts of third party spend, and I've seen this time and time again with procurement spend on analytics, most of it is services, 6,070% is services of some kind.
00;17;17;19 - 00;17;29;04
Nick Williams
And that's where the CFOs interested. And frankly, the CEO will be interested because that's over half of what they're spending to to operate your business is, is through services with third parties.
00;17;29;07 - 00;17;41;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I've through people like 80 Kearney. the research they've done would suggest that globally it's basically 50% of organizational spend on average across all industries. Yeah.
00;17;41;23 - 00;17;46;15
Nick Williams
And I would say that the UK is higher than that. But yes, globally I would accept. That's probably right.
00;17;46;19 - 00;18;07;17
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, exactly. An engineering a manufacturing company is going to have a greater, proportion towards, direct spend or sorry, goods material to spend. But you know, likewise, the bank going to be probably an investment bank might be 95% services. Yeah. I always find it quite interesting when, again, I don't want to get too much into the terminology and the attempt at categorization.
00;18;07;17 - 00;18;33;05
Jonny Dunning
I like your approach of keeping it simple, but this whole idea of direct versus indirect, I find confusing slightly sometimes because it depends what type of company you are. You know, services could sit in either direct or indirect spend if you are, an Atkins or WSP, you like a, you know, building infrastructure consultancy. Your your direct costs are effectively services where your, you know, your subcontracting.
00;18;33;05 - 00;18;55;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. and your indirect are probably going to be goods not for resale like laptops and things like that. whereas in you know, an engineering company, it might be completely different. So, so it's, I feel like there is to get through to where the, the nub of this is. You need to be really approaching this from a very top level, listening to what you're saying, because who should care about it?
00;18;55;14 - 00;19;11;16
Jonny Dunning
That's the next point I wanted to get onto. Who should care about this? there's various people that I think potentially should care about it, but when you consider the amount of spend that's involved in it, who do you think this should be? Something that somebody who should within organizations should be worrying about this?
00;19;11;18 - 00;19;31;08
Nick Williams
Why everybody should be worried about it?.Of course, if it's half of what your organization spends. Yeah, everybody should be worried about it or understand it. At least it's going back to your point about yeah, it's a C level conversation. I think the the fundamentals of a C level conversation. Yeah. So do you know how many Nonpermanent employees you've got Mr..
00;19;31;08 - 00;19;59;29
Nick Williams
Mr.. Or Mrs. CEO do you know the answer I get to that question is not really a lot of the time. So that's boring for a start. and something that for to to investigate. going back to your previous point about direct or indirect. Yeah, it's down to, a good procurement function to understand the business, understand the type of organization it is, and build their operating model around that, that suits the business.
00;19;59;29 - 00;20;21;22
Nick Williams
That's going to give them the best result. So that's the answer to that I think. but everybody should be worried about it. Yeah. So and everybody is is worried about it I know if that's the right term, but everybody should be interested. Obviously the CFO should be interested from, from a financial management perspective, from a forecasting and budgeting perspective.
00;20;21;24 - 00;20;40;27
Nick Williams
the, the, the, the tech function needs to be worried about. Have we got the right technical expertise in the right place? Are we paying the right amount of money? We're developing that. We're using third parties develop products, services operate our business. How how well are we doing that compared to our competitors? You know, what do we do to optimize it?
00;20;41;00 - 00;20;55;27
Nick Williams
the legal function. And are we getting the right lawyers in? Are they the best lawyers for us, for our organization? Do they give us the right advice? And are we paying the right amount of money? And are we are we optimizing our engagement with the law firms to to do their, their job? It doesn't matter who it is.
00;20;55;27 - 00;21;14;27
Nick Williams
Everybody in the organization should have a view because I, I would expect that pretty much every sea level member, every C-suite member, will be using third parties at some point during the year, to deliver for them, either in an indirect or direct capacity. Yeah, yeah.
00;21;14;27 - 00;21;33;03
Jonny Dunning
I agree with you. I but do you think it's one of those things where everybody feels like it's maybe someone else's problem or someone else's responsibility in the sense that everybody's got a stake in it within the organization, or a large number of parties have got a stake in it within the organization. but but whose problem is it?
00;21;33;03 - 00;21;35;25
Jonny Dunning
Who owns it? Who's responsible?
00;21;35;28 - 00;21;56;01
Nick Williams
Well, I think the the, probably procurement. All right. That's your, that's that's the place that you go in an organization to, to buy stuff. And if procurement is not able to advise you correctly in that space, and you don't feel that you're going to get that you'll, you'll make your own decisions, which might not be the right decisions.
00;21;56;04 - 00;22;42;23
Nick Williams
And that's so it's procurements, challenge and opportunity to address this in the right way, which is understanding the business, understanding stakeholders. What is the challenge? What is the strategic, imperative for my business as a whole and for my stakeholders business within that? And then how do I design a procurement strategy around that? The optimizes whatever they need for me and my function, whether it's the risk element to to the supply chain, whether it's the, geographic requirements for the supply chain, whether it's, a carbon neutral focus for the supply, whatever it is, then procurement challenges and opportunities to is to address that and, and deliver back to the business.
00;22;42;25 - 00;22;47;25
Nick Williams
a a great service that delivers that what your stakeholder needs.
00;22;47;28 - 00;23;01;23
Jonny Dunning
And in your view, in the procurement teams you've worked in and in the, in the clients and prospects that you talk to, do you think procurement are effectively empowered to do that?
00;23;01;26 - 00;23;23;05
Nick Williams
good question. well, if they're not, they need to get themselves empowered. If they're not empowered, let me spin that round. If they're not empowered, they need to work out why they're not empowered, and then they need to to change that. there will be a reason that they're not empowered is because the business doesn't accept they've got the skills, capabilities, service model.
00;23;23;05 - 00;23;40;28
Nick Williams
Right. In order to deliver what the business wants. again. So I think it's it that that's the opportunity. Let's put a positive spin on it, the opportunity to to engage with the business in a way that says, oh, we could do a lot more for you. We're not doing that for you. Why go and ask the question?
00;23;41;00 - 00;24;04;21
Jonny Dunning
Well, that was my next question was really about whether organizations actually kind of get it when it comes to the opportunity that there is here. So we appreciate it's a massive amount of spend. I've heard estimates of around kind of like $20 trillion global annual spend. you know, it's a big number. It's a big number, but it's, you know, 50% of total organization spend globally is going to be a big number.
00;24;04;23 - 00;24;26;29
Jonny Dunning
whether that's the right number or not, it's a big number. We know that. So it feels like I'm trying to look at this kind of put my, organizational hat on with the companies that we talk to and the problems that we see. It feels like something that's quite hard to pin down, because it spread across categories because, you know, some areas might be seen as being or consulting.
00;24;26;29 - 00;24;48;05
Jonny Dunning
Top level strategic consulting sits with the C-suite, not procurement or procurement teams that generally quite lean. you know, they might not be empowered, they might not be targeted towards this sort of thing. but but then so then you've got to look at it from an organizational capacity and go maybe a level higher and go, does the CFO appreciate the opportunity that there is here?
00;24;48;08 - 00;25;01;02
Jonny Dunning
But to to understand the opportunity, we need to understand what's the current baseline. So how do you think most organizations are managing this type of spend currently? What would you say is the kind of fairly standard.
00;25;01;05 - 00;25;17;11
Nick Williams
that most of the model we've talked about and categories, and silos, if you ask me, doing a great job in many cases really understanding the category, but just being focused on the category and targeted on the category. And this is the challenge that procurement faces.
00;25;17;13 - 00;25;42;09
Jonny Dunning
And if we look at the life cycle of procuring a service, which part of that would you say typically procurement, targeted on in the sense that do procurement care what happens post contract in most organizations? Because obviously they might be targeted on making, you know, hard savings at the front end against budget or, you know, against, you know, kind of going through competitive processes and things like,
00;25;42;12 - 00;26;04;05
Jonny Dunning
do you think that's where the majority of the kind of traditional procurement set up is focusing procurement people's attention, where they feel that remote is because it's very important to capture what happens, post contracts, in my opinion, because did you get what was promised? and did it change? do you think that where do you think that focus lies typically, the most,
00;26;04;08 - 00;26;26;07
Nick Williams
As you said, as accurate as you say. I would say in most cases it is designed around. And I've been through many, many discussions about, you know, what's the target for procurement. and I've managed to persuade and influence a number of organizations to move away from. Yeah. Oh, it's the hard savings because they mean nothing in reality.
00;26;26;09 - 00;26;47;26
Nick Williams
which is then the reason that the procurement doesn't maintain and develop it's seat at the table properly because they're seen as just being savings chases. And nowadays, yes. Okay. There's all the parts of the organization we go to to to help us manage risk in our supply chain because we want our suppliers to fall over. And that wouldn't be a good thing.
00;26;47;28 - 00;27;17;22
Nick Williams
so but that's a different dynamic. And then maybe the, the organization that helps us meet our targets for, for scope three or, you know, carbon or DNI. Right. But the reason that procurement, the, the recipients of those requests is because they often hold the data in one place. If the if they're working on, you know, you know, if they have contract databases, if they have, spend profile information, they have, they're the one place to go.
00;27;17;24 - 00;27;37;03
Nick Williams
But I don't see that any of that as adding value to the organization. I think that's the problem. If you're continually focused. I had a conversation with, a client this week who, very proudly told me that they had gone out to the market. they run a tender for consultancy firms, and they overall reduced the day rate by 10%.
00;27;37;05 - 00;27;48;12
Nick Williams
So. Fantastic. Well done. So my question to him was then, so how are you going to control the fact that the amount of time spent on your work next year will be 15 to 20% more than it was this year?
00;27;48;13 - 00;27;51;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;27;51;02 - 00;27;59;26
Nick Williams
he could not. So question I don't blame him for that. But that's that's not the way that he's that procurement is often, targeted.
00;27;59;28 - 00;28;01;16
Jonny Dunning
I was going to say that incentive.
00;28;01;19 - 00;28;21;11
Nick Williams
so it's not his fault he's given his objectives, the objectives to to reduce this. And then that's the problem is that those numbers then go through to be signed off as savings, but the CFO signs them off. But those are not real savings because the the actual spend won't reduced by 10% next year because the volume will change.
00;28;21;13 - 00;28;42;14
Nick Williams
Yeah. So and that's a very specific point around consulting spend and the challenge you have in that space. but there you go. It's, it's it became a talk about, oh, we're adding value to the business. But until you really understand the how to add that value and what that means and how it impacts the business, I mean, this is a very big conversation.
00;28;42;14 - 00;28;56;12
Nick Williams
We're having that right now. You know how procurement works. but yeah, having worked in it long enough, I can see that. I see it every day. And I've worked with tens and tens of clients on that on the same challenge.
00;28;56;14 - 00;29;17;14
Jonny Dunning
And this is again where it filters up to that C-suite responsibility, whether it's the CPO, whether it's the CFO to to really, have some directive to get a handle on this, because it does often require some kind of organizational change, because the way people are doing it at the moment, I would say in majority cases, I see procurement don't have the data on this.
00;29;17;21 - 00;29;35;04
Jonny Dunning
They might have a bit of data in the lead up. They might have data in the sense that they might have the supplier on a, you know, a top level procurement platform. The supplier will be registered with them and they will have probably a statement of work document that might be a scanned, signed PDF, in a repository somewhere.
00;29;35;06 - 00;29;51;19
Jonny Dunning
but that's usually pretty much it and not usually any information below par level on if somebody wanted to say, but what do we actually get for that? And did they actually do it on time and what was the actual outcome then? People have literally got to pretty much sift back through paperwork. so.
00;29;51;21 - 00;29;58;00
Nick Williams
Well, yes and no. I think that's a bit harsh. G yeah, a little, you know, I.
00;29;58;02 - 00;30;01;00
Jonny Dunning
Mean, there might be a spreadsheet alongside it.
00;30;01;03 - 00;30;02;09
Nick Williams
I think I know where you're going.
00;30;02;16 - 00;30;03;25
Jonny Dunning
But wait, it's basically.
00;30;03;29 - 00;30;30;05
Nick Williams
Yeah, I think I think, yes, in the main, but there are a number of global organizations who have got a handle on this, who do, who are making great strides in, in dealing with this challenge, and far ahead of, of, of that scenario that you paint. So I think we should we, we need to to support them in what they're doing because they are investing a lot of money, investing a lot of time resource.
00;30;30;08 - 00;30;52;02
Nick Williams
and and not just with haste, with, with with all of our competitors to get a handle on this challenge. And so absolutely, there are many, many examples of organizations that don't, but there is a growing set of organizations who really are taking this challenge seriously, are making great strides, as I say, in doing so, getting the credibility within their organizations.
00;30;52;05 - 00;31;02;06
Nick Williams
And, yeah, at some point, hopefully we'll be able to tell the world about what they've done and how they're doing it. And, and people can learn from that.
00;31;02;08 - 00;31;12;23
Jonny Dunning
What what's it that set these people apart? These companies apart? How have they done that? What is it? Because because that's not that's not the. Yeah, it's not the norm I suppose.
00;31;12;23 - 00;31;13;19
Nick Williams
If you said no.
00;31;13;20 - 00;31;25;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So, so if you, if you tried to break down when you look at those companies that are doing a great job of it, where do you think their motivators have come out that's driven them to solve this problem? Well.
00;31;25;12 - 00;31;46;21
Nick Williams
The people that I've met are doing it are the ones that are a bit like me, I suppose. who who are not prepared to accept the status quo and accept that that's just the way it is. Nick. Sorry. and they are. They are people who ask questions, who are curious who, who, as I say, you know, think there is a better way to do this?
00;31;46;21 - 00;32;04;25
Nick Williams
This is a bit mad and and just have that mindset of, I want to do something about it. And in addition to that, they're probably the people, who are prepared to put their head above the parapet and go and talk to the people they need to talk to in their organizations that are curious. They ask questions, they go and find out what's going on.
00;32;04;25 - 00;32;19;16
Nick Williams
Why is this not working? What can we do? What would we need to do to change this? Because this could be better and are prepared to take some risks and saying, well, yeah, okay. It's not the normal way of doing things. But if we think about it in this way, well, you know, how would that look to you?
00;32;19;17 - 00;32;39;20
Nick Williams
How would this new model sit within the organization? How would we get it to work? And they're not, you know, prepared to get out from behind the desk, work with, the business, understand how each each of their stakeholders is motivated, targeted, what the what they're trying to achieve. And as I say, not prepared to accept.
00;32;39;25 - 00;32;52;09
Nick Williams
well, that's just the way it is. So the people that I've met that are really good at this are those people, saying I want to be better than I am. I want my procurement function to be better than it is. And I'm going to go and do something about it. Yeah.
00;32;52;12 - 00;32;58;26
Jonny Dunning
it's. So is this where the heroes come into our discussion of these? These are the heroes of the narrative. Yeah.
00;32;58;28 - 00;33;20;17
Nick Williams
I think you could call them heroes because it's really tough. Yes. You know, and yeah, it is, you know, a CPO or a head of procurement that goes to the board and puts data in front of the board and says this and this, I think is a problem and is prepared to talk to the board and, prepared to get engagements at that level, because that's what I'm talking about.
00;33;20;21 - 00;33;40;01
Nick Williams
And you mentioned you mentioned this when you were talking through it, that it's that going up a, a level, up a level, because everybody at the, levels below the executive suite, I was just interested in running that businesses. Right. That's that's what they've got to do. But the higher you getting up in the organization, you're looking across everything that's going on.
00;33;40;03 - 00;33;53;08
Nick Williams
And that can be a scary place. So yeah, anyone who does do that I think is a hero. And would would bring that to the attention of their C-suite and say, listen, I think we should do something different about it. They have to go with a good story. They have to prepare, but they have to put themselves out there.
00;33;53;08 - 00;33;55;20
Nick Williams
And as I say, get out from behind the desk.
00;33;55;22 - 00;34;02;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, and I do I do agree is is putting their head above the parapet, which by its very nature is feels risky, feels scary. Just.
00;34;02;28 - 00;34;04;03
Nick Williams
Yeah.
00;34;04;05 - 00;34;06;01
Jonny Dunning
You know, don't rock the boat.
00;34;06;04 - 00;34;25;11
Nick Williams
Yeah. I had another conversation yesterday with somebody else and we're talking about training, learning and development for procurement. and I'm looking at it from the other side. So how can I get my sales teams, within Hays to understand what procurement have to do better? So we've got some really good examples of working very closely with procurement, but not enough.
00;34;25;14 - 00;34;48;02
Nick Williams
And then from the other side, of course, I'm thinking, well, how well do procurement sell themselves within the organization. That's a very good. And and that is a that is a thing. Right. That procurement almost anti sales in many cases. and I have a lot of experience of, of that happening within organizations where I would ask the question of, you know, how do we solve this problem?
00;34;48;04 - 00;35;07;20
Nick Williams
Well, let's just pick up the phone to the supplier and procurement saying, oh, no, we can't talk to the supplier. We're not in the process. Well, how are you going to be able to solve your internal stakeholders challenge if you don't really understand the service that we're buying and how we're buying it and what we can do to, you'll probably find that the supplier will tell you, yeah, actually, you could buy completely the wrong thing.
00;35;07;25 - 00;35;15;04
Nick Williams
We've been telling you this for three years. If you buy this thing, it will solve your problem overnight. Now obviously that's a, you know, a very simple.
00;35;15;09 - 00;35;16;13
Jonny Dunning
Perfect, perfect.
00;35;16;13 - 00;35;39;04
Nick Williams
Scenario which won't exist, but an element of some of that will exist somewhere. And and I've. Oh, I came from the south side of, of, of my career and I stepped into procurement from sales. So I was doing big ticket ticket sales and, in the tech space for Vodafone Cable and Wireless, successfully for a number of many years.
00;35;39;07 - 00;36;03;14
Nick Williams
And, my best deals were when procurement people really understood and listened to me and I could help them again, help them solve their problem. And, and I think that, procurement again, has a really good opportunity to address that and sell themselves to the business and sell themselves to the supply chain as being that conduit between the two.
00;36;03;17 - 00;36;26;16
Nick Williams
many sales organizations will bypass procurement because they think they're going to and in many cases will get tied up in some sort of process which is not going to help anybody. And I think we need to as a, as a, as a, as a profession, address that better and work out how we can, how we can bring those two together as a, as a much more effective conduit.
00;36;26;18 - 00;36;47;19
Jonny Dunning
I 100% agree, and certainly as a kind of a tech provider in this industry, that's where we've done our absolutely our best work is where people have just said, look, this is our problem. Just to just help solve the problem. Yes, that is where they get the value out of their suppliers because they're just they're getting they they're not just saying just just do what you normally do the same.
00;36;47;21 - 00;37;01;00
Jonny Dunning
Okay. So you're saying you've got expertise in this area. You're saying you can help. Let's work on this. Let's solve this problem. That's I mean that's the fun of it for me. I mean I'm, you know, very much of the same ilk as yourself in terms of mindset. I love problem solving. It's what it's all about.
00;37;01;01 - 00;37;24;07
Jonny Dunning
And, I think that's what's where the industry we're talking about here, this problem solving. Actually, it's a big one. and most of the people that are involved in it that are actually making movement in it, all that problem solving mentality, they're not willing to just settle. They want to push things. And that's where they're kind of like taking these heroic actions of probably rocking the boat quite significantly, upsetting people, making the point why?
00;37;24;07 - 00;37;45;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Why are you worrying about that? You know, we've been doing this for years. Yes. what what are going back to those successful companies? So we talked about, you know, how and why. So it's these, these people making a change, these, these heroes stepping forward to actually demand that this be looked at and actually make the case, make the statement, ask the questions, be curious.
00;37;46;00 - 00;38;07;28
Jonny Dunning
so that's quite an individual thing. so one other quick question as I showed up, which has just come into my head, which is where do you typically see the the executive support coming into that? Does it come from like the CFO? I guess it depends who's trying to make these moves. But so you get your hero, come forward and say, come on everybody.
00;38;08;00 - 00;38;26;00
Jonny Dunning
This isn't this is as good as it could be. Let's, let's, let's do something better. they're going to need to get some executive support from somewhere. Do you see that coming from different places, or is it typically the CFO kind of going, yeah, that would be really good. Or or is it coming from different places?
00;38;26;02 - 00;38;55;16
Nick Williams
The place I've seen it most successful is when the CEO right. The CEO has take responsibility for everybody, in the organization and clients I've talked to about this have said the same thing that if I want to to to get my program initiated, thought about engaged with working a CEO who has to do that to the client told me recently, that that she ended up having to take her plan to a board meeting and the CEO was ahead of the table.
00;38;55;18 - 00;39;14;09
Nick Williams
Very traditional sense to the end of the table. All of the C-suite sitting on the side. She she was a hero in presenting her. I think we should do things this way. Once she persuaded the CEO to move to the next stage, the CEO said, you work with every single member of the C-suite to get this to happen.
00;39;14;14 - 00;39;15;01
Jonny Dunning
00;39;15;04 - 00;39;35;03
Nick Williams
I've had similar and those are the best because you have that executive engagement, you have that license to get the time with the people at the right levels, which can be all across the organization to get time with them to understand, okay, this is what we're trying to do, how it impacts you. What what benefits to you would you need to see out of this?
00;39;35;05 - 00;39;58;25
Nick Williams
yeah. So that there is, there's a role in it for the CEO to give direction to, to the board to say, yeah, this is the thing this is really specific in services procurement. Because of that point, we talked about right at the beginning. It covers everybody. What was everything. Yeah. Lawyers marketing, consulting audit everybody has a as it I mean it in tech.
00;39;59;00 - 00;40;14;06
Nick Williams
Probably the biggest spenders on services in any organization particularly in banking and finance. Multi billions. So if your CTO CIO is not being asked by their boss the CEO to look at this, why are they going to look at it like a million things to do.
00;40;14;08 - 00;40;14;26
Jonny Dunning
00;40;14;28 - 00;40;19;16
Nick Williams
But if the CEO thinks it's a good idea so will the CTO or CIO.
00;40;19;18 - 00;40;38;29
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. a great CEO once told me, Jonny, that one of the most important questions I can ask about my organization is what is my total available resources? What have I got to work? How can I get stuff done, and where does that sit? Well, what expertise have I got? What's my what's what, what's the capacity and capability of this organization.
00;40;38;29 - 00;41;01;25
Nick Williams
And that's what they that that's the right questions to be asking. And then that flows beautifully into services doesn't it. Because it's like okay so this is our capacity capability of our permanent workforce that we work really hard to recruit and retain and train and, and give them the best that we can give them. Right. And the brand and the employee value proposition, etc., which we spend a lot of money on.
00;41;01;27 - 00;41;20;03
Nick Williams
But then there's probably another 3040, 50% of people in that organization who are non perm. So what's happening with them because they're they are intrinsic to the solution for the business succeeding. And the CEO who recognizes that as a bright CEO.
00;41;20;06 - 00;41;37;11
Jonny Dunning
They're probably also going to recognize that the kind of battle for talent particularly in new emerging areas of technology, and, and areas of new regulations and things like that, it's just as fierce competition within the services provider. Absolutely. As it is within the workforce. Yes, it's core workforce.
00;41;37;11 - 00;41;39;03
Nick Williams
Yes it is.
00;41;39;06 - 00;42;02;18
Jonny Dunning
So so we can see what sets these organizations apart. You got individuals who are willing to, you know, step forward and take on the challenge. You've got, a leadership team that recognize this when it's brought to them that there's an opportunity, to actually move forward with something here. What? Do you see them? What do you see them gaining from it?
00;42;02;20 - 00;42;12;15
Jonny Dunning
So when when organizations are doing this really effectively, what looks different about them? What what benefits are they getting from doing this?
00;42;12;18 - 00;42;28;20
Nick Williams
I think that the one single benefit they get is the ability to know better than they do today, that they're making the right decision. I think it's, you know, I do like simple things, right? Not a very.
00;42;28;20 - 00;42;30;18
Jonny Dunning
Complicated condensed that very nicely.
00;42;30;23 - 00;42;31;08
Nick Williams
But.
00;42;31;10 - 00;42;32;21
Jonny Dunning
Very nicely.
00;42;32;24 - 00;42;52;12
Nick Williams
well what else is there? So, so, if have senior person in an organization, you need to get things done, things done. You need to know that the decisions you make are as good as they can be. Right? because you don't want it to get screwed up, do you? You want it to happen. You want it to work.
00;42;52;14 - 00;43;13;09
Nick Williams
You don't want to over overspend on your budget. You want the product that you're trying to market to get to the market, to actually be delivered, or you want the service that you're trying to improve to be improved because you were targeted on that as part of your objectives, you're probably bounced on it. So you want to be able to make the right decision without the data.
00;43;13;16 - 00;43;23;06
Nick Williams
How do you make the right decision? Oh, I've worked with this person before and they did a good job for me here. So I'm going to bring them in to do a good job for me here.
00;43;23;09 - 00;43;23;27
Nick Williams
That makes sense.
00;43;23;27 - 00;43;24;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;43;24;10 - 00;43;41;27
Nick Williams
And that's what happens. Right. So you get you get you the, the the exact we'll pick up the phone to the partner of a consulting firm or you come and work for me X, y, z. I'm now working at ABC. Come and do the same thing. You did that right. But it could be a completely different industry. It could be could be a different set of problems.
00;43;42;00 - 00;43;48;11
Jonny Dunning
Well, that's half the battle of measuring performance, supply performance in the procurement a service is every project is different.
00;43;48;13 - 00;44;05;24
Nick Williams
And every company is different. That project is delivered four and the time is different. And the and the and the requirements are different every time. You know, I used the example of a consulting firm be the same for a marketing firm. They might work great in FMcG, but you put them into tech and they you know, it's a different thing for them.
00;44;05;27 - 00;44;39;03
Nick Williams
a law firm could be the same thing. All right. So the ability to, to make the right decisions and having that data set, part of it is, yes, existing supplier performance and supplier segmentation, categorization, classification are the right sort of slide. Do they have the right sort of capacity capability to help us? Well, if the procurement function is not all over that because mistakes will be made because if you're the executive committee chairman, don't have that data.
00;44;39;06 - 00;45;06;00
Nick Williams
And I'm not saying that they can't get it. They can go out and get it. But you need that all within your organized model that that's available at any point. Yeah. And it's built up. It was relevant data to your organization. It's not just an external benchmarking exercise. You need to to to understand that. And If you don't do that, then how are you able to support your stakeholders in making the right decision?
00;45;06;02 - 00;45;24;26
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it takes away the complexity. If you capture that data, you you ebs every project is still different. Yes, every organization is different. things change over time. You might get internal issues that delay a project or make it cost more. You might get supplier issues that do the same. But if you're capturing the information on what was promised.
00;45;25;03 - 00;45;37;08
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. What was delivered, when was it delivered, how well was it delivered? You know what changed? What was what was the cost? Cost overrun on average for the supplier across all of the projects they worked on versus other suppliers, cost overruns. You can even compare across category.
00;45;37;08 - 00;45;46;20
Nick Williams
And then why why are they over running on cost. Are we specifying it wrong in the first place? Are they undercooked it when they're coming in to bid for the work to win it? Those sorts of questions as well.
00;45;46;20 - 00;46;11;14
Jonny Dunning
There's beautiful data to be had. but I do feel like in, in most scenarios that I see, the what you talked about the people who've got this completely, you know, nailed it. They are the exception, not the rule in what I see in the market. And I think a lot of people are just missing out on the opportunity because it's kind of institutionalized in the way that people do it in a not very effective manner.
00;46;11;16 - 00;46;32;26
Jonny Dunning
and it's something that people have been doing for a decent amount of time. It's not like, you know, buying services is particularly new, but it has grown very rapidly and the world has become a more service dominated place. so so maybe on a slightly different tack here, we talked about who the heroes are. Pardon me? Whenever there's a hero.
00;46;32;27 - 00;46;40;19
Jonny Dunning
I like my voice a bit croaky because, as I mentioned earlier, we had to work night out and there was karaoke, and I think my singing might have been mainly shouting.
00;46;40;19 - 00;46;44;02
Nick Williams
But you told me it was coming if you didn't tell me what you'd sung.
00;46;44;04 - 00;46;47;29
Jonny Dunning
yeah. We don't need to go into that. Which I can't actually even remember.
00;46;48;01 - 00;46;49;19
Nick Williams
That karaoke stays at karaoke.
00;46;49;20 - 00;46;58;01
Jonny Dunning
I there was several songs were brutally murdered, by me out of them. but yeah. So generally when there are heroes.
00;46;58;05 - 00;46;58;26
Nick Williams
Yeah, there.
00;46;58;27 - 00;47;07;21
Jonny Dunning
Are villains. So in this scenario, who could be who are the villains in this in this scenario? Let's get controversial.
00;47;07;27 - 00;47;25;07
Nick Williams
Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure the the people, villains, we talked about individual people being hero. Individual people can be heroes. I haven't found anybody, really who doesn't want this to happen.
00;47;25;09 - 00;47;27;20
Jonny Dunning
maybe it's more a villainous mindset. That's.
00;47;27;22 - 00;47;47;21
Nick Williams
Yeah, I think that's more like it. It's a it's a laziness, right? Dare I say, it works. It's okay. I hit my numbers. You know, we're all good. You know, I've made it through another year and another quarter, whatever, I think, I think lack of curiosity is a villain, you know? Why would you want not want to understand that?
00;47;47;21 - 00;48;22;16
Nick Williams
Do you know, why would you not want to try and, support, betterment of your business? fear. I think fear is, is the real villain in this. Oh, I'm scared too. We're going to ask people, lack of personal gain. is another. Well, I don't understand why this would be good for me. so those sorts of things, I think are the villains in this, I mean, people people generally only buy things because they're scared and they need something to happen, or there's some personal gain or they're feeling some pain.
00;48;22;23 - 00;48;35;04
Nick Williams
Right. So the pain aspect in this one isn't, isn't very obvious because this stuff happens. It's been going on for years. Does anybody in real pain over it. Not really.
00;48;35;07 - 00;48;36;14
Jonny Dunning
Well I on that's not.
00;48;36;14 - 00;49;10;23
Nick Williams
A great driver. That's not a great driver. Fear. well you know, if we've misclassified a couple of thousand workers, well have you and would the regulator never want to know about that? And what would happen if the regulator did? Many, many companies have been fined hundreds of millions of pounds for misclassification of workers. But if we heard about many of them, no, I've got some examples, but there's not that many that the reached to the level of fear that, frankly, if I'm a CEO in an organization, I'd want to know what my organization was doing about classification of workers.
00;49;10;29 - 00;49;35;27
Nick Williams
Very simple thing. But yeah, I don't want to come up against HMRC like anybody else. Right. And if I'm a CEO of of a large company, why would I want to invite that sort of investigation. So there is a bit of fear but it there's not enough fear and personal gain. Well what do I gain from it as a procurement person I, I've just got to do my job and show that every year I'm doing something a bit better.
00;49;36;04 - 00;49;54;29
Nick Williams
So those are the things that those are the so the villains then that come out of the back of that as well, you know, people just are not curious. I'm, I hate to say the lazy people are not lazy, but they might they might have the opposite of fear in terms of, well, I don't want to put my head up against the, above the parapet.
00;49;55;01 - 00;49;57;29
Nick Williams
because that's going to make my life, you know, more difficult.
00;49;58;01 - 00;50;16;17
Jonny Dunning
And do you think that exists when we talk about these kind of like, Three horsemen of the, apocalypse services? Yes. Evidence of laziness, fear and lack of personal gain. so do you think that exists mainly within procurement or or.
00;50;16;20 - 00;50;18;05
Nick Williams
Not exists everywhere, obviously.
00;50;18;05 - 00;50;26;27
Jonny Dunning
But, but but in this scenario, is that something that's also existing within the buying population? Is that something that's also existing within the C-suite potentially. Is that something that I.
00;50;26;27 - 00;50;46;02
Nick Williams
Don't know, I, I was it was a massive generalization. And I genuinely when I meet clients, which I do on a weekly, daily and often daily basis, and I sit and talk to them. I think the procurement people that I work with are brilliant. Are they really trying to do something here? They really, you know, and they asking for our help.
00;50;46;02 - 00;51;13;11
Nick Williams
And that's great because I love helping people. So yeah, they are desperate to, to to in many cases to this is wrong. I want to do better. How do I do better. And those are the best conversations for me to have is more course great. If you've got the if you're not being lazy about it, if you're not scared, but you want to do it in the right way, and you see some personal gain because and there is personal gain.
00;51;13;13 - 00;51;22;23
Nick Williams
There's a lot of personal gain. Yeah. To get this right, I mean, frankly, I'm a good example of it, of personal gain. It's done. Done great guns for my career.
00;51;22;28 - 00;51;27;23
Jonny Dunning
I know you, you've run some specific transformations in this area, and that's been very.
00;51;27;23 - 00;51;28;14
Nick Williams
Beneficial to you.
00;51;28;14 - 00;51;31;17
Jonny Dunning
Personally. I think we're going to see more people.
00;51;31;25 - 00;51;32;13
Nick Williams
I hope so.
00;51;32;20 - 00;51;49;20
Jonny Dunning
Come forward like that. And like you say, some of these examples, it's washing through the market, starting to wash through the market more now. like when you go to conferences and you see people talking about it, it's, you know, the majority of people in those sessions that I've seen are kind of just wanting to hear. Yeah, wanting to understand because they're thinking of.
00;51;49;22 - 00;52;08;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I want to ask questions. I feel like they probably got the same problems I've got, but I'm almost scared to ask. Yeah, but the people that can actually stand there and talk authoritatively about that, there's more people starting to come forward now who generally genuinely, done this in a big scale. and there is massive personal gain for them.
00;52;08;18 - 00;52;36;17
Nick Williams
Huge. Yeah. And those that are prepared to and wish to invest will do well out of it. it takes a you know, it's not an easy thing to do. And as I say, you know, going back to your point about heroes, the clients of mine and my friends and colleagues who have done well in this space are the ones that have dusts themselves down, prepared themselves, leant into it, you know, stepped out of their comfort zone, got in front of the right people.
00;52;36;19 - 00;52;53;06
Nick Williams
Ask some, you know, quite difficult questions. but actually the benefit that they've achieved from, from doing that and, and not being prepared to sit back and say, oh, well, that's just the way it is, have done well and will continue to do well.
00;52;53;09 - 00;53;26;24
Jonny Dunning
I'm expecting to see more people start moving to different organizations to actually solve this problem. I, I'm expecting to see more people to do a very successful transformation within a particular organization. And then where could their career go from that? It could go on a more generalist basis, just up the chain. Or actually, it could be that they have that specific problem solving expertise that other people within other organizations don't have, and they can come in and solve that massive problem for potentially massive benefit within that organization over a 3 to 5 year period.
00;53;26;27 - 00;53;49;24
Nick Williams
Yeah. I think if I was, encouraging somebody to, to to think about this and map out their career, I think the good thing that you have with the procurement aspect, you can work in any industry. This is services procurement. Right. Cool. You know, bring us back to that, what we're calling it. So everybody does it. We've said, you know, 50% of everybody's global spend.
00;53;49;24 - 00;54;11;07
Nick Williams
So it doesn't matter what the organization is. Yeah that percentage might be different in different categories but IT services procurement. So if you nail it in one place there's no reason why you can't nail it in others because the principles remain the same. It is getting third party organizations to do stuff to to change or run your organization.
00;54;11;09 - 00;54;19;13
Nick Williams
and if you can get your head around how that works and optimizing that environment, you can go and do that anywhere.
00;54;19;16 - 00;54;48;26
Jonny Dunning
So you mentioned earlier, you said, you know, yes, it's hard when these people step forward and try to make these changes. But do you think organizations think it's harder than it is in terms of their expectation around like, you know, organizational change, process change and things and, you know, supply relationship change? I mean, I've, I've seen massive positives in all those areas, but I feel like there's a fear level within organizations that it might be, you know, somebody in procurement stepping forward.
00;54;48;26 - 00;55;06;18
Jonny Dunning
And or it might be the KPIs stepping forward and saying we can really make some changes here. We can. There's a huge opportunity for us to do things better as a business and to get more value from our supply chain and to have a more effective, extended, capacity. But then you might get finance saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a minute.
00;55;06;19 - 00;55;16;21
Jonny Dunning
We don't want to change anything here. We you know, this is not possible. do you think organizations it it could come from somewhere else, but do you think organizations think it's harder than it is?
00;55;16;23 - 00;55;33;29
Nick Williams
I think procurement thinks it's harder than it is. Right. I think that goes back to that point of if that was the thing. Right. Oh, you know, finance turning around and say, that's not going to work. Nobody would sell anything to anyone, would they? Your organization wouldn't sell your service to anybody because they'd be sold. No, no, we do something else over here, Jonny.
00;55;34;05 - 00;56;00;27
Nick Williams
Thanks very much. Here. We don't need doors. That's not the case at all. and having been on the other side of the table from a cold call in to somebody, say, look, I don't know whether you want to speak to me, but. And then working my way through that organization, then finding out what the problems really were, and then, oh, my might have a solution and then putting a solution together and then persuading everybody in, in that, in that decision process that it was right for them.
00;56;01;00 - 00;56;21;15
Nick Williams
But it's just sales that's just landing your product, landing your service. Yeah. I think yeah, there will be pushback. Absolutely. But there's always pushback. Nobody is going to open the door and say, yeah, course procurement you've got the right answer. Just come and do what you want. Nobody's going to say that you have to sell it. You have to understand what it would mean to.
00;56;21;15 - 00;56;26;06
Nick Williams
In your example, the CFO, what was the CFO be saying that.
00;56;26;08 - 00;56;46;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I mean, as I say, I sometimes feel that organizations just think it's more difficult than it actually is. It's just like and again, that comes down to procurement thinking. It's more difficult than it actually is. but that leads me on to the next point, which is, another part of our title, which is about storytelling.
00;56;46;22 - 00;56;53;20
Jonny Dunning
So you and I, in the way that we approach this market, we understand this.
00;56;53;23 - 00;56;55;08
Nick Williams
We tell a lot of stories don't we.
00;56;55;09 - 00;57;15;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I mean but, but it's, but it's it's it's part of that process of people understanding and yeah. And people have lots of questions and they want to have things, laid out to them, mapped out of blind to them. And one of the, one of the easiest ways to, to do that for people and the best ways to take on information is through that storytelling.
00;57;15;23 - 00;57;20;15
Jonny Dunning
but it kind of goes across everything and it goes up the levels, doesn't it, really, in this scenario?
00;57;20;18 - 00;57;21;12
Nick Williams
Yes.
00;57;21;15 - 00;57;39;01
Jonny Dunning
What what what sort of have you got any good examples you've seen, or maybe any examples of where you've had to utilize that within this area, within the when you were perhaps on the procurement side? and what is it about that storytelling that that makes the difference?
00;57;39;03 - 00;57;56;27
Nick Williams
I start to freeze up as soon as you start talking about storytelling. Right. And I was have because, what does that mean? What does that really mean for me? so I always think, well, should I have a story? And then what should the stories have? A beginning, middle and end and those sorts of things. So I'll be honest with you.
00;57;56;27 - 00;58;24;00
Nick Williams
Yeah, it scares me about the idea of storytelling. I think what I do, and as I tried to do today, is to tell you scenarios, examples of where I've done this, and the things that came out of, of that situation. So I think appealing to everybody who might be listening to this. I mean, when you're starting out in your career versus where you are in my career after 30 years, I have a lot of stories.
00;58;24;00 - 00;58;49;16
Nick Williams
Well, because I've done a lot of things in a lot of places, a lot of people, that's much more difficult if you're 28 or even 35 or whatever you might be. so but one piece of advice I would say is get as many stories as you can. Right? So that means don't sit behind your desk, get out, do stuff, talk to people, try things out and they will help you develop your stories.
00;58;49;18 - 00;58;53;24
Nick Williams
but that's as far as I would go with storytelling. as, such.
00;58;53;26 - 00;58;57;06
Jonny Dunning
I mean, effectively, as you describe it, the storytelling is the experience.
00;58;57;12 - 00;58;58;14
Nick Williams
yeah, I think it.
00;58;58;14 - 00;59;04;16
Jonny Dunning
Is the ability to articulate that, using specific examples that people can relate to.
00;59;04;18 - 00;59;05;11
Nick Williams
Yeah.
00;59;05;13 - 00;59;17;28
Jonny Dunning
and as you say, the storytelling is about the good and the bad. It's about the experience and the knowledge gained of going through a process and looking at how other people achieve great things and where things went wrong. Yeah.
00;59;18;01 - 00;59;40;17
Nick Williams
And I think if you, looking to get into it, storytelling is very powerful because what it's doing is bringing to life, you know, the scenario that you're trying to get across, right? And it's trying to connect with somebody on the other side of the table or multiple people on the other side of the table. a scenario that they might it might chime with them and they say, okay.
00;59;40;17 - 00;59;46;16
Nick Williams
Yeah. No, that makes you you know, it's not exactly the same, but it sort of makes sense. And that's the power of telling stories, for sure.
00;59;46;19 - 01;00;04;18
Jonny Dunning
So it's putting a vision in someone's mind, isn't it? It's putting it. It's putting a vision of the future in somebody's mind. Because what the next question I was going to ask was how can procurement utilize that effectively. So say for example, we've got someone who's got heroic tendencies. They're in a procurement team, they're running the procurement team, and they're just saying, this is crazy.
01;00;04;18 - 01;00;26;02
Jonny Dunning
This is not good enough. We can do this better. I'm going to do something about it. is there any advice that you would give people in that scenario as to how to, how to get that message across or, but bear in mind that they might be starting with not very much data, for example, or are there any ways that you've seen that work particularly.
01;00;26;09 - 01;00;28;04
Jonny Dunning
Well?
01;00;28;07 - 01;00;50;04
Nick Williams
I've seen it work well in many scenarios, and perhaps to answer two questions and one, and if you haven't got a lot of data, there is a lot of data out there. So just go and find it so it doesn't have to be your own data doesn't have to be your own experience. and depending on where you are, on your career path, you can just go and find it.
01;00;50;07 - 01;01;19;04
Nick Williams
There are plenty of scenarios out there, and news articles and whitepapers about other organizations that have tried to do different things, have done or are doing different things, or approach things in a different way and build your you build your stories from there. So a lot of the things that I'll talk about and on necessarily me or anything about, but but other other organizations that I've read about or I've spoken to and what have I might not have actually been the protagonist in the story.
01;01;19;06 - 01;01;55;02
Nick Williams
I might have had overheard this, and using that and I think to what you're trying to do by telling a story is to bring it to life. So to making it make it connection with somebody, so that when you're telling a story, a number of different elements will be in that story. You're not just giving a fact, you're talking about a scenario and that gives you the best chance of connecting with somebody because it's something you will say in your story, will connect with them, and it might be completely outside of what you thought they would connect on.
01;01;55;04 - 01;02;17;02
Nick Williams
And then we start talking about and then you'll, you'll your relationship will then develop that conversation. And relationship will then develop off the back of that one element or two elements of your story. So the story I told about my client I spoke to about, you know, doing this, very valid piece of work going out to the market, reducing costs.
01;02;17;06 - 01;02;37;29
Nick Williams
Yeah. Great. But then when I asked them about, you know, how are you going to control the time, the usage, the days, that's, that's spun off into a different conversation very quickly. And I could talk about, well, why was that a problem? Well, because I've seen that in other organizations. They do a great job, push the rates right down and the time goes right up.
01;02;38;02 - 01;03;14;08
Nick Williams
And they have a little control over that, because in procurement it's too late. You know, the deal's done. You've set the rate. But but then, the supplier will work out how much they need to make out of that piece of business. And they will they will, develop that will design their, their solution around making sure they make enough money if the rate is fixed and the days are not, the days are the ones that get moved and and, so that's one scenario, in which if you, if I tell that story to somebody else, they'll pick up something different out of that.
01;03;14;11 - 01;03;14;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
01;03;15;00 - 01;03;33;19
Nick Williams
For me and and the thing that came out yesterday was, was how do we control the time? Good point. Yeah. Where does the time sit. Oh well it sits in the statement of work does it. Okay. Who agrees what the time is. Oh probably the supplier. Why is the supplier. Because the stakeholder has said this is how long do you think it's going to take.
01;03;33;22 - 01;04;09;20
Nick Williams
And they will say oh 50 days. But if it it can be done in 45 days, that's more than 10% reduction. So whatever you've reduced on the day, right. It's gone out the window because you're overpaying by 10% on the days. So procurement, fighting a battle all the time. and so out of a conversation around that came a, out came this discussion around what was suddenly now talking about how long things take and how long should they take, what's the should cost of of a piece of work like this?
01;04;09;22 - 01;04;19;00
Nick Williams
I don't know, I don't know myself, but wouldn't we like to know how many of these pieces of work do you do every year, or every quarter or every week?
01;04;19;01 - 01;04;22;11
Jonny Dunning
How often of this supplier overrunning? Yeah, I mean exactly.
01;04;22;11 - 01;04;42;09
Nick Williams
Essentially what so that story, as I say that the idea of story, the story I will now, you know, I'm using with you obviously other people and I'm hoping and expecting that to drive very different conversations about, oh, how much it cost per day. Well, it costs what it costs. And you can benchmark that as much as you like, but actually that's not the point.
01;04;42;12 - 01;05;08;15
Jonny Dunning
Maybe then the true beauty of that kind of storytelling type communication is what it does, is it precipitates questions. Yes. It allows somebody to yeah. It allows somebody to, to to take an interest, to gain an understanding and to want to know more. And then they can really start probing into it and yeah, getting into the detail because that's, that's where for me, that's where problem solving really becomes interesting.
01;05;08;15 - 01;05;28;02
Jonny Dunning
And that's where you get a collaboration, where smart people are being curious and asking questions. And if, if somebody on the other end is trying to problem solve, if they can, if they can provide that, you know, value and intelligence and solution making capability. Now you're in a useful conversation.
01;05;28;04 - 01;06;01;05
Nick Williams
Yeah. And I wouldn't say that I've got anywhere near the answers. I just sometimes know how to ask the right questions. But there's two things in that. So I focus very much on asking questions. And I don't care if you think it's a stupid question. I still, you know, want to know the answer to it. and the second I focus very much on who, not how you're going to solve the problem and who can solve the problem for you is much more powerful, powerful than how we all spend a lot of time wondering how we're going to solve a problem when it's really not our expertise or our job.
01;06;01;08 - 01;06;25;10
Nick Williams
But there is somebody who knows how to solve problems. I like that, so I go for her a lot. So I always if I come away with something, I'm thinking, who knows about this? Who would be a good person to ask? Who would? Who's got some sort of platform? And it's one of the reasons that you and I ended up talking is not how I, you know, I could build a model, the, the provides the solution for my clients.
01;06;25;10 - 01;06;48;01
Nick Williams
I could do, but why would I want to do that? I'll just go and find somebody who does it. And that's how we. You and I ended up speaking, and that's how I'm speaking to a range of people. But, who's the real who really gets this? Who really understands that it's not how it gets done? I spent I think we spent a lot of time on, worrying about how things get done rather than finding people who can sort us out and help us.
01;06;48;01 - 01;07;08;08
Jonny Dunning
You know what? I've made a little notes about that. It makes me think of my one of my very good friends, who he he believes in learning from experts. Whatever he does, he will always pay the money to have an expert show him how to do it. Yeah, it doesn't matter what it is. No, he's like he's like, he's done acting or he's a voiceover artist.
01;07;08;10 - 01;07;20;01
Jonny Dunning
he he's got a property development business. he's very good at martial arts. he's actually a very good, paddleboard racer. Wow. But he's all of these individuals. He's he's these.
01;07;20;03 - 01;07;20;25
Nick Williams
Like, they. Him.
01;07;20;29 - 01;07;38;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. All of these things. Yeah. to a certain extent, he's accomplished by leveraging people. Yeah. Leveraging the right. But leveraging the who. Yeah. He always Jonny just, you know, it's, it's a learning training, expertise game. Just find the right people who it is. Just leapfrog.
01;07;38;24 - 01;07;55;29
Nick Williams
I believe that completely because it's the time thing, right? As I say that it's the time thing because we will spend hours worrying about it, thinking about it, researching it when somebody else has got the answer. So just actually you spend your time trying to find that person rather than just, you know, fix it yourself.
01;07;56;00 - 01;08;12;29
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's about that investment in expertise. and it's, you know, something he's always kind of preached a few years older than me, but he's been very good at lots of things. And he always says, you know, I'm nothing special. I just find somebody who tells me what I need to do, and I just follow the steps.
01;08;12;29 - 01;08;35;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I, I like the simplicity of the way he always describes that. so yeah, I agree with you on that. I think that's a very important aspect of it. the other side of it, that, kind of came out and what you were talking about there with some of that stuff is, say, for example, you've got suppliers that are just rinsing the game and they're, they're well, you're gamifying the whole situation.
01;08;36;06 - 01;09;09;07
Jonny Dunning
Okay. I'll make it look my rate, like my rates are cheaper than consultancy B, but I'm always going overall I'm always going to take longer. And that's where you related it back to. It's captured in the statement of work. But the statement works a living document. it changes over time, which is again what separates the procurement of services from the procurement of more binary goods material through, and so that comes back to the fundamentals of data capturing that data and making sure that you always know what's been promised at any point in time, and you always know what's been delivered against it.
01;09;09;09 - 01;09;27;19
Jonny Dunning
if you're capturing that information, you're going to get a very clear view on whether people have a tendency to perhaps have a typical cost overrun or a typical time overrun, or changed change things. but like you say, you need to be able to look at that in the context of what was it their fault or is there an organizational issue?
01;09;27;19 - 01;09;44;13
Jonny Dunning
Because that's where I think procurement are in a very interesting place, in the sense that they have this kind of like internal and external view, so they can see what's going on within the organization. They can see what's going on within the extended supply chain, but they can also see what that supply chain think of what's going on in the organization.
01;09;44;16 - 01;10;02;13
Jonny Dunning
You know that you bring in a consulting firm, and I've seen this in plenty of situations in organizations I've worked at where consulting firm comes in that, you know, wanting to go a million miles an hour solving the problem. An internal stakeholder just aren't turning up to meetings, dragging the hills and not prepared that, you know, being a stick in the mud, whatever it might be.
01;10;02;20 - 01;10;29;01
Jonny Dunning
And it's like, actually there's an organizational issue stopping these guys from doing their job or making it cost more. So the point I'm kind of getting round to here is I think a lot of people worry about supplier resistance to change in this area. We really don't see that. We see suppliers being actually very grateful for the process, wanting to be recognized for what they're doing, wanting to have more visibility and transparency about the good work that they're doing.
01;10;29;04 - 01;10;32;26
Jonny Dunning
In most cases. Do you think that's something that people worry about?
01;10;32;29 - 01;10;59;12
Nick Williams
Yeah, they do worry about it. But I totally agree with you, that, every supplier wants the opportunity to show how good they are and whatever form that might take. And, and I think the market is very open to, to I think that there is, there is a tendency, I think, with some organizations to demonize their suppliers, right.
01;10;59;18 - 01;11;25;20
Nick Williams
As suppliers are often just trying to do the best they can and get the work done. And, and, you know, build more business. Right. I've, very rarely in my career come across a supplier that was genuinely trying to gain. I mean, there are some instances where, I mean, they're very clever, and that's what that's what, you know, that's what we forget sometimes being on the procurement side of the table, these guys know what they're doing.
01;11;25;20 - 01;11;35;05
Nick Williams
Yeah. You know, you don't think that the the big consulting firms and even the small consulting firms, which are made of people out of the big consulting firms, in many cases, they know exactly what they're.
01;11;35;05 - 01;11;36;25
Jonny Dunning
Doing and open goals. Pretty tempting.
01;11;36;29 - 01;12;01;12
Nick Williams
Yeah, absolutely. Of course. So it's it's, I don't want to demonize them, but. Yeah. Well, what what, I think what you're talking about is no, we have this conversation quite a lot about, you know, whether our program should be client funded or supplier funded. So it's a really big question that a lot of my clients are wrestling with that, you know, what would I pay for what I ask my suppliers to pay?
01;12;01;14 - 01;12;22;13
Nick Williams
Well, when you look at the gross margin that most of the suppliers are making in services, 8,090% asking them to contribute one, two, 3% towards a program, I don't think they're going to be worried. They're not worried. By the way, I can say that. and why are they not worried? Because it gives they know the program, services procurement program, they're going to get recognized.
01;12;22;13 - 01;12;37;24
Nick Williams
That performance is going to be shown to the right people. They're going to have the ability to get paid a little bit quicker. The statements of work are going to be better. They're going to get, purchase order. They're going to be able to start on time, finish on time. They can have better engagement from the business. Going to.
01;12;37;24 - 01;12;38;28
Jonny Dunning
Save money, really.
01;12;38;28 - 01;12;39;18
Nick Williams
Happy.
01;12;39;18 - 01;12;40;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
01;12;40;14 - 01;12;57;13
Nick Williams
And what with one, two, three, 3%, 4% of whatever. Not at all. They happily they're making plenty of money. And what this will do is put yourself in the shoes of of of the other side. If you're a partner in a law firm, you want to guarantee the money's going to come in through a partner, a consulting firm.
01;12;57;13 - 01;13;10;23
Nick Williams
You want to make sure you've got a strong pipeline. You don't want to waste time and stuff. That's never going to happen. The better the services procurement program is, the better your supply chain will be. Enable to support and ensure that you deliver your objectives.
01;13;10;26 - 01;13;36;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I it's a factor that often gets overlooked or underappreciated. Yeah. and and this is where you know, services procurement in that extended capacity. The way it works most effectively is in a real kind of spirit of collaboration, because it's so crucial. And a lot of the time, service providers will only be visible within a small silo, within that larger organization, they might have a particular stakeholder who's just a company.
01;13;36;27 - 01;13;51;18
Jonny Dunning
X comes to company Y brings them with them. All these guys are great. Yeah, but no one else in that organization knows about the great work that they're doing. Yeah, they don't even know that they're within the supply chain, that they're available or they have those capabilities. So that internal visibility is something that we've seen people really appreciate.
01;13;51;20 - 01;14;13;18
Nick Williams
And if you go back to our optimization about the C-suite, so the CEO, I expect would say, oh, yeah, I gave you a nod on that program. Nick, how's it going? Put a dashboard together. if the supplier is a significant supplier or done some significant work, guess where their name and logo is going to be on my dashboard in front of the CEO, who's then they say, oh, I didn't know about this org, this organization.
01;14;13;25 - 01;14;41;23
Nick Williams
And the CEO might go and talk to the CFO or the CTA CEO. Did you know we're working with X, Y, Z? Yeah. Okay. Well, and one of our top suppliers, I've just seen it on the dashboard and there we go. and they the other thing is that that, if you put the qualitative view of that of as well as a qualitative quantitative, often those reports that go to the C-suite are based around spend.
01;14;41;29 - 01;14;50;27
Nick Williams
But if you're then doing spend versus performance. Yeah, this is a really high performing firm that's of interest as much as how much you're spending with them.
01;14;50;29 - 01;14;52;02
Jonny Dunning
Exactly. And what are they?
01;14;52;02 - 01;15;03;08
Nick Williams
They must be doing good stuff for us. And yeah, so so it's a virtuous circle. but but seems to be a quite a difficult one to to close that circle.
01;15;03;10 - 01;15;11;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, when you get it into this context, it feels to me like a no brainer. it's, Yeah.
01;15;11;19 - 01;15;33;00
Nick Williams
Welcome to my world. Yeah. That's why I said at the beginning. It's really simple, but it's all quite complex. Yeah. So the the view of it is quite a simple scenario in my view. I get it. and most people I talk to, you get it. But then, yeah, all of the aspects we've been talking about it, the things that that make it complex.
01;15;33;02 - 01;15;49;27
Jonny Dunning
But the other thing is, if you can't see this, if you're the CEO and you can't see this level of information, you don't understand value, you know, yeah, not just cost you, you know, you don't understand value. You could quite easily be mandating spend be cut. That's crucial to your organization.
01;15;49;27 - 01;15;50;16
Nick Williams
Oh, absolutely.
01;15;50;16 - 01;16;08;26
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I'm sure that, you know, rather than just saying slash the consultancy budget or the IT services budget by X, it's like, well, let's understand what we're getting from that. How is that driving you product development? How is that driving revenue or profitability or efficiency within the organization? That's that's another area where it's not just on the the growth side of it.
01;16;08;26 - 01;16;17;04
Jonny Dunning
It's on the side when people need to actually cut costs, you know, maybe they should be investing more in certain services because it's driving growth.
01;16;17;06 - 01;16;28;13
Nick Williams
Very much so. But unless you've got the data to understand what's going on within your business and how that is reflected in reality, yeah, you can't make that decision. It goes back to my decisioning point.
01;16;28;15 - 01;16;39;03
Jonny Dunning
So do you slightly kind of left your question. Do you see many organizations utilizing, kind of expressions of interest within their supply chain as a thing?
01;16;39;05 - 01;16;40;08
Nick Williams
What do you mean by.
01;16;40;10 - 01;16;49;04
Jonny Dunning
Effectively where we see quite a few organizations that that will basically go out to their supply chain and say, we haven't got a requirement as such.
01;16;49;06 - 01;16;51;15
Nick Williams
But we want an RFI?
01;16;51;21 - 01;17;06;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And planning that sort of stuff with kind of saying, we've got stuff coming down the pipeline. do you have capabilities in this area, you know, emerging technologies and things like that that they know are going to come into it. That's something that we're seeing people utilize it. Yeah. And kind of.
01;17;06;20 - 01;17;07;05
Nick Williams
In.
01;17;07;08 - 01;17;26;19
Jonny Dunning
Automating much more now where they get the whole supply chain holistically visible, they've got much more ability. Say you know, boardroom. Yeah. This might be coming up. Yeah. Are we able to do that. Yeah. And and that's when people can reach out to the supply chain more. And that's where supply chains can also potentially scale up quicker than organizations for new areas and things like that.
01;17;26;19 - 01;17;34;05
Jonny Dunning
But it's it's quite interesting to see people using that as a bit of a kind of like I say, horizon planning, early warning type stuff.
01;17;34;07 - 01;17;59;11
Nick Williams
I've seen some good examples of it I think is the answer and it. No, not in general. I certainly have supported it. And in fact, in, in my previous role, championed, you know, engagement with the supply chain. And, and I saw recently on LinkedIn that they've had a very, very successful supplier day, which was I think part of that would have been, you know, this is what's happening in our organization.
01;17;59;13 - 01;18;17;06
Nick Williams
we want to tell you about that so you can plan and come back to talk to us about how you can help us with some of that. So I'm a huge advocate, and I'm very pleased to say that that was a very successful day. I think, there are some elements, there are some, elements of organizations that do this quite well.
01;18;17;06 - 01;18;36;24
Nick Williams
The legal function is quite good at doing that. So they will one of the one functions I've seen that do horizon plan what regulatory changes are we expecting? Where do we need to be thinking about getting the law firms in to talk to them? When I've done law firm tenders, we, you know, there was a, a focus on horizon planning, but I think.
01;18;37;00 - 01;19;08;21
Nick Williams
Yeah. So there are I have some examples of that. I wouldn't say that it was, standard in most places. but, in general, across the organizations I've worked with. yeah, some are better than others, but I do see significant value in it. And again, I think goes back to my conduit point that procurement is the conduit for that happening, bringing the suppliers into the organization and saying, this is my you know, this is my marketing function.
01;19;08;23 - 01;19;25;18
Nick Williams
This is the this is the suppliers in the marketing arena. Bring them in in conjunction with maybe the CMO, and doing that sort of that sort of thing I think is, is a is a very valuable part of procurements role in a, in a, in an organization.
01;19;25;20 - 01;19;58;12
Jonny Dunning
Great stuff. Okay. So let's try and round things up. And in the spirit of your, emphasis on simplicity, I see if I can set you a tricky task here. So how can we summarize? How would you summarize how we've identified the the opportunity here largely sits with procurement to make a change. How would you summarize how you think procurement can kind of step up to the plate and actually take take action on this?
01;19;58;19 - 01;20;10;00
Jonny Dunning
If you're going to summarize it, how can they what can they do to step up, to step up to the plate?
01;20;10;03 - 01;20;30;11
Nick Williams
So it's a really good question. I think they need to if I'm a, if I was a CPO in another in an organization now, I'd be looking at, well, what real value I brought to that organization. and I've done quite a lot of work on this. And again, in previous roles when we were transforming, transforming Procurement.
01;20;30;11 - 01;20;51;28
Nick Williams
And we looked at this and said, what are the really important things, you know, how do we deliver value? So yes, there are the the metrics, you know, how how quickly do we turn bids around? How quickly do we, negotiate stuff? well, do we manage the tick box exercise of making sure contracts, don't, you know, expire?
01;20;51;28 - 01;21;15;19
Nick Williams
And, you know, I call it tick box. It's very important part of the compliance. Yeah. All right. Sorry, everybody. but, yeah, you know, so, yeah, we get that stuff. Right. But actually, are we, it's my function as an a CPO transforming this business. Is it making a difference to the bottom line of this organization? And if it's not, why?
01;21;15;21 - 01;21;34;06
Nick Williams
And then the question is, how do I make it so? I might not know the answer to that, but I might then go into talking to the CEO and the CFO, saying, what do you think? You know, these these are the these are the things that I have within my function. You know, what are what can I do to what do I keep doing?
01;21;34;08 - 01;21;54;13
Nick Williams
What do I stop doing? What do I improve to to meet your objectives better because I want to, you know, have a vision of what you you think, optimize procurement looks like within your function. And then you have a client. The client does the business. Takes me back to my sales days. What does the client need? I want you understand what the client needs.
01;21;54;13 - 01;22;18;09
Nick Williams
You can develop your service around that. yes. You've got the hygiene factors, but also you've got this transformative element. And when you are transforming procurement, you do need to understand what, what what that needs to look like to support the organization. Because you are a function of the organization. But actually, are you are you a strong enough functional organization to make a difference to the bottom line?
01;22;18;17 - 01;22;28;03
Nick Williams
You are, but there are a number of ways you can do that. Some more will be more successful than others, but if you don't understand those, then, emails will go home.
01;22;28;05 - 01;22;48;23
Jonny Dunning
And that's where that's the start of the process, where, as you say, the curiosity kicks in and you can you can move forward. I like that. That's a very good a good way to wrap things up. listen, I've really enjoyed that conversation. I think there's, I've got many more questions that we could we could discuss maybe, at a future point.
01;22;48;26 - 01;23;00;17
Jonny Dunning
but I've really enjoyed that. And, and I'd say hopefully this conversation will, if nothing else, bring up some questions in other people, who might listen to it. but I really appreciate your time coming down. And,
01;23;00;19 - 01;23;00;27
Nick Williams
Thank you.
01;23;00;27 - 01;23;06;02
Jonny Dunning
Jonny. going through this and and answering the questions and giving your experience and your insights, it's been.
01;23;06;02 - 01;23;06;23
Nick Williams
Honored to have been.
01;23;06;23 - 01;23;10;05
Jonny Dunning
Asked and great fun. I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Cheers.