Making Practical Choices in Services Procurement
Making the right services procurement choices starts with understanding what needs to be delivered and where capability should sit. Organisations must weigh internal capability, external expertise, timelines, cost and risk to choose the approach that best fits the work.
With Noel Lai-Kit, Head of Services Procurement, London Stock Exchange Group
05:48 - 16:29 - Adaptability and evolution in services procurement
24:43 - 33:49 - The value of problem solving and strategy in services procurement
34:01 - 43:18 - Services & people - the grey areas in between
43:18 - 49:02 - The services procurement lifecycle
49:52 - 01:02:43 - The importance of data in services procurement
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;08 - 00;00;14;22
Jonny Dunning
Okay. So I'm delighted to welcome Noel Lai-Kit to the podcast today. Noel, you are the head of services procurement at the London Stock Exchange Group. And I'm delighted to have you here with me today in London Bridge. Thank you very much for joining me.
00;00;14;23 - 00;00;15;14
Jonny Dunning
How are you doing?
00;00;15;16 - 00;00;22;16
Noel Lai-Kit
Very good. Jonny. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here and it's my first podcast, so please be gentle.
00;00;22;18 - 00;00;41;00
Jonny Dunning
Excellent. What is great, and I'm really pleased to have you joining me in this conversation. You've got some really interesting insights to bring into the conversation in the market. And as I always say, you know, we need more people talking about this stuff. And the more dialog and conversation and the more people, more voices like yours that can be heard.
00;00;41;02 - 00;01;01;23
Jonny Dunning
It's just helpful for the industry as a whole because it just brings the conversation out into the open. And, you know, the thing I really like about people like yourself is you're not kind of walking around saying, hey, I've got all the answers. It's just it's more like telling stories about your journey and what you're seeing and the challenges that you faced and, and the things that you're working on around services procurement.
00;01;01;25 - 00;01;27;00
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's what's interesting for other people to be able to, to listen to. I get so what I want to start off by doing is just having a little look at your background, because one of the things I find interesting about you and your role and what you're doing is the kind of combination of different elements and skills and capabilities that go into making you who you are and your approach to what you do.
00;01;27;02 - 00;01;35;16
Jonny Dunning
So you didn't actually start off specifically in procurement, did you? Just talk through your kind of journey so far through from education through to where you are now?
00;01;35;17 - 00;01;59;09
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, absolutely. So as you say, I didn't leave college for I wasn't a teenager going, I want to have a career in procurement. So, it kind I just that I, it just happens naturally, actually. So, when I go back to my school days, choosing a university, I, I enjoyed business studies at A-levels, so I decided to go in to do business studies at at university.
00;01;59;12 - 00;02;21;26
Noel Lai-Kit
Found I really enjoyed that. And, finance was my, my thing. So I went down the finance route at university, went into accountancy. My first job was in finance. Ultimately, worked for various companies. Sort of, you know, Apple. Apple worked for them for, for a couple of years working my way through worked for King's College London.
00;02;21;28 - 00;02;45;12
Noel Lai-Kit
And I found myself at Sony PlayStation, again. So various different industries. So manufacturing for Sony PlayStation, when they were going through fantastic growth. And then, I went back into architecture and a building architectural firm. I did that for four years, worked my way up to a financial controller there at, at a company called LDY.
00;02;45;15 - 00;03;00;25
Noel Lai-Kit
And from that point, somebody who when you worked for Thomson Reuters at the time and this was back in 2011 and said, oh, do you want to come and join us? At Thomson Reuters? So which is quite interesting actually, because it's my first kind of step away from pure accounting and looking after the P&L
00;03;00;25 - 00;03;19;11
Noel Lai-Kit
Now, where this is really working in their technology function at Thomson Reuters and, yeah, she, she kind of the role was really a bit of a business analyst. So it's kind of, it's a bit weird. It's a bit feels like a demotion. But she said, look, this, this place, there's so much change and it's different
00;03;19;11 - 00;03;39;12
Noel Lai-Kit
opportunities. Come in and do this and see how you get on? And if you do, well, there'll be opportunities. And my word, was she right? Because, 15 years later, there's been so much change. Firstly, in terms of the company you work for. So, the financial division of Thomson Reuters was acquired by Blackstone, in 2017-18. Right.
00;03;39;18 - 00;04;18;21
Noel Lai-Kit
in turn creating a company called within Refinitiv before the London Stock Exchange Group who I, I will now refer to as LSEG from here on in acquired Refinitiv and integrated that from 2021. So in terms of my career growth, changes and growth, I was yeah, as a business analyst in Thomson Reuters, in the technology team looking after, about $500 million of spend it was at the time and focused on the telco network and how we were integrating that into the, into our huge customer network of financial services, the banks, the traders, everyone that's that's trading, you know, would be that time
00;04;18;21 - 00;04;38;22
Noel Lai-Kit
would be using a Reuters terminal. So managing that estate from a business analyst point of view, understanding all the all of the the detail within those those inventories, and we were also charging an element back to, to our, to our clients. That evolved and someone said, actually, do you want to do some, some contract management, some supplier management.
00;04;38;22 - 00;04;47;17
Noel Lai-Kit
And and looking after the revenue piece of it as well, in terms of what we the contracts are going out to our customers. So I was like, oh yeah, okay, let's, let's, let's give that.
00;04;47;17 - 00;04;48;23
Jonny Dunning
give that go.
00;04;48;26 - 00;05;08;03
Noel Lai-Kit
And so when Refinitiv, Refinitiv was created, they looked at it and said, okay, well, actually, what you're doing there is, is more kind of sourcing procurement work. So we're going to split our team in half. Some of them stayed in the technology division, doing vendor management. And the rest of us went into the sourcing procurement organization.
00;05;08;06 - 00;05;37;00
Noel Lai-Kit
And I was at that point looking after, the network technology, as I was previously with it, actually slightly reduced remit because some of the, the contract management supplier management piece stayed within the function. And yeah, that was good fun. And then again, what happens is the person that was looking after technology services and moved into a different role outside of procurement, and I and I remember getting a phone call and I was in a car park at the time, my boss at the time range me and said, Noel, do you want to do you want to pick up tech services alongside what you're doing today?
00;05;37;03 - 00;06;17;26
Noel Lai-Kit
When I was like, well, no look, I'm not I don't really have an experience of doing of services, tech services, procurement. He was like, that's fine. No, don't worry it’s only people, you know, you'll be you'll be fine. So yeah, I took that on and evolved. And as LSEG were working through the acquisition of Refinitiv again. You know, the, the new CPO that was that was taken taking the team and, yeah, there was those various roles that they broke the team, the, the functioning to three sourcing towers, plus the, SRM and the supplier relationship management and the and the, the operations function of what works across.
00;06;18;02 - 00;06;44;11
Noel Lai-Kit
So the towers were broken down at the time. And we work in joint integration, how to set how to set the operating model. And we looked at it in three lenses. So there was a technology tower, a services tower and a corporate tower. Technology, software hardware infrastructure, cloud, service services procurement was looking at was was looking at the tech services is a big part of what we do.
00;06;44;12 - 00;07;08;10
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. Along with, consulting. Right. And contingent labor contractors. So I brought my team down to those three areas. And the third tower was corporates, which is looking after the functions such as finance, HR, legal, etc.. Yes. And where I am now. So just recently literally hot off the press, last month, my role was expanded again to, to consolidate from those three towers.
00;07;08;10 - 00;07;28;19
Noel Lai-Kit
I just mentioned technology services and corporates. So we've still got a technology tower. And then we've consolidated services and corporate into one. So, I think the new team is called services and corporate procurement. But yeah, I take ideas in terms of a more apt name for, for that, for that, for this, for this area.
00;07;28;21 - 00;07;54;18
Jonny Dunning
I think it's very apt and that and that's and that's one of the kind of one of the cornerstones of, this conversation is, is just an understanding of that recognition of why you and your organization have come to, to logically view the world in this way, where you've basically you've specifically had a focused say, this is how we procure services.
00;07;54;21 - 00;08;11;11
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's really interesting because I feel like that's kind of at the front of ahead of the curve, really, in terms of the market maturity around how people procure services. Yeah. And it's it's very interesting to see that, like I say, looking at your job title, head of services procurement, it's like, that's something we're starting to see more.
00;08;11;14 - 00;08;32;09
Jonny Dunning
But I still feel like it's, you know, you one of the kind of your company, one of the early adopters of that sort of approach. But just before we kind of come into that, I always find it fascinating. Like a lot of procurement people didn't necessarily set out to say, I'm going to follow a career in procurement, although I would say now there are more courses popping up.
00;08;32;14 - 00;08;49;08
Jonny Dunning
Yes. Like there's, there's a I think it's an MSC at Portsmouth University, for example, in strategic procurement. And, you know, there's some really good courses propping up. And there are more situations now where people are saying, I'm going to follow a career in procurement. Yeah. Whereas it just wasn't really like that a few years ago, was it?
00;08;49;08 - 00;08;56;28
Jonny Dunning
Most people were kind of like coming at it from different angles, which I find quite interesting, like it wasn't something you necessarily expected to end up in. No.
00;08;56;29 - 00;09;18;23
Noel Lai-Kit
And I think a lot of my colleagues and peers, have had a similar journey in terms of coming from what might be maybe an IT specialist or maybe from the legal, area. And it's kind of evolved into procurement. So I think what is so fantastic about working procurement, especially an organization that values procurement, and I think we've not had to fight for a seat at the table.
00;09;18;29 - 00;09;21;24
Noel Lai-Kit
We are, we are, we are. We're given a seat at a table.
00;09;21;26 - 00;09;22;08
Jonny Dunning
That's brilliant.
00;09;22;12 - 00;10;02;01
Noel Lai-Kit
Which is really, really good. But ultimately I, I love procurement because it's so varied from day to day to so different pieces you work on. And again, I always fall back on my finance background. I find it quite easy to do deals and to understand the complexities around the numbers around a deal. Yeah, but then working in and working with legal, working with an I.T specialist, an engineer or some kind of technician, you know, and working with, with the people for the HR people function, you just get to understand different specialisms and different functions and actually what I love about services procurement is that I literally work across the whole organization.
00;10;02;01 - 00;10;21;26
Noel Lai-Kit
I, I'm group wide in the sense of working with the functions, working with the businesses, and working with you know, I.T our huge I.T teams. So yeah, I love the, the, the variety of what the job brings. And a company, loves change as well. One of our values is change. So and yeah you just.
00;10;21;28 - 00;10;22;07
Jonny Dunning
That's.
00;10;22;07 - 00;10;30;29
Noel Lai-Kit
Interesting having the change keeps me occupied and energized. Really in terms of, you know, being part but part of the change we’re delivering to our to our customers.
00;10;31;05 - 00;10;46;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, let's face it, in the world today, the market that we operating in, change is a constant isn't it? You can't avoid it. Those organizations that are that can't adopt a change mentality or have the anti change mentality, I mean just going to get left behind.
00;10;46;24 - 00;10;47;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, absolutely.
00;10;47;12 - 00;11;12;18
Jonny Dunning
I think it's it's yeah it's absolutely key. I find it really interesting I, I I've definitely encountered situations where people will tell me some people in procurement will specifically avoid services because it's too complex and it's too varied. And if they're working in a category of a particular buying category of, you know, goods or materials which is, you know, super structured and very mature, it's a different kind of role.
00;11;12;19 - 00;11;43;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So I think for me, services procurement is where the Problem Solvers exist or have to exist. And it's quite dynamic. And also it has this very, broad remit within the business, which is what I find interesting that you started out with an interest in business studies. Yes. So that is obviously going to give you a broad understanding of, you know, what the business is trying to achieve, how the strategy filters down to all the different departments and how everything kind of loops up to make that business successful.
00;11;43;03 - 00;12;05;14
Jonny Dunning
And that is something that I've heard several, you know, many, you know, high quality procurement executives talk about with regards to to services is the most critical thing, is an understanding of the business, because ultimately, the way that the services that you procure are in almost like an extension of of how that business get stuff done. So it's kind of got to align with the strategy really has about 100%.
00;12;05;14 - 00;12;26;25
Noel Lai-Kit
And I think whenever I get involved in an activity especially and we ultimately will get involved in a contractual piece and how what a commercial contract will look like. And but putting that kind of technical side away aside, it's what's the outcome we're trying to achieve. And, you know, what is the business objective we're trying to do? How is how is this going to help our customers?
00;12;26;27 - 00;12;38;16
Noel Lai-Kit
And then you can start talking about the commercials and how that fits into a, into what will be in a contract with a supplier at the end of the end of the day, but ultimately, we'll see a company trying to achieve. And how do you and then how do you get there.
00;12;38;19 - 00;13;00;07
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So it's interesting you mentioned thinking about the outputs or outcomes and how it's going to affect your customers. So obviously that's LSEG’s customers. Yes. But also you've got two customer bases effectively or maybe even three. You've got your customers that are LSEG customers. You've got your internal buying stakeholders. Yeah, your customers. And to a certain extent you've got your supplier customer base as well to think about.
00;13;00;12 - 00;13;06;12
Jonny Dunning
So you have to be very, conscious of how that interaction is affecting, I guess all three groups.
00;13;06;12 - 00;13;25;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Yes, 100%, I think. And and again, that's one of the reasons why I love being in procurement because your, you can tell you trying to problem solve and and find out where how do you and it's not just about pleasing and and satisfy satisfying those customers because ultimately we want to be a business a good strong business partner.
00;13;25;04 - 00;13;39;23
Noel Lai-Kit
And that means sometimes challenging and prodding and making sure that we're doing the right thing. But yeah, trying to navigate those, those so that triangle is, is is yeah, it's not easy, but it's part of the fun ultimately.
00;13;39;26 - 00;14;07;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And if you've got a focus on it specifically from a service procurement angle, I personally think that is one step further in the evolution or maybe more than one step further in the evolution that exists within a lot of organizations. I think, you know, every, every organization is going to need to do things in a slightly different way, but having a focus on how you buy services takes into account the nature of services.
00;14;07;04 - 00;14;39;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, because they are different. You know, they change their complicated, they're hard to define all those sorts of things which are challenges, challenges for, for you guys in procurement and also challenges for your internal stakeholders. And obviously if you supply chain as well, but I'll come back to that in a minute. But just just continuing with looking at your journey, one of the things that I find fascinating is in your journey through kind of accounting, business analysis and then procurement, and then a refinement in procurement.
00;14;39;08 - 00;15;08;23
Jonny Dunning
What is involved in all stages that. Well, one is data and understanding of data and numbers and being able to use that. But also it's problem solving. And you mentioned that's one of the things that keeps you engaged and that you find interesting about it is the problem solving angle. I personally feel that that kind of adaptability, in my experience of talking to, you know, a decent number of services procurement specialists, I think that's something that comes up a lot, that kind of adaptability.
00;15;08;23 - 00;15;15;08
Jonny Dunning
Do you think that is particularly relevant to the type of things that you're buying and the way you have to work?
00;15;15;11 - 00;15;34;08
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I think so because I yeah, I do, and a tough one to answer when actually trying to articulate. But yeah, I think we are always problem solving and especially service procurement. You always you know, you you're always trying to understand what's your requirement. What are you what are you looking to achieve. And then then how you get there.
00;15;34;08 - 00;15;56;05
Noel Lai-Kit
But ultimately sometimes the hardest thing that a stakeholder, whether it's internal or external, is struggling to do is is articulate what's what's the requirement, what they're trying to achieve, what what's their outcome to trying to get to. And then we can help them navigate that and document it so that actually we before we start engaging with a supplier sometimes that you can you can do it in a different way where you bring the supplier into to help us do that early.
00;15;56;05 - 00;16;29;25
Noel Lai-Kit
But a problem solving. But ultimately you're trying to you're trying to simplify a difficult and complex problem. And that's where I think procurement can be really helpful because, we've got these highly intelligent people who are specialists in their, in their function or business units or, or technology. And we're trying to, to, to, to simplify as much as possible so we can actually take it, to, to a supplier to say, okay, this is what we now need or we need you to help us build or provide to us that we can, we can, we can build it.
00;16;29;27 - 00;16;50;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I find that fascinating. But this this whole idea of defining the requirement and this kind of like what a lot of people seem to struggle with, the kind of like starting with a blank page. Yeah. And it requires procurement to help the stakeholders in terms of structure and content. We need to make sure you're including this sort of thing.
00;16;50;01 - 00;17;07;24
Jonny Dunning
You need to include assumptions and milestones and dependencies and whatever it may be. But that's just the kind of scope of requirements, the legal side of it that's kind of in you're probably fairly standard T&C’s or wherever you negotiate with a particular supplier, which might have been done in their MSA, I guess at that point. Yeah.
00;17;07;25 - 00;17;15;23
Jonny Dunning
But that's that's almost the stakeholder almost doesn't need to worry about that, do they. They need to worry about what is it you're asking to do and what is the outcome that you want to get.
00;17;15;26 - 00;17;16;14
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;17;16;16 - 00;17;18;28
Jonny Dunning
And that's people do find that hard to articulate don't they.
00;17;19;01 - 00;17;38;18
Noel Lai-Kit
Massively, massively because it's and sometimes it's a honestly sometimes you're not sure you're on a journey, you know. Yes, AI is a good example. AI such a, it could be such a vague term and ultimately it's what are you trying and you just have to look at it maybe in cycles and going, okay, what what milestones you need to get to, to look at the broader picture.
00;17;38;18 - 00;17;59;29
Noel Lai-Kit
Because technology, for example, is changing every day. I mean, you don't want to to go on a journey that actually then you can't change. You can't you lose the flexibility to navigate. So, ultimately you're trying to guide them with some structure, but ultimately get them to the end point that they need to get to, which is, which is not which is not just not simple.
00;17;59;29 - 00;18;00;22
Noel Lai-Kit
It's not easy.
00;18;00;24 - 00;18;21;19
Jonny Dunning
No. So it's interesting. So just picking up on a couple of things you mentioned there it is, particularly in technology projects. I mean, yeah, in the world of services procurement, in my experience, I.T and technology is the biggest area of spend, followed by probably engineering services, consulting, that sort of thing. Those are those are the biggest areas of spend that organizations are addressing at this moment.
00;18;21;19 - 00;18;48;24
Jonny Dunning
Obviously there are lots of other areas of spend, whether it be marketing services, legal services, etc.. But if you take technology services, for example, you know, those projects are working in kind of an agile process sometimes where it's iterative sprints. And yeah, you know, we see that in terms of sometimes deliverables might be, sprint. Yeah. And then agile process where it's saying we'll get to 0.1, then we'll reassess it, scope out stage two.
00;18;48;24 - 00;19;11;01
Jonny Dunning
So I think that kind of maps in very well with the actual process. Yeah. And it's also interesting when you talk about the supply chain getting involved in helping define those, scopes of work. For some organizations. That is a real big problem in the sense that there's sort of like no control over it. Yeah. And the suppliers are basically, you know, heard the phrase marking their own homework.
00;19;11;05 - 00;19;11;15
Noel Lai-Kit
Yes.
00;19;11;15 - 00;19;27;14
Jonny Dunning
Too many times where nothing's bid and all that sort of stuff. But that's the countdown's potential downside of if it's completely unfettered and totally unmanaged. Yeah, but if you're actually getting into a project where you go, oh, we need specialist input for this, then it's a benefit to get the supplier to help, surely?
00;19;27;14 - 00;19;45;04
Noel Lai-Kit
Oh, 100%. Yeah. You look when we, we we've all got our, subject matter expertise. And I think we all need to appreciate it, actually, when we don't have that expertise or when you maybe have the expertise, but you need to maybe check your homework, you answer to yourself, you want, and you have a benchmark. Yeah. These are always good.
00;19;45;04 - 00;20;08;05
Noel Lai-Kit
It's no different to what you do when you're building the building extension in your house. You might have an idea of what you want, but actually it's nice to get an architect to actually help you see if you put that down in print for you. So I think being able to bring in an external company who's, you know, I'll give an example of when you're, you know, putting in a new, and EPM, you know, a performance management tool,
00;20;08;08 - 00;20;40;00
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. For example, when you, when you're bringing in a new EPM, enterprise performance management tool, you'll be doing this once every ten, 15, 20 years, right. Well, actually sometimes you might need advice from a company who is implementing these, you know, 20 a year. So they will have that knowledge that you won't have any experiences of, of what can go right, what goes right, and what goes wrong in these kind of programs and projects that you can then take that expertise and build it into, into yours, understanding that every implementation is unique and or can be unique.
00;20;40;02 - 00;20;53;16
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. You can actually take their advice and their experience and build that into your into your project plan doesn't mean you need to help actually implement it by actually having their their knowledge is could be could be the game changer that actually helps your implementation.
00;20;53;18 - 00;21;14;23
Jonny Dunning
That's a great example. And it actually reminds me, one of my good buddies, Carl, he's he runs a high end bespoke building firm, and one of the things he's starting to do now is he's starting to do consulting on the side. So he basically does kind of like luxury high end residential. And it's really interesting. Like in terms of him providing just advice for people as a separate thing.
00;21;14;29 - 00;21;25;11
Jonny Dunning
He's got like decades of experience of doing this. So when he's talking to someone who's building their dream home, most people, if they're lucky enough to get the chance to do that, it's only going to be once in a lifetime.
00;21;25;11 - 00;21;26;05
Noel Lai-Kit
Indeed.
00;21;26;07 - 00;21;29;04
Jonny Dunning
He's doing it four times a year. Yeah, for the last 30 years.
00;21;29;06 - 00;21;29;26
Noel Lai-Kit
So there you go.
00;21;30;01 - 00;21;43;22
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So yeah, it's really interesting. And you're like subject matter expertise is so valuable. And and particularly in areas like technology where it's changing so fast and keeping up with for example, the latest, latest cyber. Yeah. Regulations and threats and things like that.
00;21;43;28 - 00;21;44;06
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;21;44;13 - 00;22;11;09
Jonny Dunning
You know, even your well-educated internal stakeholder is not necessarily going to have the expert level knowledge to spec out a requirement in the details needed. But the thing I, I like and value about what you guys are doing is you're documenting it. Yes, you're capturing it. Because that is the big problem for a lot of organizations. And what they'll often end up with is something that's poorly defined or undefined or just completely the supplier.
00;22;11;09 - 00;22;28;20
Jonny Dunning
Just saying, this is what I'm going to do in this. How much is going to cost with no attention to it whatsoever? And then you might have one line on a purchase order and then maybe an SOW that’s a sign scanned PDF that's in a document repository somewhere. And it might have captured some milestones. They might change.
00;22;28;20 - 00;22;39;10
Jonny Dunning
But it's not it's not following through. It's not a live document and it's not an alive process. Yeah. Which I think where organizations that's where the services can kind of hit a bit of a brick wall and just become invisible. Yeah.
00;22;39;16 - 00;23;04;29
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. I, I like to think, you know, like now we've, we've got a, we've got a strong framework in place, which is kind of helps us manage the delivery of whatever it might, may be in a, in a, in a way where you're balancing the need to get stuff done with finance, strong financial management and, and that's, sometimes it can create some healthy friction along the way because you've got, a function or a business.
00;23;04;29 - 00;23;19;29
Noel Lai-Kit
You want to you want to crack on and get this stuff done. And, and you've got to you've got to just kind of hold, hold the reins in its own and constructively say, well, actually, you need to think about this in a slightly different way. We still get to your outcome. You might just take need to take an extra you know, a couple of weeks to plan this out.
00;23;19;29 - 00;23;26;29
Noel Lai-Kit
But when we do that, you'll save time at the end of it and, and manage your, your, your budgets effectively along the way.
00;23;27;01 - 00;23;29;03
Jonny Dunning
Avoid things like settlements.
00;23;29;06 - 00;23;30;08
Noel Lai-Kit
There we go.
00;23;30;10 - 00;23;48;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, yeah. It's something that comes up a lot. It's something that, Nic Everett, who, had a podcast conversation with recently, she brought that up as an area in particular where it's like, you know, if you just have this kind of, if you don't have things clearly defined and clearly agreed, you don't take the time to get it right up front.
00;23;48;05 - 00;23;49;09
Jonny Dunning
You just get the problems downstream.
00;23;49;09 - 00;24;06;24
Noel Lai-Kit
100%, 100%. It's like any it's now again, I always refer back to building projects. And I did my last one five years ago and hopefully I won't be doing with a few years yet. But again, it's how long you spend. Maybe with the architect upfront is what then will help the builder be able to take that and actually build to that, to that spec specification along the way.
00;24;07;02 - 00;24;11;07
Noel Lai-Kit
You know, you wouldn't also build it's going to build off of a blank sheet of paper. So yeah.
00;24;11;07 - 00;24;37;18
Jonny Dunning
Definitely not of my specification. Yes, that's for sure. So so the interesting thing about outputs is I feel like the world is trending more towards output, an outcome based delivery. Yes. I was at a really, interesting AI conference. Got to go to the House of Commons, Downing Street, which is quite cool. It's sponsored by, a labor MP, Lee Baron.
00;24;37;20 - 00;25;06;04
Jonny Dunning
He was sponsoring this research, which is carried out by Bloor Research. And one of the things that came out of it was that previously, the way that work got done historically, it was quite it was just based around a person's time. So Jonny Dunning five days a week. But with the use of AI, if what used to take me five days a week only now takes me three days a week or four days a week, whatever it is, then is time the best thing to just be measuring though?
00;25;06;05 - 00;25;06;27
Noel Lai-Kit
Indeed. Yeah.
00;25;06;28 - 00;25;33;26
Jonny Dunning
And whereas actually it's like, what am I achieving? Maybe I can do more. Yeah. So like outputs is just becoming more of a thing. And the world has moved more of a services based economy. And the flexibility required in having that outsource network, I what I feel like it means people don't have have to move away from is kind of the approach the I perceive is sometimes a bit lazy historically, where organizations will just say, just get some bums on seats.
00;25;33;26 - 00;25;48;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, doing something and it's like, well, what are you trying to achieve? What's the outcome? And again, I think that ties back into business strategies in terms of you're probably sitting down with some of your stakeholders and trying to get them thinking about how what they do relates to the strategy.
00;25;48;19 - 00;26;15;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, it's really interesting actually, because I see my and my team's job to be fulfilling that role as you, as you say, to sit down with, our stakeholders internally and understand what the challenges are, and actually start working with them on their requirements before they even know they need to go to the market. So. Right. So you're talking to these guys every day, every week, and, and getting a feel for their challenges, their problems and helping solve those problems with them.
00;26;15;19 - 00;26;36;06
Noel Lai-Kit
And then when you're looking to go to the market to fulfill that, that service, you're already thinking about it. So when you put it as it's easier, it becomes easy for them to put it, put it into, into a contract. Ultimately, that that delivers what you need to do, whether it's outcome based or sometimes actually, a time materials engagement will work for, for that specific projects.
00;26;36;09 - 00;26;51;18
Noel Lai-Kit
But ultimately the more you work with procurement and the I think the better outcomes will all get together. Yeah. And there's a bit of education along the way to, to to see us see procurement as a, as someone that can help them rather than, you know, as a post box.
00;26;51;21 - 00;26;58;09
Jonny Dunning
And how, how does your organization achieve that. Because it I mean, you mentioned you were just, you know, invited to the table.
00;26;58;09 - 00;26;59;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;26;59;14 - 00;27;11;26
Jonny Dunning
Which is brilliant to see. But this type of enlightened approach, I think it's an enlightened approach within procurement, that's very closely linked to business objectives.
00;27;11;26 - 00;27;13;00
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;27;13;03 - 00;27;30;00
Jonny Dunning
Firstly that either that I don't know what came first is chicken and egg here is to were you invited to the table because there was that approach this, that was, you know, specifically within the culture of the procurement organization on the CPO or is it that that was just what the business asked of you guys?
00;27;30;02 - 00;28;03;17
Noel Lai-Kit
It's a tough one, I think. I think it's a bit of both, to be honest with you, because I think, we delivered a lot during so when LSEG acquired Refinitiv there was a, there was a large integration project, from 2021, January 21st or February 21st apologies for three years. And we had a lot of, you know, we had to deliver a lot to the markets in that time in terms of synergies, both from a from a, cost base and infrastructure, offices, data centers, as well as on the, on the customer side in terms of integrating and having one voice to the, to the customer.
00;28;03;17 - 00;28;29;14
Noel Lai-Kit
So lots of, large programs within that. And we had to deliver and procurement were, were helping to help the business achieve those objectives over that three year period. And ultimately the execs, I think, could see the value of what we were delivering. And then, you know, would, would, would give us the mandate then to, to, to continue that evolution in terms of, what needs to be delivered in the future.
00;28;29;14 - 00;28;53;25
Noel Lai-Kit
And I think, you know, a good example, I, which I spoke previously about was, I think for my area in the workforce piece, you know, CFO comes in and just wants, okay, tell me, tell me where my, tell me where my workforce are, you know, and people are going, okay, great. You know, HR are coming with their, their data on, on, on the, on the people that are on the books in terms of FTEs and and FTC's.
00;28;53;28 - 00;29;16;12
Noel Lai-Kit
And we had good data on, on contingent labor and it was like, yeah, if I was, I was great, but where's my where's the external workforce here? And, you know, it was some difficult conversations, but ultimately that, that set off our workforce program in the sense when looking at, a total workforce, across the group, you know, and trying to work through.
00;29;16;14 - 00;29;54;04
Noel Lai-Kit
Okay, well, look, regardless of whether the FTE, contract, or external, we need that information in one place. And we can then, you know, having that taken back to data again and having that data, you can then, you can start looking forwards and that this program, ultimately involved had had executive, CFO, chief operating officer or chief people officer all three and then our chief procurement officer all involved there in terms of looking at it from a, you know, from, you know, you had you have the chief people officer who was was a sponsor of this ultimately, in terms of looking at the whole people workforce there.
00;29;54;05 - 00;30;21;11
Noel Lai-Kit
You know, you've got a CFO who once understand all of that with the the financial impacts of that and what, what, what sensitivity analysis can be done to to make sure that we were as efficient as possible. And the operating officer working across that and having procurement in the middle of that as well, helping to deliver this has been has been really, really interesting, actually, and thought provoking in terms of what our role is in that, in terms of of managing the whole total workforce and, and how you don't have to get in conversations.
00;30;21;11 - 00;30;38;17
Noel Lai-Kit
You can't limit your, your, your knowledge on just on your bits within the external workforce. You have to understand the impacts. And when you want to outsource and think versus when you want to start in source sets and, and make decisions on on what you're doing, certainly versus what you do externally and how.
00;30;38;19 - 00;31;06;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I feel like that's going into the really clever stuff. I it's like, I had a conversation with, Lisa Williams from Dow Chemicals in the US, really interesting conversation. And she's very super passionate about this kind of total workforce approach. But she also has a clear understanding that for most organizations, you know, they'll have the, internal workforce pretty dialed, you know, FTEs, FTCs also their contingent workforce.
00;31;06;20 - 00;31;27;15
Jonny Dunning
It's a pretty mature set up in terms of technology, service providers, all that sort of thing. The big gap for most people is services procurement, where it's actually these outsource service providers and add another conversation with, another services procurement smart guy called Adam Withers, who works for Matchtech. And he was talking to me about some of the studies he's been doing on the numbers.
00;31;27;15 - 00;31;46;20
Jonny Dunning
When you look at and go, okay, how many contingent workers do we have? And then look at how many people do we have doing work for us outside of the contingent workers in our full time who were in our external service providers? Yeah. How many people are accessing the buildings? I hear this all the time. Yeah. People go, how many people, how many people, how many workers do we have?
00;31;46;23 - 00;32;00;21
Jonny Dunning
And it's X many And then they say, well, why have we got 40% more people accessing our systems and doing this and doing that? I find that fascinating. But what you guys have been doing is quite a well coordinated approach to that, it seems to me.
00;32;00;21 - 00;32;25;26
Noel Lai-Kit
And I think, you know, I think we've got that because we've said we've had the executive mandate of, you know, various members of our ex co going, we need this information, and we think it's important. So we will invest in that part of the of of we invest to, to deliver what we need to do. And the outcome will be a, a workforce that they can fully they can have complete visibility on and ensure that they're working on the right things.
00;32;25;26 - 00;32;47;01
Noel Lai-Kit
And, you know, what I, what I find really interesting, actually, is that when we talk about workforce, there's no there's no debate about, the internal workforce and how is FTE versus FTC. Yet when we talk about the external workforce between you and I, we will talk. We'll say contingent labor. We will say, it services will is it consultancies.
00;32;47;09 - 00;33;06;06
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. And, and and so what we've, what we, what we've tried to do is actually have a definition of it. So we can all speak the same language within the company. So yeah, FTE FTC and FTC is part of that really is about FTE. A you got contractors which some people say contingent labor. And we got consultant advisory versus consultant delivery.
00;33;06;06 - 00;33;31;26
Noel Lai-Kit
So interesting advice and delivery is where they're actually working on a project, and delivering outcomes. And then you've got your outsource providers who are doing a managed service. And ultimately, sometimes you don't really care whether they're providing ten people or 100, because ultimately they're working through a set of SLA. Yeah. To deliver and whatever service that be, whether you tech or your, facilities management within your office or data centers.
00;33;31;26 - 00;33;49;22
Noel Lai-Kit
So, yeah, I think and I think that's helped us, actually. And when people say, okay, I want that piece of data, you can say, actually, what bit of data do you need or what information do you need to help you make a decision? Because it's neatly defined and structured in a way that helps people again, make decisions quicker.
00;33;49;24 - 00;34;10;28
Jonny Dunning
You've just brought me onto a neatly onto another topic that I was interested to cover with you, which is this kind of gray area. Yeah. I had a really interesting conversation with a service procurement guy from Amazon. We were at an event and we were just chatting away, and we were talking about the difference between procured services or sometimes people will call it a statement of work.
00;34;10;28 - 00;34;33;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Versus contingent worker. And we were kind of debating back and forward because obviously it's perfectly legitimate within a services contract, within a statement of work that some of it might be, T&M based, you know, you could have outputs that are blocks of consulting time. For example. Equally, you could have pure project deliverables, you could have KPIs, you could have sprints in an agile process.
00;34;33;27 - 00;34;41;25
Jonny Dunning
It could be a varied. Yeah, that's a whole point of deliverables and milestones. They need to be flexible in nature but clearly defined and measurable.
00;34;41;25 - 00;34;43;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Yes.
00;34;43;04 - 00;35;04;17
Jonny Dunning
And where he got to was the difference between a worker under an SOW versus a contingent labor is under SOW, You don't care who is as if you don't. You don't care who the person is, as in like for a contingent worker. You're hiring Jonny Dunning and I've got a particular set of skills and I'm charging X amount per day under a services contract.
00;35;04;20 - 00;35;16;21
Jonny Dunning
There's some workers they might need to be. If they're doing a T&M bit, it might need to be a senior consultant. But actually, that you don't care that whether it's Jonny Dunning or not, it just needs to be the person doing the work. But but it's it gets complicated, doesn't it?
00;35;16;21 - 00;35;34;04
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. So I, I respect respectfully disagree with that because I think again this is a gray area. So we've done this and we perfected it and I'm right I just think it's a bit more complex than that. And I'm someone who likes to simplify as much as possible. But I think you in the next in a, in a statement of work, you.
00;35;34;06 - 00;35;47;17
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. You might have, you might have a T&M in there and you might have a. Yeah, I think you do care who is doing the work in that because I think when you when you choose your supplier, you want to work with and you get a good one, I think you actually want to make sure that you keep Jonny Dunning on.
00;35;47;17 - 00;36;02;19
Noel Lai-Kit
That is a as opposed to, where they come in via the contractor route. So I think there's a bit more of a nuance there in the sense of actually we try as much as possible to name them, and so that we can make sure we hold we keep Jonny because Jonny, we know Jonny, he's done a good job on this, this other piece of work.
00;36;02;19 - 00;36;25;20
Noel Lai-Kit
And actually he's he's worked for this services company. So we can't bring him in through another route because. Yeah. You an employee of of of that company that we're, we're using for this, for this service. So we've, we've tried to break it down by again is contractor versus consultant delivery. And again it's not perfect but where you, it's maybe how much you, how many how many people you're looking for.
00;36;25;27 - 00;36;33;04
Noel Lai-Kit
So are you looking for a single resource working under a manager's, jurisdiction, if you like, direction.
00;36;33;07 - 00;36;33;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;36;33;16 - 00;36;54;27
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, yeah. And then we go to our managed service provider, and you use that form to bring in the worker. And when we're looking to bring in multiple people, maybe a squad, if it's not, if it's a tech, piece of work or, and if it's under a T&M based on a T&M base, if because the commercial contract is, is another is a secondary conversation because as we said, okay.
00;36;54;28 - 00;37;07;21
Noel Lai-Kit
What you looking to deliver? Do you have a set of requirements if you're not sure let's put them on a T&M basis for some of it or all of the the engagements. And then then you might move them on. But ultimately you still care who you get. Because if you've got a squad.
00;37;07;22 - 00;37;21;25
Jonny Dunning
You need the you need the right people. Yeah. You need you need to know that your supplier is putting their top team on it. Yes, sir. Jonny Dunning is really good saying that you need to make sure he's involved. But yeah, I mean, I always look at it very simply as what's the contractual vehicle you're using?
00;37;21;25 - 00;37;22;06
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;37;22;08 - 00;37;46;17
Jonny Dunning
If you're contracting under an output based contract or statement of work. Yeah. That is what it is. Yeah. If you're contracting, for a specific individual on a time basis, that is a different thing. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's it's either it's either a statement of work type contract or it's a contractor agreement effectively. So I like to try and look at it as like where's the contract base for it.
00;37;46;20 - 00;38;04;11
Jonny Dunning
But it's like like you say, and this and this is, this is the gray area, isn't it? Where I like the fact that you're kind of pushing back on that and, and you're, you're discussing the nuances of it because that shows that you guys are on it. Yeah. You're looking at it, you're assessing it, and it's an important thing.
00;38;04;19 - 00;38;14;12
Jonny Dunning
Whereas for a lot of organizations it gets like brushed under the rug and then you get chaos. Yeah. Where people are going oh the headcount freeze. Yeah. But I can I can run a PO
00;38;14;15 - 00;38;38;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Yes, yes. And I've seen that in the past where somebody said, okay, we need to do headcount for freeze just to control cost for, for a period of time. But then what you do is you have people coming around the avenue and putting a purchase order agreement in place with, with SOW attached to it. And you can hire those people which you've moved from, maybe because you contractors and your FTEs are managed tightly by the services side and not then.
00;38;38;07 - 00;38;50;00
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, you've got leakage there. And when you say, if I was looking at the books and going, okay, why, why, why have we not saved money through this hiring freeze? It's because of of those backchannels. If they're not controlled properly, then, yeah. You're creating issues.
00;38;50;07 - 00;39;12;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's that whole classic squeeze in the balloon type conversation, isn't it? Yeah. It morphs somewhere else. Indeed. But the thing is, the the people, the buying managers, they're just trying to get the work done on that. Yeah. The unfortunately that then falls into the trap. If they going down that route of a PO value is that I can I don't need any procurement oversight of is on a 100 K or 50K or whatever is.
00;39;12;19 - 00;39;33;09
Jonny Dunning
And every piece of work is. Yeah 49 K. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And and some companies have pretty high limits on that. I was a I was in the US recently did a really interesting roundtable with some procurement experts of various different organizations and for some big organizations, you know, half $1 million. Yeah. As a basically a kind of like self sign off purchase order is not unheard of.
00;39;33;09 - 00;39;43;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I think for a lot of organizations, it's probably more like 250 and below. But, that that can mean a lot of kind of invisible leakage, basically.
00;39;43;07 - 00;40;02;03
Noel Lai-Kit
I think, what we found over the years is it's kind of nebulous. What what company comes comes them from. But I think where you need your execs to, to lean in is, is the prioritization question. Because ultimately when you're looking for an external worker, it's because you don't have the internal capacity to do to do the day job.
00;40;02;03 - 00;40;21;04
Noel Lai-Kit
So you go, okay, well, actually, I can't do this. I need something, an external worker. And, but ultimately, when you've got to manage within a tight a budget, financial constraints, it's then important that you that you're the senior people, whether they're whoever they exec or director level or whatever it may be, they need to set the prioritization.
00;40;21;04 - 00;40;38;04
Noel Lai-Kit
So you kind of go, well, I got these ten things on my list I need to define. We need to prioritize 3 or 4 of them now to get these done, because they're going to deliver the greatest outcome. And actually, maybe the people you're looking to hire on these and bring in through the back door, we shouldn't be doing that, because ultimately that's not part of the prioritization we need to do.
00;40;38;04 - 00;40;56;09
Noel Lai-Kit
And we can bring them now through the front door because we prioritize the work we need to do and deliver. And everyone's happy that we bring these people on regardless of the commercial contracts you will. You're bringing the people in externally for the right reasons. To deliver to those five priority points. And I think we've had great support.
00;40;56;12 - 00;41;03;27
Noel Lai-Kit
Actually it’s not even about greate support. They've understood that so that we can support that and that endeavor along the way with a mandate to do so.
00;41;03;29 - 00;41;21;17
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I think it's really important that you've got that mandate to do so. You got that support. But it's for me, it's just business logic. Really? Yeah. Which is, which is, you know, business logic is easier when you're not a giant corporation. Yeah. When you're the bigger the company, the more difficult that business logic is to maintain.
00;41;21;17 - 00;41;48;11
Jonny Dunning
Because ultimately the C-suite should have all the data on all the all the. I always refer to them as like work delivery channels. So whether you're doing it under an outsourced SOW, whether it's a contractor, whether it's an FTE, whatever the different channels are for, your organization might be gig workers, or there might be an AI channel, you know, they're not too distant future for some organizations, the the people that are running the show need to be able to just marshal their resources.
00;41;48;11 - 00;42;10;23
Jonny Dunning
Like, what's our total capacity and capability? Yeah, I remember a CEO, I've mentioned it many times, but a CEO saying to me, Jonny, I just need to know what resources have I got? What's the most effective use of all my resources? How can I deploy. Yes. Deploy them. So again, it's very strategic, isn't it, because you're talking about the organization prioritizing what it needs to get done.
00;42;10;23 - 00;42;15;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that is firstly a sign of a good organization. Yeah. Having a strategy.
00;42;15;13 - 00;42;15;23
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;42;15;28 - 00;42;37;25
Jonny Dunning
Communicating the strategy. But for a lot of organizations where they then fall down is when they need to execute on that strategy that they have. A they have a very low level of visibility on all of their. Yeah, channels and capability. They have suppliers all over the place that no one knows about, apart from one person who's got them in their, you know, a little diary you know, you know, in their inbox, all that sort of thing.
00;42;38;02 - 00;42;53;29
Jonny Dunning
And if stuff's happening just at that Po level with very little information, you know, how is it if a CFO then comes to a CPO and starts asking detailed questions, what are they going to do? Go and try and look back through all the scanned sign PDFs. They've got hardly any information. It is. Yeah, it gets pretty difficult that point 100%.
00;42;53;29 - 00;43;12;29
Noel Lai-Kit
And your tooling strategy so important in terms of, yeah, what what tools you need and how you manage that workflow. Because I'm yet doing it through a peer. We know it's not going to be fit for purpose because you can't capture that level of detail. You need to be able to have that visibility across what people are actually doing and where they are, let alone how much they cost.
00;43;13;07 - 00;43;18;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Put on a on a rate basis rather than just a gross number on a purchase order.
00;43;18;04 - 00;43;47;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. One of the other things you mentioned was, about the kind of downstream implications. So I'm interested to know for you and your team, when you're helping your buyer engage a service provider, scope it out. Yeah. It sounds like you've got involvement through the delivery phase as well. Is that right? In terms of you, you're kind of helping them keep an eye on it, helping them shift, bring in new requirements and kind of take things further as they go.
00;43;47;10 - 00;43;48;09
Jonny Dunning
I changes stuff like that.
00;43;48;15 - 00;44;04;09
Noel Lai-Kit
I think this yeah, I think we do. And I think it's evolved a lot over the years because I think in the past maybe a source in a procurement function would be seen. So let's, let's get the contract done and we walk away and maybe let supplier management vendor management or, or the buyer manage that, that delivery element.
00;44;04;09 - 00;44;23;29
Noel Lai-Kit
So as I think because what we're delivery now it's always been complex. But I think there's there's more of them around this understanding that we need to stay close to these, these projects, that we understand it because ultimately we need to be there, ready for when, when to make sure things are going well through the lifecycle of that, but also being ready for the next phase, what's the next phase going to be?
00;44;24;01 - 00;44;45;03
Noel Lai-Kit
And by, by but sometimes some of the corporate sounds about partnering with you, with your stakeholders and being with them for the journey is so important, because if you walk away and you're told six months time, a years time, that there's something's gone wrong or you need to renew, the contracts, and if you've not stayed reasonably close to it, then you're starting from scratch each time.
00;44;45;03 - 00;45;02;04
Noel Lai-Kit
And and you're, you know, you're not offering any real value. And, you know, challenging, you know, able to then influence that piece of work in the company trying to achieve as well. So I think it's really important you do stay stay close to the project you're working on. And, managing capacity though, is this tough doing that because obviously there's a lot to it.
00;45;02;04 - 00;45;20;02
Noel Lai-Kit
And you, you're stepping out some. So you might be feeling that people are stepping outside of the, the, the, the, the constraints of what their role should be. But I'm yeah, I'm all for the more you get involved, the more you understand the project through delivery, the more value you can add at the you know, when you when you get to the point of of contracting or whatever.
00;45;20;05 - 00;45;39;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I mean, just purely from a tech angle on that. I think it's really interesting in the sense that for us as a tech provider in the service procurement space, we always look at for the lifecycle. Yeah, all the upfront stuff, all of the sourcing, the contracting and then critically, the downstream, it never ceases to amaze me how many organizations that procurement function do not look at the downstream.
00;45;39;28 - 00;45;56;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Because it's partly because they're just targeted on the up to the point of contracting. Indeed. But it's like that doesn't work in services. It changes and you know, it gets so you know, oh I've gone with consultancy a over consultancy b because they've got a lower day rate. Oh well guess what. It's taking them twice as long as I quoted for.
00;45;56;27 - 00;46;19;27
Jonny Dunning
They got five extensions and I just, I just it it really amazes me how many organizations the procurement are not incentivized or motivated to follow the projects through to completion. And that's where I think having this focus on what are the requirements around buying services is really important, because if you're procuring goods and materials, it's a different set up.
00;46;19;27 - 00;46;41;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think the way that the technology supports that is very mature in the sense that you have catalog buying, guided buying. But the thing you're buying is easy to define a measure and it doesn't change. It's you're buying 50, you know, two kilo red widgets. And that is it is what it is. You know, you can compare price, you can compare quality stuff that quite easily.
00;46;41;13 - 00;46;58;02
Jonny Dunning
There are complexities around the supply chain. Yeah. But that's almost like I always say it's like the reverse of services because the supply chain is generally quite simple. But the thing you're buying is hard to define, hard to measure. Yeah. You know, and I just think that's missed if people aren't following up the downstream. Yeah they're only getting a tiny bit of the picture.
00;46;58;05 - 00;47;14;11
Noel Lai-Kit
Yep. Absolutely. So yeah you can't walk away I think you need to stay involved. And and I think I don't think it's not valid. I think it's more a case of maybe you've got you've got a capacity constraint because you're procurement team. You're that function. That services team is not large enough to be able to to stay involved.
00;47;14;11 - 00;47;38;02
Noel Lai-Kit
And and I think that's an ongoing challenge because, you know, you can only have so many people in the team doing this stuff. And yeah, they've got to focus on what they can. But ultimately, I really do ask can challenge my team to to stay involved as much as possible, because then that way you can help your stakeholder, throughout a lifecycle of their of their journey, whether it's limitation or, or something else.
00;47;38;05 - 00;47;57;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I also think when you look at that capacity issue, yeah, that is also where automation AI can be really useful. And it's interesting to still see some resistance to that sort of thing within some procurement teams, because you will tend to get some for giving teams that might think, is this going to take my job away?
00;47;57;15 - 00;48;07;06
Jonny Dunning
But I guess if they're doing very transactional based activities, that's their thought process. Yeah. Whereas for you guys in your team you're thinking strategically.
00;48;07;06 - 00;48;07;20
Noel Lai-Kit
Oh, absolutely.
00;48;07;20 - 00;48;10;28
Jonny Dunning
So if you can automate stuff, the team are probably going to be like, great, I'll have more data.
00;48;11;01 - 00;48;31;14
Noel Lai-Kit
That'll be delighted that the guys in the team are yeah. In terms of capacity, they're struggling with, you know, it's the mundane or the, the repetitive tasks of, of you know, a well, maybe it's negotiating a basic part of an SOW or all that front piece, and that stuff is not a value added piece to value added piece is, as you say, he's he's working through delivery.
00;48;31;14 - 00;48;55;18
Noel Lai-Kit
How do you want to construct the how do you want to make sure you've got the right structure to you know, whether it's milestones or, or something else to actually deliver. And then, as you say, working, staying with a stakeholder, a stakeholder through the lifecycle is, where we want to focus their time. So, yeah. And the more automation AI can bring into the, the, the process, I think the guys would the guys and gals would love it ultimately.
00;48;55;18 - 00;49;02;28
Noel Lai-Kit
And they're definitely not pushing back on, on, on how we can bring in those kind of tools and, support that can help them. Ultimately.
00;49;03;00 - 00;49;23;13
Jonny Dunning
I think that's a very healthy way to look at it. Yeah. Because if but but it's you guys to a certain extent, you're not constrained by a limited attitude within your C-suite or within your organization. Yeah. You're quite a liberated procurement function in the sense that you just like, go and do it, guys and be strategic and think about the business outcomes and like you're being asked to level up.
00;49;23;15 - 00;49;34;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. The the service which for me that plays into the the conversation where people are looking towards how do we you know getting to value. Yeah. Rather than savings.
00;49;34;06 - 00;49;34;18
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;49;34;21 - 00;49;52;22
Jonny Dunning
And you know lots of people talk a good game about getting to value. But when you ask them to really break it down and define it, they kind of can't or they don't. Their organization hasn't given them the facility to be able to truly get towards that. It's like aspirational. But I think when you look at the detail of what you guys are doing, I think you could put the argument together.
00;49;52;22 - 00;50;11;02
Jonny Dunning
That is driving towards a value based consideration of what procurement are delivering, rather than just because for a lot of organizations and I don't, you know, it's not the fault of these organizations or these procurement teams. In a lot of cases, it's just the way they're targeted and structured and limited. It's like, how much did you save up front at the point of, you know, contract?
00;50;11;05 - 00;50;15;12
Jonny Dunning
That just is not that is not reflective of the end result in services. Yeah.
00;50;15;14 - 00;50;41;01
Noel Lai-Kit
Oh, absolutely. And you always again, you've got this, constructive, challenge of essentially making sure you've, you've got a competitive rate. I think that you can't, you can't you can't move away from the fact that you need to deliver against your budgets. And when we report to the CFO, so, you know, we were very close to the numbers and how we how we need to deliver those and especially my finance background.
00;50;41;03 - 00;51;04;19
Noel Lai-Kit
But at the same time, you need to ensure you're getting quality, from your in service agreement. You look at actually quality of the delivery. And sometimes that's not going to come cheap. And but again, you need to benchmark it so that you know, it's competitive at least. And I think that's important, that we need to work through that with, you know, and using the scale of your, of your organization to get that, to get that competitive rate.
00;51;04;22 - 00;51;26;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. You, you bringing up loads of great points, which is why I keep making notes. So, so. rate I want to come back to looking at that but I want to come back to, quality because that is that is the metric that often gets left out in services procurement. It's like what saving did we make upfront, which is not an accurate reflection of total savings in my opinion anyway because anything could happen post contract.
00;51;26;22 - 00;51;46;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. But the quality is very interesting because you've got the quantitative metrics. If you're capturing this stuff effectively in a platform, for example, you'll be able to see it for every supplier, for every project, for every milestone and deliverable. Where are they on time? Where are they on budget? How much did it shift? Yeah. How many changes?
00;51;46;11 - 00;52;05;08
Jonny Dunning
What was the average cost over on all this sort of stuff. But then you've got the qualitative information on the people within your team, your business saying whether they did a good job or not. That is that's that's the quality metric really, isn't it? Because otherwise it's like something that for a lot of organizations, it's way down the line.
00;52;05;08 - 00;52;23;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, the project's gone off the rails. The settlements left, right and center. Everyone feels hard done by and it's pretty much impossible. It's not documented to go back and assess what the quality was or why it went wrong. Yeah. How how do you guys kind of pull together that quality assessment, as it were?
00;52;23;00 - 00;52;46;02
Noel Lai-Kit
It's it's tough is the short answer because you can use various kind of things. So you got Net Promoter Score. You can use again that's very subjective. And what we tried, there's a couple of ways you can do it. So yeah you got you got a Net Promoter score. You've got I think you need to find as much quantitative, way to do it as possible.
00;52;46;02 - 00;52;47;10
Noel Lai-Kit
So, because.
00;52;47;10 - 00;52;48;14
Jonny Dunning
You do you work in finance and.
00;52;48;14 - 00;52;48;26
Noel Lai-Kit
Indeed
00;52;49;02 - 00;52;49;21
Jonny Dunning
Know, I.
00;52;49;23 - 00;53;06;06
Noel Lai-Kit
No, no I agree. Yeah. And I think tech services is good. Again, we keep going back to tech services because, I think would be clear passion for both of us. But I think, what we've got nowadays, I think there's various tools out there now. And one, one we use within a company that can measure developer productivity.
00;53;06;08 - 00;53;29;24
Noel Lai-Kit
So we find that really useful because that, again, is something we've not been able to measure well, in years gone by. But now actually our engineering function can go, okay, well we've got developers both internally and externally. You know, it's in your it's it's in the environment that they're developing on. And they can see actually what's the velocity what's right first time in terms of coding etcetera, which, which gives us that quantitative measurements.
00;53;30;01 - 00;53;51;28
Noel Lai-Kit
But ultimately you still need subjective. Okay. Well you know when it when it's maybe a bit of advisory work or delivery, which is not necessarily, you know, measurable. I think what we've just started doing now with our consulting preferred supplier list is, every engagement finishes, we ask the stakeholder to complete a very quick survey captures, you know, their their feedback on how well this particular project went.
00;53;52;04 - 00;54;11;29
Noel Lai-Kit
And we can collect, again, more data to collect and then feedback to our, our consultancy to say, well, this is where you've done well and this is where there's been some engagement, say that you've not done so well. And is there a theme developing from, from from the supply base you can actually feed and and then you your it's not just been about being up beating up at the till.
00;54;11;29 - 00;54;29;08
Noel Lai-Kit
You actually getting some feedback you can give back to me to say, well, next time you get engagement in this particular area, these will you need to focus your, your your your focus your efforts on improving that. But on that basis. But also this is where we see you seem to be working really well with this, with this team when these particular kind of projects.
00;54;29;08 - 00;54;35;29
Noel Lai-Kit
And that's actually, you know, you're doing well there. So to keep it up and, and look to continue to evolve and and improve in that space too.
00;54;36;01 - 00;54;40;15
Jonny Dunning
And you know, to a certain extent you could look at that as challenging the supplier a bit more.
00;54;40;16 - 00;54;41;09
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;54;41;11 - 00;54;54;07
Jonny Dunning
But surely it's got to be an overall benefit for supplier relationships in terms of going to that depth, because you're not just looking at the areas where they can improve, which should be good for them anyway, because it means they can do a better job for you to get feedback. But you're also looking at whether they've done a good job.
00;54;54;07 - 00;55;13;13
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I'm 100%. But when you again, when we talk about earlier, we talk about the issues with, you know, people looking to bring in services through the back door. Yeah, we want this all to come through the front door because and and ultimately because we want our stakeholders to to trust the suppliers we're putting in front of them and the options that we're giving them from a procurement perspective.
00;55;13;13 - 00;55;29;23
Noel Lai-Kit
So, and if you're able to then give that feedback to the supply to say this, we're doing well, this we're not doing so well. And you need to perform in these areas and improve and improve your performance here. That's only good. Then when our stakeholder needs to, to fight to to find a solution and to deliver an outcome.
00;55;29;23 - 00;55;51;26
Noel Lai-Kit
So, you know, because we don't want them to say, okay, actually they were below your list was because you sent us to were poor So we've got we've got our mates over there that we want to use So you're trying to find a balance where you you just giving your stakeholder the right options with the right framework, the right commercials, the right quality that they can deliver what they need to deliver because ultimately they shouldn't care who's who's doing it, long as they're getting the quality.
00;55;51;26 - 00;56;13;12
Noel Lai-Kit
But if they don't, they don't feel they're getting that quality. That's when they'll come with their own options. And and that's why these close relationships with stakeholders and your suppliers will help you get to that. Get to the out to get to the right delivery framework. Again, we haven't perfected it by any stretch of the imagination, but it's where I think where we're making headway and cracking that nut.
00;56;13;14 - 00;56;36;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it feels like a very grown up approach to it. Yeah. And you know, like I say, I like I find it very, you know, I applaud your attitude of, you know, you've got very much it kind of like just wanting to progress and learn and, and improve all these things, which is great. But whether you've got to the end point of solving these problems or not, and you guys are trying to solve these problems, and I think that's the important thing.
00;56;36;25 - 00;56;52;11
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's where it's interesting for other people to hear what you've been doing because, I it's like, well, you know what? You can go out and try and solve these problems if you get the right executive support, if your business is set up in the right way and your procurement function are fit for purpose to do it, you can go after these things.
00;56;52;11 - 00;57;04;00
Jonny Dunning
They're not easy. Yeah, but they're worthwhile. Yes. And I think that's the the end game really isn't it. All of this stuff is complicated. Yeah. But it's you know, it's not quite flying a rocket to Mars. It is doable. Yeah.
00;57;04;01 - 00;57;23;01
Noel Lai-Kit
But yeah. And flying a rocket to Mars, that maybe that's that's moonshots. But you actually to get there there's, there's, there's little quick wins you can do along the way that that helps you with an outcome of the business, deliver what needs to be needs be delivered and making those quick wins helps you get the confidence along the way to to then keep going.
00;57;23;01 - 00;57;28;00
Noel Lai-Kit
And you know, you might not get to Mars, but you're going to maybe you'll get to, another another planet that's closer.
00;57;28;02 - 00;57;46;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And, you know, I think with the way the market is so competitive, the way there’s so much change in the market, the big thing always comes back to for me is if organizations aren't addressing services procurement like you guys are addressing it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So saying it's not perfect but we're working on it. We're trying to improve it and we're getting value from it.
00;57;46;15 - 00;58;06;15
Jonny Dunning
For organizations that aren't doing that or have got blockers in the way of them doing it or have not even thought about it, I personally think they're going to struggle to be competitive in the market, because just the speed of change, the demand for the skills and the, the capability and the capacity from the supply chain. Yeah, yeah, they are finite.
00;58;06;20 - 00;58;23;22
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So where people are, you know, bringing in new technologies or doing new things, it's it's kind of like as much of a war for talent within the supply chain as it is within the permanent headcount. Indeed. So I, I do think fundamentally the drivers for this are top level business drivers.
00;58;23;23 - 00;58;24;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
00;58;24;15 - 00;58;43;18
Jonny Dunning
Can your organization compete effectively in the market and and you know, it feels very much like you guys are looking at this strategically, which I think is is great. And I also think it just gives procurement the ability to sort of like elevate their function, particularly when it comes to services like say, I think you've got a very, very supportive executive structure in place.
00;58;43;20 - 00;59;14;17
Jonny Dunning
But you know, there's so much value. I always find it fascinating going back to data on, on love, love the data myself. You know, the amount of data that procurement are privy to is astonishing. Yeah. And you sit at this intersection where it's like. And I'm talking about, you know, metrics. And I'm also talking about, more this sort of like qualitative data that you're getting because you're getting feedback from all different angles.
00;59;14;17 - 00;59;34;23
Jonny Dunning
You're getting feedback from the supply chain on what your internal stakeholders are doing, what the how the teams are performing, how they're interacting with them. You're getting information from your internal stakeholders on how the supply chain is performing. And so you got this kind of 360 degree view on how effective the company is at doing stuff. And obviously you're looking at how you're doing stuff as well.
00;59;34;25 - 00;59;57;24
Jonny Dunning
I think that data is really fascinating because for a lot of organizations, if they just take things on a very surface level, for example, if they're not looking at not trying to measure quality, it's never easy, then they can end up making snap decisions. And and suppliers get blamed for stuff where it's actually not the supplies fault, and the inefficiency might sit in the organization because a particular team are too busy on something else to bother with the consulting firm.
00;59;57;24 - 01;00;10;22
Jonny Dunning
They're supposed to be spending time with them and ends up taking loads longer, or they didn't scope it properly and it all shifts and that costs more money. I feel like that's quite an important consideration when it comes to the sort of like total view of this.
01;00;10;27 - 01;00;35;20
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, yeah, I but yeah. And it's so important that you, you understand all of those moving parts and, and I think being in service of services procurement is, is, is an education all the time because you're trying to solve those problems with, with where those problems are happening. Yeah. I'm bringing those, those bits together. You just mentioned is, is kind of what makes the job so, so interesting.
01;00;35;20 - 01;00;36;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Really.
01;00;36;15 - 01;00;54;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it when an organization says, okay, we've got to make cost cuts, for example. Yeah, I've seen plenty of situations where the organization will basically say we need to cut our consulting spend. Yeah. And if they don't have visibility, if they've just got like PO level data, then it's the they can say, how much did we spend with Accenture last year.
01;00;54;11 - 01;01;12;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. People are going to know that. What were they working on? What projects did they deliver? What were the outcomes of those projects? Yeah that's different. And so if you need to cut for example, consulting spend, how do you know what to cut. Are you cutting stuff that's like actually really driving your bottom line or really helping your product growth.
01;01;12;19 - 01;01;39;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Versus stuff that's maybe a bit more wastage. It's just got to have that visibility and that information. And it's like companies are struggling on. It's amazing when we we see quite often big, highly complex organizations, sometimes technology based organizations that are trying to run this stuff on email, spreadsheets and just word documents and PDFs and stuff like that, it's just the the level of information, the volume of data is just too big and that you just you just can't do it.
01;01;39;17 - 01;01;48;05
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And that kind of I feel like from that point of view, there's almost like a chunk of, of their workforce capacity or their work capacity where they're just basically flying blind.
01;01;48;06 - 01;01;50;00
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, yeah.
01;01;50;02 - 01;02;00;27
Jonny Dunning
But it's and it's, you know, I find it difficult to understand why some organizations aren't trying to address that, but I guess it feels like getting started is quite difficult if you haven't done it before.
01;02;00;28 - 01;02;19;25
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I think so, because some of this stuff is not. It sounds obvious. And I said just the the example I gave earlier in terms of, you know, somebody saying, just give me my workforce data and and not being able to provide that straight away. Kind of it's so simple questions that have then everyone's going, oh, hang on a second.
01;02;19;27 - 01;02;36;01
Noel Lai-Kit
And before you know it, you realize what data you're missing to actually help you make those, those critical decisions. But yeah. And where do you start? What what point, at what point do you start? Where do you look? Where do you go first? And actually clean data. Better, better. You're not going to get 100% data. Maybe that's too utopian.
01;02;36;01 - 01;02;43;25
Noel Lai-Kit
What I'm going to get to actually you want to get as close as possible to that. And 80/20 90/10 is okay, actually, in terms of making some of those decisions.
01;02;43;27 - 01;03;11;21
Jonny Dunning
So if I want to kind of spring this on you too much. Yeah. But off the top of your head, if you, advising somebody else in another organization who's saying, look, all services, procurement all over the place, you've got no visibility, it's not even really centralized in terms of who's in charge of it. If you were, you know, helicoptered in to say, okay, well, if you were going to say the first start point, you might look at, what would it be?
01;03;11;21 - 01;03;17;01
Jonny Dunning
Would it, would it be basically trying to work out what data do we have to start with at least?
01;03;17;01 - 01;03;32;28
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I think it's it's data. It starts with data. What data you have. What quality is your data in how you collect in this data. And again is it is it email. Is it manual spreadsheets. Is it some kind of power BI. Do you have vendor management system to how you collect? What data do you have? How you collecting it?
01;03;33;00 - 01;03;48;21
Noel Lai-Kit
How good is it? I think you have to start. Yeah. It always starts with data. Tell me what you've got and then we can we can work through it and go, okay, is this good enough? Do we need to enhance it? And actually, can we start making some decisions based on what data you have? If you don't, then you're always flying blind aren’t you.
01;03;48;24 - 01;04;04;01
Noel Lai-Kit
You need all that. You need as much information. You need that information. You just need to be you need to be considered in terms of what information you do need. Because sometimes you can boil the ocean, right? And say, okay, I need, you know, what are the critical bits of information you need? You know, is it is it.
01;04;04;08 - 01;04;22;29
Noel Lai-Kit
And it's going to be a long list, okay? It's not rocket science. It's going to be, you know, you know, who are these people where where they come from in terms of their supplier, where they located, what's their rights? Yeah. And ideally, what projects are they working on was there was the, job category, you know, job family, etc..
01;04;22;29 - 01;04;40;07
Noel Lai-Kit
So but then there's other things that people might be data you kind of would like is a nice to have, but you don't really need it to help you make decisions along the way. So it's it's been very, measured in terms of what information you do need to help you make those decisions. And let's not try and boil the ocean.
01;04;40;07 - 01;04;42;04
Noel Lai-Kit
I said, certainly initially. Anyway, you.
01;04;42;04 - 01;04;56;13
Jonny Dunning
Can always upgrade as you go. Connie. Yeah. If you if you do an initial take of what data do we have? Yeah. Then that helps you have the next part of the conversation, which is what data do we need. Yeah. And then you say you can have a rationalization to say, well, we out of those ten bits of data that we'd ideally like.
01;04;56;13 - 01;04;58;14
Jonny Dunning
Yes, we can get five of them pretty quickly.
01;04;58;14 - 01;04;58;23
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
01;04;58;23 - 01;05;05;11
Jonny Dunning
Let's do that first. Yeah. Like you said, in terms of kind of like getting to the moon, it's it's it's a step by step process.
01;05;05;18 - 01;05;07;03
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
01;05;07;05 - 01;05;25;07
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah. We we decided we we just we we we worked we had a view of what was critical data and, but we also asked, people how our function people function, our finance, our, functional stakeholders, whether it was the business or tech to say, what do you think are the key bits of information we need? And okay, that's a starting point.
01;05;25;07 - 01;05;35;07
Noel Lai-Kit
This is what we think. Now we're going to prioritize getting this information first. And that helps us in terms of having a first view, that was relevant and useful for our execs.
01;05;35;10 - 01;05;54;18
Jonny Dunning
So one of the things I'm kind of fascinated to understand more for, for you and your team and your business is the kind of what's next in the sense that, okay, you guys have got some pretty damn good data, you got some great processes. I know it's a constant process of improvement for you guys to try and constantly be building this and making it better.
01;05;54;20 - 01;06;04;03
Jonny Dunning
But where do where do you see the next steps of that kind of in relation to that total workforce of like strategic decision making process?
01;06;04;06 - 01;06;23;08
Noel Lai-Kit
So what are we doing right now? So I tell you what we're doing right now, and I think we're where we're trying to get to is I think our tooling is is so important. So we've kind of gone, okay, this is what we need this empirical data to allow us to make the right decisions. So how do you get hold that data when it goes back to how do you get it and what do you need to help you along the way?
01;06;23;08 - 01;06;41;29
Noel Lai-Kit
So the tooling we're looking at, without naming the supplies and who's providing it, you know, is, a workforce planning tool, right. Knows our, our, hiring managers to to put in more information in terms of this, what we need, and is what then we've got a we've got a plan then and this is again this is where I talk about it.
01;06;41;29 - 01;06;45;14
Noel Lai-Kit
Everything is all about now is total workforce. So regardless of of the internal or external
01;06;45;16 - 01;06;51;05
Jonny Dunning
So is that almost like a triaging type system or intake where you're basically saying, this is what I need to do.
01;06;51;07 - 01;06;55;20
Noel Lai-Kit
No, not not so much. It's more it's a, it's a planning tool.
01;06;55;20 - 01;06;56;02
Jonny Dunning
Right.
01;06;56;05 - 01;07;16;03
Noel Lai-Kit
Which allows the hiring manager to, to use it for, for budgetary kind of say budgetary for forecasting purposes, to say, I've got this, this is my current workforce and this is what I'm going to need in this, in this next cycle, whether it's quarterly, six months, annually cycle. So they continue. We go on. Okay. Well, this is my workforce.
01;07;16;06 - 01;07;33;16
Noel Lai-Kit
I've got these open roles, but these are the ones I'm going to need in the future. And then that can kind of gets periodically signed off so that it flows in. So, and that's going to capture our total workforce. And I'm excluding kind of outsourcing from this because I can that's completely different and we don't really get going.
01;07;33;17 - 01;07;41;27
Noel Lai-Kit
But I mean we care about whether it's one, one, one person or a thousand doing very simplistic way to describe it. But yeah, you get my point.
01;07;41;27 - 01;07;42;27
Jonny Dunning
Oh, I know what you mean. Yeah.
01;07;42;29 - 01;07;59;07
Noel Lai-Kit
But then that kind of gives you the visibility again at both exec level and on the ground level, where you can actually see what your workforce plan is looking like. And then you can measure up against what programs at least these people needed to be working on, which I kind of kind of agree the prioritization for them.
01;07;59;09 - 01;08;15;19
Noel Lai-Kit
We're where where we're looking at our, vendor management solutions, system as well, in terms of whether we upgrade to the next version or whatever, that we can make sure that we're using it in a way, because we've had our we implemented our vendor manager system ten years ago. Wow. And it's been it's been changed so many times.
01;08;15;19 - 01;08;17;03
Noel Lai-Kit
You know, it's been so bespoke.
01;08;17;03 - 01;08;18;15
Jonny Dunning
Probably tweaked for you guys.
01;08;18;15 - 01;08;20;01
Noel Lai-Kit
And yes, they can either.
01;08;20;02 - 01;08;30;14
Jonny Dunning
For angle it's it's you know, there's a real balance point between the software company driving where a product should go. Yeah. Versus customers.
01;08;30;20 - 01;08;30;29
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
01;08;30;29 - 01;08;33;13
Jonny Dunning
Pulling it in a different direction. And there's gotta be a balance.
01;08;33;13 - 01;08;47;22
Noel Lai-Kit
Right. Exactly. So I think we're going to be saying okay, you know what we want to strip it back to basics. Now we've, we've we've made so many changes over the last ten years that we need to move to, to a kind of out of box solution. It's still might need to be slightly adapted, but we can be really strict about using it out of the box.
01;08;47;22 - 01;09;05;24
Noel Lai-Kit
So that's another piece we're looking at as well at the moment. And, and ultimately trying to get to a position where we've got an end to end. Yeah. But from forecasting right to the whole lifecycle being captured in a in look at the, the whole interim process basically.
01;09;06;00 - 01;09;29;21
Noel Lai-Kit
And then you can start thinking about well okay, well how can we automate this in this part of the lifecycle. How can we to make focus our value proposition in a different area. So yeah, I think it's tooling strategy is what's important to us in terms of getting there and simplifying how, or end to end processes to get to a position where we can not only see the current work force, but we can see what they're going to be working on next as well.
01;09;29;21 - 01;09;45;23
Noel Lai-Kit
And then there's all other kind of snazzy things you can do in terms of, okay, well, if you've had these people working on these projects internally or externally, how do you make sure you can keep that knowledge and bring it back? Or you need to move on to the next project that's coming down to the down to and then the trap later on.
01;09;45;25 - 01;09;51;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think I think tooling within procurement in general is very important.
01;09;51;24 - 01;09;52;14
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
01;09;52;17 - 01;10;13;00
Jonny Dunning
And you had this kind of, digital transformation that came out of the kind of manufacturing sector where you basically had the ERP systems coming along. Yeah. And then you had the kind of procure to pay in source to pay suites that came out of those ERP systems. Yeah. But I feel like they're quite heavily predicated towards procurement of goods, materials, catalog buying, guided buying.
01;10;13;02 - 01;10;31;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that they works for that. Whereas it's interesting to see the tooling coming in in other areas where there is contingent workforce, whether it's services, procurement, specific and loads of other, you know, procure techs growing massively because one of the things I always think is that with procurement becoming became, I always see procurement as quite a relatively young profession.
01;10;31;21 - 01;10;32;12
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, absolutely.
01;10;32;18 - 01;10;51;29
Jonny Dunning
Compared to some other functions within organizations like finance or even things like marketing. If you look at like the marketing technology stack, it's way mature than procurement, but it's all happening for procurement now. I think that's really important because when you're hiring people, you're bringing in people who are, you know, tech native. They're expecting to see good systems and processes.
01;10;51;29 - 01;10;54;01
Jonny Dunning
They don't want to walk into a manual environment, do they?
01;10;54;02 - 01;11;14;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Yes, absolutely. And I think what's great is that you've now you start to see some procurement coming up, which is looking more at orchestration as opposed to, you know, so I think that's where the game changer will be for us to help us actually smooth out the process and experiences from your, from the from the actual buyers, from the stakeholders that need to procure service.
01;11;14;04 - 01;11;21;07
Noel Lai-Kit
Because as you say, the is not able to to to do that, we don't think well enough and maybe then they don't try to in itself, which is fine. Yeah.
01;11;21;07 - 01;11;41;08
Jonny Dunning
And you kind of, you know, you hear some people talking about the death of the suite and this, that. And yeah, there's always arguments and it's like every company's different. Yes. But ultimately if organizations are looking at their tooling and trying to make things more sophisticated and take out the transactional activity so people can focus on more strategic, yeah, so they can use data, then that just makes sense in terms of trying to compete in the market.
01;11;41;08 - 01;11;43;08
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah.
01;11;43;11 - 01;12;08;09
Jonny Dunning
So just to kind of round things up, we could just we could throw we could definitely keep going, but just to kind of round things up. So the fact that your organization has come to look at the world of services, quite specifically, and to really look at, trying to build that out and build the build up, the, the, level of data, the level of quality and enable that decision making process.
01;12;08;12 - 01;12;22;03
Jonny Dunning
Is that something that you think other companies are trying to do? Have you seen that similar focus within other organizations, or does it come up in peer group conversations, or do you think it's still something that's quite early in terms of a thought process?
01;12;22;03 - 01;12;40;08
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I'd love to bet to say here that no, no, no, we're unique. We're we're the only ones doing this. I think, the more more my peers I speak to, I think everyone I think a lot more people are looking. I won't say a lot more people are looking at this as a challenge. And certainly a challenges we need to solve.
01;12;40;10 - 01;13;02;02
Noel Lai-Kit
Obviously different companies and different groups, different procurement organizations at different stages in that lifecycle. But I think it's more I think service procurement is becoming more, more well known, but still probably not as well as it should be ultimately. And Jonny, this is what yeah. You know, this this is a challenge you've taken up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm absolutely happy to support, you know, getting service procurement out there.
01;13;02;04 - 01;13;16;15
Jonny Dunning
I really appreciate it. And it's, you know, it's this type of conversation and just bringing people into the conversation when you do, when you do have these chats and when you do sit in round tables and things like that. And yeah, for me, as I was saying to you earlier, kind of when practitioners really start getting into the super.
01;13;16;16 - 01;13;43;14
Jonny Dunning
I'm fairly nerdy on this subject, but ultimately I'm coming from a tech point of view. I'm not a practitioner. I can kind of hang on to the conversation to a certain level, and then it just goes into procurement turbo and I tend to like be kind of just trailing along at that point. But it's brilliant listening to practitioners discussing this stuff because it's art of the possible what support you getting and just the fact of services procurement, almost like as an emerging discipline, services aren't going away.
01;13;43;20 - 01;14;00;18
Jonny Dunning
It's only getting bigger. Yeah. It's only changing faster. And so I think it's a great time for people to be able to talk about it. And. Yeah, and I think there's real value in listening to the journey that people like yourself have been on and the things that you've come up against, and also areas that have really helped, like having that great exec backing.
01;14;00;21 - 01;14;22;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So yeah, I'm really appreciative of you coming in, having this conversation. I have a feeling that maybe I can follow up conversation that we might need to have as well, going into detail on some certain areas. But yeah, it's been absolute pleasure to go through it with you. And, yeah, hopefully some really interesting stuff in here for people to kind of just think about, have questions about and take away and build into their own discussions.
01;14;22;13 - 01;14;33;01
Noel Lai-Kit
Yeah, I hope so. It's been it's been really fun doing it. I said, it's my, my first podcast. But but it would be really enjoyable. Thank you for facilitating and yeah, hopefully you maybe you will have me again in the future.
01;14;33;04 - 01;14;34;04
Jonny Dunning
Absolutely. Thanks very.
01;14;34;04 - 01;14;35;09
Noel Lai-Kit
cheers Jonny. Thank you.