Services Procurement – A Case Study For Change
A practical look at how clearer processes and better visibility can help reduce resistance and make services procurement easier to manage. The case study highlights the changes made to create greater consistency, control and confidence across the journey.
With Nic Everett, Senior Procurement Manager, Telent
00:12:49 - Getting started with managing Services Procurement effectively
00:27:00 - Business case hurdles and successes
00:36:21 - Improving transparency in supplier delivery for business agility
00:49:09 - The factors holding others in the market back
01:01:47 - What the future holds and what part AI can play
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;01 - 00;00;11;18
Jonny Dunning
Okay, so, I'm very pleased to welcome Nic Everett, who is a senior procurement manager at Telent, to join me on the podcast today. Thanks very much for joining me, Nic. You're welcome. How are you doing today?
00;00;11;26 - 00;00;17;03
Nic Everett
I'm good. Thanks, Jonny Really good. So thank you for inviting me. Hopefully this will be a very good conversation. Now.
00;00;17;04 - 00;00;38;09
Jonny Dunning
I'm very much looking forward to it. We're going to be talking about service procurement. My favorite subject. And really just the case study for change. Change. Some people see it as being too complicated, too difficult. Maybe some people don't realize the benefits of making change in this area, but this is a great opportunity to look at what you've done.
00;00;38;11 - 00;00;55;09
Jonny Dunning
At Telent and how that change has taking place and, and what's come out of it, really. So I'm really pleased to be able to bring that conversation to other people in the market and just share some of the challenges and thoughts and insights that you've come across, in this journey. So yeah.
00;00;55;11 - 00;00;56;21
Nic Everett
Yeah, I'll do my best.
00;00;56;22 - 00;01;08;03
Jonny Dunning
Excellent stuff. Okay, so before we dive into that side of it, could you just give a little bit of a background, on yourself and what you do and how you came to be in this position in procurement?
00;01;08;10 - 00;01;28;15
Nic Everett
Yeah, absolutely. So, I've been in procurement, so coming on 20 years now does seem such a long time when you say it out loud. So actually, my journey started. I was studying out in America, and I was in a pub and someone said, what do you want to do with your life? And, I just said, I want to spend other people's money.
00;01;28;17 - 00;01;57;16
Nic Everett
I didn't think it was going to end up in IT, In technology. I was thinking more glamorous things like handbags and shoes and things like that, but. And that's, that's kind of where my journey started for me looking for a role. And I did end up in technology from the get go. And I cycled through lots of different, job roles in procurement from just doing contract changes through to just buying widgets and things like that.
00;01;57;16 - 00;02;23;20
Nic Everett
And over the years, I've really become quite passionate about services. And in a couple of my roles, I had the opportunity to really delve into that from, a global perspective and local. So I knew of Telent when I was in one of my first jobs, all right. And they were a supplier to me. So I've seen Telent throughout different iterations of what I've been doing.
00;02;23;20 - 00;02;45;27
Nic Everett
And when it came up to join them, I it was a great fit. And that's where I am now currently. And I'm really looking at how we use service procurement within the organization. So yeah, I can pull on lots of different areas of expertise that I've gained and knowledge over the years. And yeah, put it to good use.
00;02;45;29 - 00;03;07;08
Jonny Dunning
Absolutely. And it's quite interesting when you see that sort of circularity about you having Telent as a supplier. And now you being part of the team of Telent So just going back to kind of your early forays into procurement, it's quite interesting that you've worked across different areas of procurement. I wouldn't say everyone is necessarily drawn to the services side of things, services categories.
00;03;07;10 - 00;03;29;03
Jonny Dunning
You tend to find some people would almost rather sit in a very more, much more of a transactional, category, more around kind of like goods, like, say, widgets, that sort of thing. What, what for you were the kind of key differences between what you were doing when you were managing more goods and materials type procurement versus when you started addressing some of the kind of like more services related categories.
00;03;29;05 - 00;04;05;04
Nic Everett
Yeah. So at the beginning I was buying, Apple Macs for design houses and things like that. And it's to your point, really transactional is you need something can you need it by next day and you can negotiate prices based on quantities of what you're buying. When I went to, Airwave Solutions, which was my first foray with Telent as a supplier, it was the London 2012 Olympics and I got given the supplier contract to manage, and that was the delivery and services of the radios that were used at different venues.
00;04;05;07 - 00;04;28;21
Nic Everett
So they couldn't use mobile phones because the networks were, potentially flagged as not fit for purpose. From a stability point of view, when it came to so many people in the UK using their mobiles at one time. So they chose to use a radio network which are emergency services use. So Airwave Solutions was chosen at the time, to to implement those radios.
00;04;28;21 - 00;04;52;13
Nic Everett
And it was a German supplier. Riedel at the time. And it was my first foray into actually what services meant versus I'm buying or renting radios. Yeah. What was that difference? And it was really interesting to, unpick the services side where you've got people, what do they do? How do you actually pay for it? What are the laws?
00;04;52;13 - 00;05;25;24
Nic Everett
What are the rules? Versus well, I can just buy a cable or earpieces or any accessories that go with it really easily. That's fine. That's already been sort of, you know, laid out. And it was really interesting to come up against certain problems within that delivery because nothing simple, nothing goes plain sailing ever. And, and how in a procurement perspective, you actually deal with that from contract through to, actually you're dealing with people and emotions.
00;05;25;24 - 00;05;56;24
Nic Everett
So it really caught me a little spark in me to go, oh, this is actually really interesting. Really interesting. And I moved on to different companies after that, and I got into Sage, which was looking at how TA is done across a global platform. And with that contingent workers and how they're procured. So it was another element to that category.
00;05;56;24 - 00;06;25;02
Nic Everett
Yeah. So it wasn't until I joined Telent and, I had the opportunity to take the labor category on full time, that I went back to that whole services procurement, and I could use some of that experience not only from a global perspective, but also from a start to finish from the London 2012 Olympics on, actually. How do you run a program?
00;06;25;02 - 00;06;40;20
Nic Everett
What do you need to consider when you're actually going out to market and almost looking at how how do you expect a supplier to act and behave and deliver if you need them to do a specific thing?
00;06;40;23 - 00;07;11;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, no, it's really interesting. I think one of the things that, I find fascinating about this is you obviously have certain personality traits. Yeah, of things that interest you. And I feel like it's would, would you, would you say it's like a problem solving mentality? What what are the personality traits within you that draw you to the problems of managing the procurement of services versus, you know, the procurement of more goods, materials.
00;07;11;22 - 00;07;26;12
Jonny Dunning
Because because I feel like, like you say, the the procurement of goods feels more like an established solved problem with clear routes. What is it about the chaos or the challenges that that draws you into more that services side?
00;07;26;17 - 00;07;53;13
Nic Everett
You hit the nail on the head. It's pure problem solving. Yeah, I love that. It's a challenge. It it's exciting if you like that side of procurement and understanding how to articulate something from a contractual perspective and then an operational perspective. And how do you marry those two so that you can get your end result without friction, without legal issues?
00;07;53;15 - 00;07;58;03
Nic Everett
It's fascinating. And that's what drives me. It's that problem solving.
00;07;58;05 - 00;08;31;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I think, that's something that I see as a trait that that definitely comes to the forefront with people who work in this area, that that kind of problem solving mentality also generally kind of like adaptability. Yes. Which is an essential kind of inherent part of that. But the other thing I just want to draw on in terms of your background, which I think is really interesting, is that that crossover between like contingent workforce categories, talent acquisition, labor categories, and outsource services because, I had it recently described Everest Research.
00;08;31;20 - 00;08;45;05
Jonny Dunning
We had an interesting conversation with those guys recently doing some good research in this area. And they described services procurement as a procurement problem with a talent twist. And I thought that was quite a clever way to describe it because.
00;08;45;07 - 00;08;46;01
Nic Everett
It's like a cocktail.
00;08;46;03 - 00;09;12;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, exactly. And I see it. Is this interesting. Confluence or and it creates some gray areas because ultimately it is an inherent part of a very big part of what organizations procure, but it's also how they get work done. So I think, do you do you feel it's valuable, the fact that you've had that experience dealing with that kind of more, kind of like worker and talent centric side of things as well.
00;09;12;08 - 00;09;46;09
Nic Everett
Definitely. The ability to be able to articulate the difference between TA and services procurement is well, has been valuable. Definitely. And there are so many people that don't know the difference. And and often the fight that I found that we have is articulating that within the business that you work in. How do you get people on board who don't work in these areas to fully understand the implications of what is contingent, and then what is services procurement?
00;09;46;11 - 00;10;14;12
Nic Everett
And, you know, through our journey in Telent and having that problem statement of Ir35 and what that implication means for us as an organization, being able to identify myself and educate others as to what that really does look like, has been really key in bringing people on board and feeling very comfortable with what we're actually doing.
00;10;14;15 - 00;10;35;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So important. Like you say, to to get that internal validation. Misclassification is a big driver. So obviously was one of the key drivers for you guys when you when you kind of got started on this. So there's the kind of risk and compliance elements of managing the fact that these are, you know, ultimately people doing work on it.
00;10;35;24 - 00;11;01;10
Jonny Dunning
But the other side of it that I find really fascinating is it's it's it's just work capacity. So it's a, it's a channel to get things done. And I think if organizations, one of the things that's becoming clear is seeing how organizations are trying to line up the different channels, whether it's freelancers, whether it's contractors, internal capacity, outsourced services procurement, these are various different ways that the organization can get work done.
00;11;01;12 - 00;11;20;02
Jonny Dunning
And actually what we what we see is most often the gap is around the services procurement side because it's just less mature for most organizations and in the market in general. But when you map that together, well, then suddenly the organization can start to understand, you know, what's the best use of our resources? Is, is that something?
00;11;20;02 - 00;11;36;08
Jonny Dunning
So obviously, it'd be great to get on to talking about the journey, that you've been on within Telent with this. But I'd be interested to know whether that is something that has come up as well in terms of that overall understanding of like, what are our options for getting things done, what's our capacity and capability.
00;11;36;10 - 00;12;02;09
Nic Everett
Absolutely. So it's very much thought of, well, I, I use this route I go and phone up Joe Bloggs and I get what I want done. It's the way I've been doing it. I've put it in an email and, you know, I raise a purchase order and and jobs a good’un. So it is trying to educate and bring people along that journey of it's not really appropriate anymore.
00;12;02;10 - 00;12;25;23
Nic Everett
That isn't the way we do it. That's not how you're going to secure best practice. You know, we have instances within our problem statement before not only of IR35, but it was evident that suppliers also didn't have a clear cut set of requirements and deliverables to work to. So you then get creep. That's costly time impact.
00;12;25;23 - 00;12;44;02
Jonny Dunning
So what I'd like to come on to next is just to look at your journey, the services procurement journey within Telent so far. So so how did it how did it start? What were the kind of like first changes that that happened and what were the steps that have taken place?
00;12;44;04 - 00;13;09;25
Nic Everett
Yeah. Great question. Because it has been a great journey. Difficult but great. So the first thing was around IR35 that that was that was a catalyst to get the conversation going. And when you start to present to senior management that you can't truly articulate what your, purchasing habits are and how can you determine who is inside or outside Ir35?
00;13;09;25 - 00;13;33;20
Nic Everett
It raises a few eyebrows. So that's a few few people on edge. So it was then a task of, well, how do you combat it? And we had some conversations, internally in procurement and it was around. Well, we've got some MSPs that use certain VMS tools. So what does that look like? What's up and coming in the industry.
00;13;33;23 - 00;14;04;29
Nic Everett
And we found Zivio and Morsons, who are our current MSP. And it was really about educating the seniors who make the decisions on how this will combat that evidence based decision on whether or not it is inside or outside Ir35. It then became really apparent with additional benefits. A true system that looks at services procurement likes Zivio can offer.
00;14;05;05 - 00;14;32;03
Nic Everett
So that was then as I love to coined the term, it's self-service with guardrails. So you can have a huge volume of outsourced services which we do in Telent We have that volume, and being able to identify what's disguised, contingent workers. And once you sorted that out, that was actually quite easy to, to deal with because an MSP, has had years of dealing with contingent workforces.
00;14;32;05 - 00;14;58;12
Nic Everett
We see that in lots of different, roundtables and expos and things. So once that they were identified, that was triaged and dealt with, what we were left with is still a huge spend and requirement on services. So Zivio came into its own in that respect, and it was using the tool to say, right, what does good look like when it comes to articulating the services you need?
00;14;58;14 - 00;15;24;07
Nic Everett
How do you marry that with behaviors? How do you marry that with internal processes? Well, you know, we've got still a procurement lens on it. So how do you get value for money. And it really has been an interesting two years. So we're coming up into our third year and I can absolutely say hand on heart, it's been a fascinating journey.
00;15;24;10 - 00;16;01;08
Nic Everett
And we now have, teams that use the system for statements of work. We've adapted it to use something which we call safety critical. So that is where you do buy skill sets for maybe a shift or two. And that's a really fast reactive requirement. And Zivio was flexible. There was the agility to actually mold the system to answer that problem statement of how do you get someone that's potentially on their mobile phone in down in the underground doing work, and they need someone for the next shift?
00;16;01;14 - 00;16;34;11
Nic Everett
How can they, purchase that service and we've got to the point now where we're able to do that, and it's a completely yin yang from where we were. It's fabulous. So that's where we currently are. We're implementing the safety critical. We have statements of work. We can prove we're compliant. You know, we do have a decision tool that shows our stakeholders if it needs to be contingent worker or if it's actually a true outsourced service that they require.
00;16;34;11 - 00;16;41;28
Jonny Dunning
And that's it. So that decision tool is part of the MSP service. And they have a they're the kind of the they're using their expertise to program how that works.
00;16;42;00 - 00;17;07;12
Nic Everett
They are indeed. So they have IR 35 experts. And we've relied on them to produce a tool which they're very proud of, which they should be. And it enables us to make that initial decision to say, right, you need to follow this avenue and you or you can go down through H.R. And go and get your contingent workforce, and then you have the true STS determinations from there.
00;17;07;14 - 00;17;17;10
Nic Everett
But it's it really is that fork in the road that directs internal, stakeholders on where they should go. And it's been really, really valuable.
00;17;17;12 - 00;17;42;01
Jonny Dunning
And so from a technology kind of like user journey, if they go through Morsons FCOS tool. Yeah. Shout out to Chris Burke and the team at Morsons for that. So, so effectively a user journey would be they go through the, the status determination within the FCOS tool, and then they either go through the vendor management system, if it's a contingent workforce engagement, or they go through Zivio if it's a service procurement.
00;17;42;02 - 00;17;53;04
Jonny Dunning
SOW type engagement Yeah. That's it's brilliant to see that in practice because a lot of people, in my view, mistakenly think that's more complicated than actually is.
00;17;53;07 - 00;18;19;23
Nic Everett
Oh it's not it's 31 questions that you can do in ten minutes. And you then have, a certificate at the end that can be used. It's there on file as an audit trail. And you know as well as I do audit trails, paramount to making sure that you can prove you're compliant and having a tool where that is a one stop shop where you can nip out do your FCOS, come back, it records everything.
00;18;20;00 - 00;18;45;25
Nic Everett
Go out, put your statement of work out into the, supplier domain for answer. And it's just documented every single step of the way. And we've managed to load in loads of suppliers. And I think what I've heard is, well, how do you combat that pre-approved supply chain? Do you not have to go out just to anyone on Google, no you don’t.
00;18;45;28 - 00;19;11;06
Nic Everett
And we've locked it down, which has been a huge help. So we only use pre-approved audited suppliers. Yeah, because we're in a safety critical environment. We have to we can't just be going out to anybody. So again, those guardrails have been laid down. And we can then safely say to a project manager to an engineer, go and ask, go and ask that question.
00;19;11;06 - 00;19;41;21
Nic Everett
Use the portal. I've had the question. Aren't you afraid of your own job being lost because you've got a tool that does that? No, no, we it frees us up to do the far more complex activities and it's it's just a tool. It is a fabulous mechanism to get the non complex, high volume churn work out there that people can do it themselves and they can learn.
00;19;41;21 - 00;20;07;23
Nic Everett
And what better way to have a project manager or an engineer that can write their own scope, understand how the supplier responds and know how to articulate everything from scope to, standards that are needed, milestones. If they do it themselves, they're going to have a far better program than if I do it for them. They'll actually be able to understand it far better.
00;20;07;23 - 00;20;30;18
Nic Everett
So we're educating people and it's a success because we actually haven't had scope creep. We don't get settlement issues that can come from it at the end of a program, because Joe Bloggs said, you could do this. And we said, well, no, we can't, and we're not going to get it back from the client. You know, it stops those arguments.
00;20;30;24 - 00;21;06;12
Jonny Dunning
And that's significant potential cost savings in amongst that as well as the yeah, I think the self-service element is, is critical. Ultimately from from a scalability perspective as well for procurement, if you've got, you know, a, a sophisticated, well-educated procurement team like you guys have, it's still not going to be a massive team. So if you've got a self-service element to it and a technology enabler in the middle, then it allows you to manage that scale, keep an eye on things, not, you know, the procurement team isn't getting in anyone's way, is facilitating and adding using the technology to just basically streamline it?
00;21;06;15 - 00;21;25;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So as you say, it actually elevates what the procurement function can deliver both to the internal stakeholders and the supply chain, but also in terms of the data and the compliance that is delivered to the business overall. So so like you say, you know, some people might look at it and go, oh, is this going to take away my job.
00;21;25;00 - 00;21;26;25
Jonny Dunning
No, it's just going to make your job better. Really?
00;21;26;28 - 00;21;51;03
Nic Everett
Absolutely. I mean, to have the time and the capacity to actually go out and have those supplier relationships go out, find out who's new in the market, what are people up to if if we're bogged down with doing that churn of issuing scopes, looking at quotes, then when are we supposed to have time to do the more strategic bits, if you like.
00;21;51;03 - 00;22;14;10
Nic Everett
And that is strategic, that is looking at proposing to a business, okay. This is what your supply chain could look like. You've got X, Y and Z now. But actually these guys are doing some great technology, bits for you in the future with regards to, I don't know, CCTV or something. So let's look at them, get them in, let's have some conversations.
00;22;14;12 - 00;22;35;28
Nic Everett
But I couldn't do that if I was doing all of the the noise and the churn that would come through. So it's it will get better and better the more elements we add using Morson and Zivio as a platform, the more we get freed up to do that is those SRM activities, which is fab because that to me is where procurement should be.
00;22;35;29 - 00;22;48;03
Nic Everett
We are a strategic function. And, you know, it's it's all out there on LinkedIn with us as a community saying we are strategic, but how many times do I hear but yeah, I'm bogged down with all of the churn.
00;22;48;06 - 00;23;16;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And the this is something that I've heard CIPs talking about recently in terms of like bringing great talent into procurement and retaining great talent in procurement. It's I think it's impossible to do that, especially with talent coming into the market. Now, if you don't have effective use of processes and technology within your business, because if you hire someone who's really smart data, you know, they're going to be data driven.
00;23;16;19 - 00;23;34;25
Jonny Dunning
Everybody is these days and they're technology driven as well. And they'll use a lot of technology in their personal life. So if people are coming into some of these organizations where procurement are doing very manual processes and they're very transactional, I just can't see how they can retain talent. People are going to come in and think, this wasn't what I was expecting.
00;23;35;01 - 00;23;53;28
Jonny Dunning
So if there is a more sophisticated process, you know, that whole thing of like, is this going to take away my job? If people are working in that kind of manual transactional capacity, that's going to go away. That's the thing that's going to go away, not the strategic stuff, just like companies are not going to be able to do that because they won't be able to get the talent to do it.
00;23;53;28 - 00;23;55;12
Jonny Dunning
And it's just totally inefficient.
00;23;55;13 - 00;24;14;18
Nic Everett
Yeah, absolutely. And being in procurement for as long as I have, it's always well What are you going to do with your tail spend. Have you can you give me a list of your suppliers that do X, Y and Z? And so many times I've been in organizations where we don't have all of that data. We have spend keeps coming out of our eyes.
00;24;14;18 - 00;24;41;16
Nic Everett
Absolutely. Of course we do. But that knowledge of exactly what those suppliers do, what they can bring to the table, that's what we need to start focusing on when it comes to services, procurement and spending the time understanding that rather than that noise. And you know, the AI tool how great is that as part of Zivio. And that again it helps the noise.
00;24;41;17 - 00;24;45;25
Nic Everett
It helps the.
00;24;45;28 - 00;25;08;26
Nic Everett
It helps with the drafting of those requirements. So to your point of taking away those basic elements of a job, yeah great use the AI feature, then we can spend far more time doing the strategic bit. So I'm not surprised it's a topic of conversation with CIPS because I hear it in the areas that I'm in as well.
00;25;08;28 - 00;25;34;02
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I'd made this idea of making procurement truly more strategic. I think what you, what you've done and what you're doing within Telent and the broader group is very impactful and it's you can't argue with it. And, and you can put the data behind it. And that's something that's very important to the C-suite where they're trying to understand, like, you know, what is the most effective use of our resources?
00;25;34;02 - 00;25;54;06
Jonny Dunning
What are our risks? You know, how do we operate with the supply chain and things that you're talking about in terms of like understanding capabilities within your supply chain, that we're seeing a lot more now where people are using the services procurement supply chain within Zivio for things like horizon planning. Yes. So okay, future technology requirements coming through.
00;25;54;07 - 00;26;19;26
Jonny Dunning
You know, we need to be planning who's got that, who's who's upskilling themselves to be able to do that. What new suppliers do we need to bring into the supply chain. And we're seeing stuff like much more use of things like expressions of interest. Yeah. Where, where organizations are saying, okay, here's something that we've got coming through the pipeline, who has the capabilities to potentially do this and that just, you know, shortcuts it when that does need to be turned into an RFP and actually just pushed through.
00;26;19;29 - 00;26;50;22
Jonny Dunning
So yeah, I think it's undeniable, when you actually are doing what you guys are doing, that it does make it more strategic and you're reaping the benefits of that. And I think that for hopefully for a lot of people can take away that fear factor of just change because that's one of the blockers. And as I said before, you know, in terms of looking at that resistance to change, some of that would have come for you guys at the very beginning of the process in terms of getting that business case in place.
00;26;50;25 - 00;27;13;03
Jonny Dunning
So if we if you kind of look back to that initial business case, obviously there were risks around misclassification, which were a significant catalyst for it. But what if you look at the hurdles around creating a business case? What kind of got Telent through those hurdles? What what would you see as the kind of main areas where the rest of the business might sort of go, we don't normally do that.
00;27;13;03 - 00;27;17;12
Jonny Dunning
Or do we really need to do this? What were the kind of because nobody really likes change, do they?
00;27;17;13 - 00;27;49;12
Nic Everett
No.No. We all fight against change. You get the odd few that thrive in it. Yeah, yeah. So really it was the Ir35, which was, the strapline. Yeah, that's what got us in front of, the senior leadership team. And it was very much about the savings that you could make if you put through statements of work with correct scopes, and went out competitively to your suppliers.
00;27;49;12 - 00;27;50;08
Jonny Dunning
Massive. That's it.
00;27;50;13 - 00;28;16;13
Nic Everett
And by having that sold as a self service really piqued the interest of all senior leadership team. It really helped that they are a friendly bunch. And actually you can have those discussions. So putting the business case together took a long time. It went through numerous iterations to to really get it right in its articulation of exactly what it could do.
00;28;16;16 - 00;28;35;17
Nic Everett
You know, in an ideal world, we should be using something for at least a year before we go for a business case, because then you can really understand what it does, right? We don't get that as a luxury. You have to obviously get it signed off before you use it first. Trial periods are sometimes acknowledged and used.
00;28;35;23 - 00;29;03;05
Nic Everett
We didn't have that luxury. So it really was about identifying those true benefits. So for us it was the compliance, the threat of HMRC coming after you. And then it was around the cost savings. What could it drive for the business. And how do you get something to either be cost neutral or cost positive. So by suggesting that using it competitively, we could save the fee that it would cost.
00;29;03;10 - 00;29;10;12
Nic Everett
Yeah. Essentially in a down and dirty way. That's that's what ended up being the pass mark for, for it to be signed off.
00;29;10;14 - 00;29;32;29
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. That's really interesting. And it's like you say when you tie in to that kind of overall value proposition and the savings side of it, there's quite a few different elements as the efficiency side of it. There's the, the risks, you know, risk mitigation around potential fines and misclassification and things like that. But then there's savings around things like settlements or savings around things like getting better prices at suppliers because more of them are going through a competitive process.
00;29;33;01 - 00;29;55;04
Jonny Dunning
Yep. That's where it really starts to add up. And it's interesting what you said around not having had the luxury of running a trial period, that I think my own personal viewpoint is that if technology doesn't allow organizations or if the service that people take on doesn't allow people to run a proof of concept when they want to, I think that can significantly hold the market back.
00;29;55;04 - 00;30;12;09
Jonny Dunning
And I think that I feel like that's one of the things that's possibly happened in services procurement, where organizations, you know, the spend is always big. Yes. So if you try and eat the whole elephant at once, that's tricky. The way that you guys have done it, where you've basically iterated take in one area, build up to another area, build out to another area.
00;30;12;09 - 00;30;34;24
Jonny Dunning
I think that's been fantastic. You know, best practice, evidence of how to do it and how to roll out very successfully within an organization. But basically, if you try to eat the whole elephant at once, it just doesn't move. People just don't do it. And if the technology, if the technology can't do it on a smaller scale to start with or the service provider can't run a POC, I think that is a significant hurdle for the broader industry.
00;30;35;01 - 00;30;51;10
Jonny Dunning
So that's something that in terms of how we operate and how we operate with our MSP partners, like Morsons and others, that's something that I'm I'm perfect personally, a strong advocate of in the market because sometimes these business cases have to have that to start with.
00;30;51;12 - 00;31;14;07
Nic Everett
they do they do. And it's it's an ideal world. Right. But we did carve it up. We we certainly didn't take it all on to start with. It would not have worked. Big bang would not have worked in, the behaviors that we have within our organization, within the technology area of with engineering, I think it's safe to say that other people can resonate.
00;31;14;07 - 00;31;26;09
Nic Everett
It's it's not it's relationships that have been there for 20, 25 years. And they know who they like. They, you know, they get to know each other's kids, for Christ’s sake.
00;31;26;09 - 00;31;26;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Yeah.
00;31;26;27 - 00;32;01;16
Nic Everett
It's it's quite incestuous in, in our, in our area say it's taking sections and going, right. Let's try it. You can have a voice. You use it. Why don't you give us feedback once you've used it. And by empowering the users where it's not just a dictatorship, that's really helped and it's something that I'm really keen on. And I'd tell, the stakeholders during training that if you've got ideas, then it can morph, it can change.
00;32;01;16 - 00;32;26;24
Nic Everett
This isn't rigid. And if you've got a voice, voice, you know, I'm not here to dictate to you. I'm here to give you a route that is compliant. Yep. But if you have ideas on what's missing, let me know. And that does build, a really good adherence to to what we're doing. And it's always people in and it is it's a massive trust.
00;32;26;24 - 00;32;46;19
Nic Everett
That's a really good way of putting it because, you know, invalidating people's thoughts or beliefs on what they're doing operationally. You're saying, oh, we need to do this because of x, y, z. But actually if we need to tweak it, if we need to bend it to do something that it's not currently doing articulated to us, tell us and, and we can work together.
00;32;46;19 - 00;32;55;06
Nic Everett
And that that having that advocate on board as well during roll out helped significantly.
00;32;55;09 - 00;33;19;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And and that sort of feedback when it comes into whether it's the MSP or whether it's us as a technology provider is hugely beneficial because I think one of the things that, you know, we've both identified as being extremely important within services procurement is flexibility. Yes. You know, ultimately the underlying workflow of a statement of work, the underlying services procurement process is pretty standardized across organizations, across industries.
00;33;19;24 - 00;33;52;25
Jonny Dunning
It's, you know, the way that that contractual vehicle operates. But there's a lot of configuration that needs to be considered around that, which is where the complexity comes into it. Because every organization works differently. If you're in the chemicals industry versus engineering versus media, there's different things that need to be taken into consideration. Even if the underlying concept is still very much the same, which is where certainly from my point of view, I'm very passionate about the need for specialist technology to solve this problem because, it's different to contingent workforce.
00;33;52;25 - 00;34;17;18
Jonny Dunning
You're not just buying an individual's time, you're you're buying an output from a service provider, whatever that output might be. And it's massive. It's worth a huge amount of money. It's like 20 trillion global spend. So so this for me is where it's really interesting to see. The, the market trying to understand how they need to actually segment this and address it separately.
00;34;17;21 - 00;34;42;13
Jonny Dunning
And it brings me back to the point I was making earlier about ultimately with with you guys, it's a great example of a contingent workforce program and a services procurement program basically working beautifully in tandem. You know, the VMS process is not it works beautifully for that side of it. The service procurement process goes through a dedicated services procurement system in Zivio and it basically has a nice entry point that pushes people down the right route.
00;34;42;21 - 00;35;02;03
Jonny Dunning
And then obviously you can collect your data and analyze, you know, the numbers at the end of it in a centralized view. So I think that is another area where people assume it's going to be more complicated than it needs to be. But really, what you guys have done a great job of working with Morsons team and our team is to engineer a user experience.
00;35;02;06 - 00;35;17;17
Jonny Dunning
Yes, that actually works for people, takes into consideration the type of processes you have in place, how Telent operate as a business, the requirements that are specific to that. And ultimately, I would like to think you've made people's lives easier in terms of the buying process.
00;35;17;24 - 00;35;44;22
Nic Everett
I really hope so. You’d have to ask all of them Jonny. But yeah, it's the flexibility. And the ease is crucial if you're going to sell anything to any stakeholder. And it's it's been great, actually. It's been hard and it's not going to solve world peace or anything like that, but it's it's been really good because it's fascinating.
00;35;44;23 - 00;35;59;22
Nic Everett
Yeah. How to bend and mold into different requirements. And that back to our original point of what intrigues me, which is problem solving. What drives me is, is all around that. So yeah, it's been really good.
00;35;59;24 - 00;36;20;17
Jonny Dunning
And what about the supplier angle? Because that's something where people also, like you say there's long term relationships, but I think is this kind of a lot to it in the sense that, you know, if if you look at before and after, you know, what are some are some suppliers in a much better position now where they're not missing out and stuff and people have these concerns.
00;36;20;17 - 00;36;25;22
Jonny Dunning
But from your point of view, what's the supplier element of that journey been like?
00;36;25;24 - 00;36;57;23
Nic Everett
Oh, that's a good one because, it was quite sticky to start with. Yeah. You know, resistance to change. We've always done it this way. Don't understand why you're making us do more work. And again, it's perception over reality. What does it actually mean from a step by step process for them to essentially get paid? Yeah. And when you break it down into okay, you've potentially had arguments or discussions, to get yourself paid for other jobs.
00;36;57;23 - 00;37;31;01
Nic Everett
But actually, if I can say to you, if you go down this route, then you're far more likely to get paid for what you've actually done, because it's been articulated properly, because there's been key milestones, you've then stuck to what you said you were going to do. Far easier to to get paid. And that's really been my mantra about it, is once you get up to speed with using anything, mobile phones, you know, we're both of a similar age where mobile phones were new to us after our, initial teenage years.
00;37;31;01 - 00;37;50;11
Nic Everett
And it's and it's getting used to something. As soon as you get used to something, it becomes easier, it becomes second nature. So again, it's just articulating that to people saying, yes, this is quite painful right now. I acknowledge that. But give it time and give it six months. And before you know it, it's just part of your routine.
00;37;50;11 - 00;38;10;15
Nic Everett
And and that's what we have found. What they do love, which we've had feedback, is because of the way we're utilizing the information, is you get a supplier profile. Yeah, it's their sales pitch. Yeah. And that goes to the whole of the business, you know, that's there and available. And what we've done to really elevate that is we're going to start using spotlights.
00;38;10;18 - 00;38;40;29
Nic Everett
So on intranet pages and within the business it's kind of going in. It's taking that profile. The supplier owns it I don't need to chase them. It's that that is their carrot to say, keep your profile updated and then we'll use that spotlight to tell the business what you do, what you're available for doing. Because where we're quite rigid in what the suppliers are allowed to do from a safety perspective and compliance.
00;38;40;29 - 00;39;04;27
Nic Everett
And this enables us to go right. Well, they can do this if you want that. Let's get them audited. Let's get that skill set flagged in the system for them to be able to do. And what it does is it reduces that, scope creep on site where they haven't actually been audited, fit for doing that work and things like that do happen.
00;39;04;27 - 00;39;24;13
Nic Everett
You know, life happens, but we're trying to then utilize some of the aspects within Zivio to help with that. And that's what's been really key. And that's actually a really good point at the suppliers. Some of them have actually said this is really good. We've not seen this before. Yeah. And so it helps us, but it also helps them.
00;39;24;13 - 00;39;30;13
Nic Everett
So yeah, it's it's fab and it's just pulling these things out and, and working with it in quite a creative way.
00;39;30;16 - 00;39;57;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And that to me sounds like proper collaboration. Yeah. You know ultimately they are an extended part of your organization. I had a great conversation with a chap called Niul Burton recently who's ex EY and he described this, this term of the extended enterprise. Yeah. And I thought that was a great way to put it because they are, you know, fundamentally you're all working as a team to get the job done for your end customer.
00;39;57;21 - 00;40;16;17
Jonny Dunning
So the ability to collaborate like that and actually recognize supplier performance, where they're doing a great job, understand why changes are happening, because it might not be the suppliers fault that something gets extended or delayed, or it could be all sorts of factors that play into it. Having that clarity and that transparency. Again, like you say, it's perception versus reality.
00;40;16;19 - 00;40;32;06
Jonny Dunning
Sometimes people look at that and go, oh, my supply chain won’t like that. Or suppliers might think, oh, hang on. We being you know, you're kind of, you know, putting, putting us under the microscope here. But ultimately it's about understanding what's required, delivering on promises and actually having the opportunities to do great work and be recognized for it.
00;40;32;13 - 00;40;53;07
Nic Everett
Absolutely. And I've been having conversations with people where the supplier said, nope, not doing it. I don't want to be part of this. And it's, well, why not? What have you got to hide if you've got nothing to hide? If you are genuine in what you believe you can provide to me as a service, you do this. No problem.
00;40;53;09 - 00;41;18;22
Nic Everett
And I think that for me has been quite insightful as to that conversation, which I'm hoping other people can resonate with, which is, well, I've used him for years. Well that's great and I appreciate that. However, if they're not willing to come on to a system and actually prove what they can do, then there's something a bit fishy about that.
00;41;18;23 - 00;41;41;20
Nic Everett
Yeah. So therefore let's not use them. So it's it can really work. Putting something like this in place can really help you understand that supply chain, weed out the ones that aren't applicable anymore. Create great relationships with the ones that you want to build that strategy with your business units. What are we going to do in the next five years?
00;41;41;20 - 00;42;14;09
Nic Everett
Okay, who are we going to use? What's the capacity of all of those suppliers? Are we putting too much in with one supplier? Okay, let's go somewhere else. Do we have the ability to use the tool and mold it to do something completely different, like safety critical? That isn't statement of works. It's an availability measure. It's it's really just taking that roadmap and that maturity path that I'm so much enjoying right now to really get it to work for the business and the suppliers.
00;42;14;09 - 00;42;20;16
Nic Everett
And they have fedback that it's really working. They are getting paid and for me, that's a win win.
00;42;20;19 - 00;42;29;12
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And like you say, it creates more visibility of this. Those suppliers and their capabilities across your organization that they wouldn't have if they're just in somebody's black book.
00;42;29;12 - 00;42;30;21
Nic Everett
Absolutely.
00;42;30;23 - 00;42;53;02
Jonny Dunning
I think the other side of it that's really interesting, and something I'm very passionate about in the market is, you know, there are lots of reasons why organizations should address services procurement. Yeah, I'd say primarily because for most organizations, literally most organizations, I say this is a manual or semi manual process. They don't have control. They don't have visibility.
00;42;53;02 - 00;43;12;13
Jonny Dunning
It's all over the place. And it's a big area of spend, you know, on average it's like 50% of organizational spend across industries, locations, etc.. But the the ability to actually have a strategic understanding of how you're going to get work done in the future, that's the most critical thing to me. And it's like, can you actually get stuff done?
00;43;12;15 - 00;43;35;12
Jonny Dunning
Can you get it done when you need to? Can you actually, take on new tasks that require new skills? How flexible and adaptable are you to that? And if an organization has no control or visibility over their services supply chain, they are going to lose. They are going to be out competed by people who are doing it properly, like you guys, where you have the ability to go to market effectively and get work done.
00;43;35;15 - 00;43;53;20
Jonny Dunning
So I think that is the that's the ultimate business driver for me. There are obviously things like, you know, misclassification, a very strong drivers, compliance risk, financial risk, all sorts of other things. But ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, when everything's moving as quickly as it is right now for the suppliers as well, they're going to miss out on stuff.
00;43;53;20 - 00;44;12;22
Jonny Dunning
If they're not doing things effectively and they're not using automation. Yep. And AI where it is relevant. I just think that's the stark reality of it to me is you take company A and company B, both of them spend loads of money on buying services and getting work done in that way. And it's something that's generally increasing in the market, that kind of output based delivery.
00;44;12;24 - 00;44;19;04
Jonny Dunning
If company A has got it nailed, they've got a really dialed in process and they've got visibility and data. They're going to outcompete company B.
00;44;19;07 - 00;44;38;27
Nic Everett
Yeah they will. And what ties into that as well, which is really a hot topic at the moment. And that is skills. You know you've got aged population in the tech space. Yeah. And you know we're going to see quite a lot of retirements coming up in the next 5, 10 years. And it's that knowledge in that skill set that's lost there.
00;44;38;27 - 00;45;21;07
Nic Everett
A lot of especially in the public sector, is, you know, that there's not a huge amount of money and investment as, as we can all, listen to with the budgets. So it's about sweating assets as well. In certain industries, if you lose that technology experience and knowledge, it and you haven't got sight of what your suppliers are doing to make sure that they have those skill sets, apprenticeship programs, learning training, if you don't have the time, capacity or even a list of who you need to go to to have those conversations, how can you ever be ready for a five year plan?
00;45;21;09 - 00;45;42;02
Nic Everett
And you know, to your point, you just push yourself out of the market, because if you've then got to be only reactive in that moment in time to go to a supplier base and say, can you do this for me? In the technology realm, they quite frankly could turn around, okay, but we don't have that anymore because they all retired over the last five years.
00;45;42;05 - 00;45;55;29
Nic Everett
So yes, it's imperative that we know what our suppliers are doing. What's their roadmaps, how are they going to make sure that they're going to be around and being able to support in the industry five, ten years from now?
00;45;56;01 - 00;46;26;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, and it comes back to that overall work capacity and capability. The organization has what they can do with their internal teams. Yeah, they have their contracts and temp arrangements. They may be engaged and freelancers or have a direct sourcing program for for some contingent workers. And then they have their services supply chain, all of which fit into a kind of skills or capability matrix where the organization, if it has the right data and it has the right processes, can be agile and say, here's some work, what's the best way for us to do it?
00;46;26;02 - 00;46;41;15
Jonny Dunning
Last year, this is how we filtered all the different work through all the different, work delivery channels. This is what we're going to focus on this year. This is what we're going to highlight. These are the areas of risk. These are the areas of opportunity. It's just doing proper business really isn't it. It's being it's being effective.
00;46;41;18 - 00;46;51;00
Nic Everett
Absolutely. I've had one supplier that decided to get accredited in a completely different field, because they had the right access rights to site.
00;46;51;01 - 00;46;51;15
Jonny Dunning
Okay.
00;46;51;17 - 00;47;20;08
Nic Everett
But they then upskilled themselves in something different. Well, that's just enabled them to get more business because they've had that foresight into, well, not many other people are there, are they? Let's let's upskill our own teams. You know, while some industries are not spending the money at the moment, which we do have in some of our customer bases because they are public organizations, then what are they going to do with their staff?
00;47;20;11 - 00;47;50;11
Nic Everett
You know, their work is how are they going to feed that? So they stick around and they don't go to another competitor down the road. So by upskilling and sort of cross-pollinating an engineer to do different engineering activities in a different area, that to me is brilliant. That is an example of how it should work, because they've had that conversation with us openly about what's on our roadmap and what can they do to be part of that.
00;47;50;13 - 00;48;07;16
Jonny Dunning
And it's that two way collaboration that really makes the magic happen. Because if you're saying to them, okay, these are some of the requirements we're going to have coming down the line, you've made them aware of that. Now they can make those decisions. They can invest in that themselves without that ability to communicate. And I think again, it comes back to that self-service nature.
00;48;07;23 - 00;48;29;07
Jonny Dunning
You know, something that's absolutely core to us at Zivio is enabling that self-service not just for the buying population, but also for the supply chain. Yeah. And and actually that's where procurement can sit in the middle. And they can that can be very hands off or they can layer on a bit more control where required. But ultimately they can orchestrate the process and they can have visibility and they can add their value.
00;48;29;10 - 00;48;32;25
Jonny Dunning
And then it just pushes everything into a completely different way of operating.
00;48;32;27 - 00;48;33;27
Nic Everett
Yeah.
00;48;34;00 - 00;48;51;14
Jonny Dunning
Nice. Okay. So so we we know that this is great for companies to do this. And you've had a fantastic experience of making it happen. And the reality and the great results that you guys are getting from it and all the stuff you're kind of I love the fact, you know, when I have these conversations with you, it's it's very always about what's next.
00;48;51;14 - 00;49;08;26
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Which I think is fantastic because I think that's more helpful for people in the market in the sense that you're very honest about the challenges, the trials and tribulations, the journey that you've been on. But if you if you look around the market and you look at other organizations, that might be a very early stage of, you know, like a complete immaturity.
00;49;08;28 - 00;49;18;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. With services, procurement. What do you think are what would you imagine are the key things that are holding them back?
00;49;18;05 - 00;49;54;04
Nic Everett
How to articulate to a budget holder senior leaders on what is available in the market to actually solve that problem? It's quite daunting. I think it doesn’t matter how senior you are. It's really daunting trying to bring someone along a journey that you might have in your head. You might have a PowerPoint presentation, but until you can actually articulate properly for that business, not for someone else's business, but for yours, how that's going to impact and driver benefit, no matter what benefit that is.
00;49;54;04 - 00;50;22;18
Nic Everett
We've spoken about compliance, cost savings and all of that. You know, it's I think it's just starting the conversation and if I was to give my two pennies worth for it, it's having a conversation with yourselves, for example, and going, right, this is my problem statement, how you've got experience with multiple companies putting this in place, what have others done?
00;50;22;20 - 00;50;49;15
Nic Everett
And I'm all for using people in a nice way, obviously, for their expertise. You know, we all don't know everything. And egos should not be part of this whatsoever. And it's really trying to understand what your status is now. And I think that's sometimes even quite hard to articulate because it can be quite daunting. Lots and lots of noise, you know, you spend and then you're going, but I don't know what all of them do.
00;50;49;18 - 00;51;10;27
Nic Everett
So it's really it is starting with that. What's what's your need. What's your bucket. Why do you buy services. You know it's your organization. Basically you don't want to get loads of permanent people. Do. They want to go down the contingent work rate and have them sitting in your team, or do you truly need it outsourced and deliverable based?
00;51;11;00 - 00;51;36;01
Nic Everett
And then once you can start to carve that up as as a landscape through your organization, you can then go, okay, Jonny, it's time for a chat. How are we going to use technology to aid us in getting clarity, compliance, a better relationship with our supply chain, a better relationship with our stakeholders. Don't forget, they love it where me know as a procurement person what they do.
00;51;36;05 - 00;51;38;19
Nic Everett
Yeah. So yeah that's.
00;51;38;21 - 00;52;13;04
Jonny Dunning
All there is some great advice in there. Yeah. And it's and like you say it's getting started. It's I like the way you, you put across that kind of like segmenting the landscape and understanding that that kind of current status. Set up. And like you say, it's understanding what's available in the market in terms of the various different technology vendors that there are that are addressing or crossing over with this space and also understanding the service provider landscape as well, where more of the kind of traditionally like workforce solutions companies or staffing organizations are bringing in specific procurement expertise.
00;52;13;06 - 00;52;37;14
Jonny Dunning
You know, in some cases, specifically services procurement SMEs to help them, which is fantastic to see. Because obviously they're making that transition from looking after the contingent workforce side of things for organizations to then starting to say, okay, well, we can actually help you with your services supply chain. It is different. They'll use different processes, they'll use different expertise, they'll use different technology in a lot of cases.
00;52;37;17 - 00;52;55;06
Jonny Dunning
But it can be done, as is evidenced by what you guys have achieved. And I think it is a real opportunity because companies, you know, why would they, you know, take on a service, an external service to help with this side of things. Well, there's a lot of compliance and there's a lot of moving parts to it.
00;52;55;06 - 00;53;12;02
Jonny Dunning
And procurement teams are pretty lean. So if you bring in a service provider who's also underpinning it with technology, then that can really get you off the ground and get you moving and allow the procurement team to do what they need to do. So I think it's it feels like that awareness of what service providers are, that are out there.
00;53;12;02 - 00;53;29;19
Jonny Dunning
How can I help you? What technology is available in the market to try and solve these problems? Yeah. And then if it's not going to be a one size fits all for each organization, they can look at what's going to work for them. But that's why I think these sort of conversations, hearing what you've got to say is so important, because it's just making people aware of the fact that there are solutions out.
00;53;29;19 - 00;53;59;07
Nic Everett
There, 100% go to round tables, you know, go and speak to peers in the industry, use LinkedIn. It's it's knowledge gathering. The more you know, the better you can articulate and the better choices you can make. Because you're right, one size does not fit. All I know that entirely is 100% correct. And I'm lucky that we have found a solution that means that we can be agile against our requirements, but yet it's it is about just getting out there listening to podcasts.
00;53;59;07 - 00;54;06;15
Nic Everett
Yeah. And, and really sort of understanding, like you say, what, what is out there? What's the art of the possible.
00;54;06;17 - 00;54;36;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's brilliant. I, I'm, I'm so pleased to see more voices in the market now. More people talking about this and articulating it and just, you know, people if people can come together and discuss the problems that exist around it, that's, you know, hugely beneficial. And, you know, in some cases, you look at those conversations is quite therapeutic for people because people sometimes are sitting there in their organization, maybe feeling slightly isolated, feeling like, oh, we're the only ones with this problem, this is a complete mess, or this is which is this how do all the people have these problems?
00;54;37;04 - 00;54;56;15
Jonny Dunning
And actually recognizing that these are problems that exist in most organizations and obviously every organization is slightly different. But but these are problems that exist across the board in what I see. So I think just having these peer to peer conversations, it just opens up that that potential for people to think, okay, there's an opportunity to address this.
00;54;56;18 - 00;55;00;11
Nic Everett
Yeah. And no question is a stupid question.
00;55;00;13 - 00;55;15;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And one of the things that I think is quite interesting is that, I think it takes a certain type of person to even want to address service in the first place. So you say problem solving mentality, but also, you know, kind of got to be a little bit willing to put your head above the parapet, haven't you.
00;55;15;15 - 00;55;18;01
Nic Everett
Yeah. You gotta have some balls.
00;55;18;08 - 00;55;19;19
Jonny Dunning
You've got to take a bit of risk haven’t you?
00;55;19;23 - 00;55;21;06
Nic Everett
And girls can have that too.
00;55;21;13 - 00;55;22;00
Jonny Dunning
100%
00;55;22;00 - 00;55;45;13
Nic Everett
Say you're right. It's I think it helps if you've got not necessarily a passion for it, but if you're really interested in it as well as a subject matter plus, then yet you're a bit of a problem solver. I'm a massively creative person, so I see it from a lens of problem solving. But, how can I make it something joyous for people?
00;55;45;15 - 00;56;12;08
Nic Everett
Because that's where I go to. I get eyes rolls all the time from engineers, but with a bit of humor we can get past it. So, yeah, I think just just go for it, start the conversations, and don't be scared to have really detailed, non glamorous conversations. And what I mean by that is, you know, to the point of well what did you put in your PowerPoint to actually get that message across.
00;56;12;12 - 00;56;39;01
Nic Everett
Because we can all have these very high level conversations of business case together, but someone might not even know where to start with that. Yeah. And I think it's really key. And what I've had feedback on is keep it relatable when we're having these conversations. Don't gate keep things. There is no need for that whatsoever. There is, opportunities for us all in other professions.
00;56;39;01 - 00;57;00;20
Nic Everett
So let's actually get down to the nitty gritty. What did you say? What what areas did you take is sort of your your benefit profile? What what was said back? What kind of questions did you get asked from your board? You know, things like that. Why can't we have those granular, detailed conversations? Why does it have to be, you know, someone speaks out with a thesaurus, you know?
00;57;00;24 - 00;57;15;28
Nic Everett
Yeah, I think I get really, frustrated sometimes with some of those conversations where it is it feels like gatekeeping because they're just using really big words. Yeah, but actually, let's get into the detail because we should be helping each other.
00;57;16;05 - 00;57;50;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, exactly. There's nothing to be lost between organizations by sharing best practice on this sort of stuff. And it elevates the procurement function. Yeah. And it's interesting now starting to see more dedicated roles, specifically looking at the procurement of services across organizations. Yeah, it's something I find fascinating because coming from a more of a procurement technology angle, rather than being a practitioner by background, I look at the way that organizations buy things, and I just very simply from a technology perspective, I break it down and say, well, this is how organizations buy goods.
00;57;50;29 - 00;58;14;07
Jonny Dunning
Where you're buying a, a simple or relatively simple thing. It's simple in the sense that you can identify what it is, you can measure it, you can compare it all those sorts of things. But it's got a complicated supply chain. So that's one set of problems that needs to be solved by technology in a certain way, which is actually very well solved by the kind of traditional procurement suite where you've got your guided buying, your kind of cataloging and all this sort of stuff.
00;58;14;09 - 00;58;44;21
Jonny Dunning
Then organizations, buy people. So you're named individual for a period of time, contractors, temps, all that sort of stuff. That, again, is a very well solved technical solution. Your vendor management system providers that actually manage that process that have been around for 20 plus years now. So that's a fairly well solved problem. And then you've got the way the organizations buy services where it's the reverse of goods, simple supply chain, but complex thing, hard to define, hard to measure, hard to compare.
00;58;44;24 - 00;59;04;27
Jonny Dunning
So I kind of look at the way the organizations buy things and say you either buying a thing, a person or a service, but the way that procurement is traditionally broken down within organizations is not doesn't necessarily reflect that or hasn't reflected that. And it's more taken from a point of view of direct. This is direct. This is indirect, yes.
00;59;04;27 - 00;59;30;04
Jonny Dunning
But both of them could be a mix. And it depends what kind of organization you are. If you're a manufacturing organization within your, direct spend is going to be more goods, materials if you're, a consulting firm or, you know, a building consulting firm, for example, your direct spend is all going to be services because it's basically going to be subcontracted architectural, consultancy, engineering consultancy, building consultancy.
00;59;30;08 - 01;00;08;04
Nic Everett
You have a mix. Yeah. So you can have a subcontract which defines that. You need equipment and you don't want to free issue it. So you want them to take full on that responsibility of buying the goods to do the job as well. But that brings in complexity. So you're right. It's not just it's it's not simple. And the way that you need to articulate it in your terms and conditions or contract or framework, then you've got flow downs, potentially from your own customer on how you want that subcontractor to behave on site.
01;00;08;10 - 01;00;36;20
Nic Everett
But what we've done, and implemented, which is another decision tree, so it's around that complexity. So if you have, more than 40% equipment in your request, you have to come to procurement because that enables us then to go and do your bill of materials and get you the right prices. You know, we use Cisco HPE in support that comes with its own complexities from our contractual relationships with them.
01;00;36;23 - 01;00;55;28
Nic Everett
So in that decision tree, we we have built a complexity matrix that if you take one or more of those boxes, then you utilize procurement. We've got the expertise to really help you buy it in the right way. We still might say, actually, do you know what? We'll take that bit separate, but put the rest through the Zivio route.
01;00;56;05 - 01;01;09;06
Nic Everett
But it gives the ability for us to to review that complex requirement first. But if you don't take any of those, then you can just walk on straight through and just do it yourself. Yeah.
01;01;09;08 - 01;01;38;09
Jonny Dunning
And that's where I'm seeing some change in the market where rather than necessarily having a direct, just a purely direct versus indirect approach or, you know, obviously most organizations are working on a category strategy. Some of those, you know, services will go across multiple categories, but seeing more organizations taking a route to say this is how we need to address services is really interesting, because it's sort of it's an evolution of how, procurement, look at the world.
01;01;38;13 - 01;01;42;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I find that really fascinating talking about evolution.
01;01;42;03 - 01;01;43;12
Nic Everett
Yes.
01;01;43;14 - 01;02;03;13
Jonny Dunning
I want to just come on to an area that I know you've got a particular interest. I know you were always interested in, in technology, and you're very interested in the AI side of things. In terms of where you see this going, the future of this, what do you see as a kind of future roadmap for your own organization and also for the market?
01;02;03;19 - 01;02;06;11
Jonny Dunning
And how do you see AI potentially playing into that?
01;02;06;12 - 01;02;30;19
Nic Everett
That's such a good question. So at the moment it's we're utilizing it for, people that don't know how to write scopes properly. Or it's something that they just need a refresher on, maybe. And the way in which AI has helped us is, say, go play with it. Yeah, okay. Is it put in your requirement, like copy paste.
01;02;30;19 - 01;03;00;16
Nic Everett
What if your customer sent you something. Copy paste that in if you need to. But see what AI triggers as a set of considerations. So we all know that there's gaps in AI. So you should never just not read it and use it. But what the AI is doing is going right. I'm taking what your question is, and I'm going to give you a template scope and these are considerations you need to make.
01;03;00;16 - 01;03;28;07
Nic Everett
Well, nine times out of ten a lot of our stakeholders don't know that you've got to consider, what your milestones are going to be versus any special criteria that you need. And what the AI is doing is giving you examples so it can bring it to life. This all drives the ability to send to a set of suppliers a scope that makes complete sense and enables good in, good out.
01;03;28;08 - 01;03;57;21
Nic Everett
Yeah, you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out and then you just in a whole world of pain. So that's great. We also have the ability to then analyze what the supplier sends back from a risk profile. How cool is that. Yeah. So you can then if you don't have procurement sat on your shoulder reviewing it because this is all about self-service with guardrails we can use that analyzer of an AI to go, okay, well the supplier has put all this in
01;03;57;24 - 01;04;24;08
Nic Everett
What am I missing. So what does that mean for me as a business as a purchaser. What does that do. Because it's taking into consideration what you've asked as your exam question and then it's gone. Well you suppliers answer this. These are the gaps honestly. It's it's next level. And I think from again from the fact that we in procurement we need to be used for for the more complex the more strategic stuff.
01;04;24;15 - 01;04;51;23
Nic Everett
This is great. This basically tells that stakeholder what their risks could potentially be, and it gives them that learning curve as well to be better in the future. I think it's great. And if we can get it AI to streamline and take the noise and eventually be learn from all of what gets put in over a couple of years from that business.
01;04;51;23 - 01;05;15;20
Nic Everett
I say from our business what we ask for, because we sometimes do get quite a lot of repetitive requirements. Well, eventually you could just say, I need a CCTV installation and it will automatically come up with something that has been built on previous knowledge that has been input into the system. So again, time saving gives good in you get get out.
01;05;15;23 - 01;05;37;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's it's amazing how taking that information that specific to your organization that's kind of like, you know kept within the boundaries of your organization and then augmenting it with all of the other information. The an AI large language model will have access to. You're basically just, you know, you're using the maximum amount of data possible to try and make the right decisions.
01;05;37;04 - 01;06;00;03
Jonny Dunning
I had a really interesting conversation, recently listening to some, kind of procure tech investors talking about AI. There's talk about the AI bubble at the moment. And I think this, you know, it seems pretty obvious that some of the AI investments are overvalued at the moment. But ultimately, this still is a complete, you know, industrial revolution kind of type change.
01;06;00;03 - 01;06;38;04
Jonny Dunning
That's, that's occurring. But it was interesting listening to, you know, tech tech companies that are kind of saying, well, if we're raising investment with the VC, how front and center should AI be? And it was really interesting to hear the response of, like, well, it's not just about AI, it's about what problem you solving. And I think from our point of view, the, the ability to use AI at different points within that services procurement lifecycle to create a better user journey has been absolutely game changing for us in the sense that it's not it's not kind of putting the AI first is putting the problem first.
01;06;38;06 - 01;06;58;26
Jonny Dunning
What's the problem? And and like you say, in being able to analyze responses flagged risks, you know, help with scope creation, help with supply recommendations and understanding background and things like that, summarizing bids and things like that. All it does is it just adds to the process of what a human is doing and actually just, you know, just creates efficiencies, speeds up.
01;06;58;27 - 01;07;27;22
Nic Everett
Yeah. You know, I don’t know if anyone else can resonate with this, but the amount of times I've spent hours putting stuff into Excel on a comparison of rates and tasks and time it takes to do that task, to understand what my supplier is giving me actually makes perfect sense against how many hours it takes to lay certain, meters of cable and and to have AI that can just streamline that for me.
01;07;27;24 - 01;07;50;22
Nic Everett
Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? It's it's a tool that makes my life easier. It's nothing to be feared of if you're using it in that capacity, would I want it to make my life choices? Absolutely not. From from a very task perspective. Why are we not making life easy for ourselves? Because that's where it comes into its own, making the tasks easier.
01;07;50;27 - 01;08;14;15
Nic Everett
So I've got more time to have conversations using that, analyze data from my responses on my bid and I can then be informed having those discussions and going, well, I can see where you're more expensive. I can see where you probably have misjudged how long it's going to take you to do that task, because I know better, but it flags that up and up and I think that's just great.
01;08;14;15 - 01;08;21;10
Nic Everett
It's, it's that's where I see AI being truly of a benefit in our procurement world
01;08;21;12 - 01;08;46;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think from a tech service provider point of view, the onus of responsibility on people like Zivio and, you know, any tech provider that's utilizing AI is to make it kind of more, more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, effectively, it has to be weaving it into your process, to make it add more benefit than the classic question of someone just saying, why wouldn't I just go and use ChatGPT?
01;08;46;17 - 01;09;21;29
Jonny Dunning
And this is where the background prompt engineering. This is fascinating. When I talk to our tech team and all our brilliant CTO about this sort of stuff, you know, the advancements that we're making on a month to month basis are incredible. But the the technicalities of what actually happens behind the scenes in terms of how, as a tech organization, we're talking to the APIs of these large language models and guiding them on that, on the prompts and building safeguards and specific templating into it and making it specific to a dedicated purpose and solving the specific problem you're trying to solve.
01;09;22;01 - 01;09;37;06
Jonny Dunning
There's a massive amount to that. We could never do what a large language model does, but the value is in how we leverage that and how we weave it into the process. So the end user doesn't need to think about it. And it's just seamless. And they're just getting these benefits added in.
01;09;37;08 - 01;10;02;21
Nic Everett
Yeah. You don't need to be a ChatGPT You don't. That's not like you say. That's not the intention. It it's around how do you make it bespoke enough. Safe enough so for the users to use in the environment? I'd much rather have an AI tool that learns in a closed environment, my business, because that's going to be beneficial to me.
01;10;02;23 - 01;10;34;03
Nic Everett
If I use ChatGPT or copilot for for the business activities. One, I've got to be really careful what I put into, a global learning tool and to the amount of discrepancies that still happen is astronomical, especially from a legal point of view. So having it closed in that environment, in the work that you put into it, even by just using it at the moment, we can see that, that it's not just putting something into a larger language tool.
01;10;34;08 - 01;10;54;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, exactly. And and you know, the difference between using like for example, the ChatGPT playground where it is using data to train the model versus the APIs for using a corporate API. It's not using data to train models so that you're looking at, you know, Microsoft for example, the similar it's all on Azure. It's a similar sort of, you know, kind of security setup to using teams or Outlook.
01;10;54;17 - 01;11;24;24
Jonny Dunning
So that's something that you know, is a massive consideration, which is where things like that Microsoft tie up with open AI. It's hugely beneficial. And that helps helps a lot of organizations be able to, to leverage this type of, this type of tool. So this in, in terms of how the rest of the market can kind of, can take, encouragement from the great work that that people like yourself are doing and your team are doing and your organization are doing and how that moves forwards.
01;11;24;26 - 01;11;44;18
Jonny Dunning
You've, you've you've brought up some really useful points for how people can get started. What do you think is, is going to be the thing that kind of changes this in the market? You recently, I know you recently spoke at a round table talking on these sorts of topics. What sort of what sort of questions were you getting from people in the in the market?
01;11;44;20 - 01;12;14;05
Nic Everett
How to start right. How to start? What problems did I come up against and has it done what I needed it to do. And the answer is was it was really hard. It was complex. But with the right team behind you and coming to experts in the in the field, it made it a lot simpler and, a nicer experience.
01;12;14;07 - 01;12;37;22
Nic Everett
So it was very much just the start. If I can say anything, just start. Start with your own internal landscape. What is it that you currently have in your buckets? What do you have in your contingent? What do you have as services? Do you buy just people, but sometimes they're disguised. It's okay to not be right because there's ways to solve it.
01;12;37;22 - 01;12;58;05
Nic Everett
So if you find it, you've got loads of disguised labor HMRC but but if you do, you can solve it and you can rectify it. It's it's not insurmountable. So just start and you know happy to have a chat with anyone if they want. It's I'm not gatekeeping. It's it really is just start. Brilliant.
01;12;58;05 - 01;13;08;28
Jonny Dunning
And and so in terms of how people can engage that sort of conversation in the market, like you say, you're happy to have a conversation with people. How can people find you on LinkedIn?
01;13;09;04 - 01;13;19;09
Nic Everett
See LinkedIn. Yep, I am there. And that's the best avenue. Or, you know, just listen to this podcast over and over again.
01;13;19;11 - 01;13;36;05
Jonny Dunning
The one other thing I was going to ask was, so you talked about the fact that so to kind of close off and kind of bring our, conversation, round to a close. The thing for me that I think would be really interesting to understand and hopefully for other people as well, is so you said, you know, it was hard.
01;13;36;05 - 01;14;03;10
Jonny Dunning
It's been a tricky journey. But my question to you is if you, with all the knowledge that you've got having done it once, if you were suddenly parachuted as a kind of like procurement Swat team into another organization and presented with the same kind of like ultimate problem to solve, how much easier would it be? It's always going to be complex, but how much easier would it be, having been through the process once?
01;14;03;12 - 01;14;27;21
Nic Everett
So much easier because you can trust yourself. You can trust your own knowledge and thoughts on disparaging people that might put up a fight. So if you've got people that are very rigid in the way that they think and say no, it won't work quite well, okay, right. Work. If you haven't been through that process, then you're more likely to go, oh, maybe then I'll be put off.
01;14;27;23 - 01;14;48;15
Nic Everett
Wouldn't have that. So if I can help anyone in their position looking at this for the first time, and they have got negative minnies that basically say that won't work, that won't work, happy to have a chat because believe in it. We've done it and and it does work. It really does. Are people always going to be happy? no.
01;14;48;16 - 01;14;56;16
Nic Everett
People don't like change, but it it does get better. You just have to keep up it keep it, just keep going.
01;14;56;18 - 01;15;15;14
Jonny Dunning
No, that's absolutely fantastic. And, I really appreciate, you coming on to share those views. And I think it's really important to get this message across that ultimately is about sharing, sharing the knowledge. And, and yet once people are more people understand the process that the companies and people like yourself have been through, they'll feel encouraged.
01;15;15;14 - 01;15;19;25
Jonny Dunning
They'll be they'll be braver with the decisions they make and more confident in having those conversations.
01;15;19;26 - 01;15;37;25
Nic Everett
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've been talking now for for quite a few months. And, you know, we both end up coming away feeling really empowered and thinking of, oh, oh yeah, we discussed that, didn't we? So that's brilliant. To me that is completely worthwhile. So let's yeah open it all up.
01;15;38;02 - 01;15;49;08
Jonny Dunning
Perfect. Well, it's exactly what this podcast is all about. I'm so grateful to you for coming on board. Thank you very much. And, yeah. And no doubt we will be able to have a bit more of an updated chat at some point in the future.
01;15;49;09 - 01;15;50;15
Nic Everett
Yeah, let's do it. Thanks, Jonny.
01;15;50;19 - 01;15;51;04
Jonny Dunning
Thank you.