Services Procurement spend management – liberating the opportunity and avoiding excuses

How do we guide people on the best way to liberate the opportunity rather than leaving them to be the architects of their own problem?

With Paul Vincent, Global Leader, Service Design, Randstad Enterprise

00;03;24;00 - Terminology in services procurement

00;19;58;17 - The drive for MSPs to try and solve services procurement problems

00;23;51;04 - Is missclassification a SOW problem?

00;37;10;13 - Whose problem is services spend?

00;51;06;09 - Getting started with service procurement spend programs

01;15;39;00 - Avoiding excuses

01;27;39;03 - Areas for positivity

Episode Highlights

Transcript

Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.

00;00;00;16 - 00;00;06;01

Jonny Dunning

Okay. I'm delighted to be joined today by Paul Vincent from Randstad Thanks very much for joining me, Paul. How are you doing?

00;00;06;04 - 00;00;07;11

Paul Vincent

I'm very, very good. Happy to be here.

00;00;07;17 - 00;00;18;12

Jonny Dunning

Excellent stuff. so we're here to talk about services procurement. You and I have been having conversations about services procurement for a decent amount of time, but a few years now, hasn't it?

00;00;18;14 - 00;00;18;26

Paul Vincent

It certainly.

00;00;18;26 - 00;00;41;04

Jonny Dunning

Has. what we want to talk about today is this issue of how we're addressing services spend management. I use the phrase carefully, and we'll come on to the terminology in a minute. but what we're talking about is some of the things that you and I have spoken about, where you've described liberating the opportunity or, and kind of avoiding excuses.

00;00;41;07 - 00;00;55;23

Jonny Dunning

So some great topics for us to get into. obviously you've been spearheading the services procurement stuff at Randstad, for a while now. I believe your role has actually taken on, some additional responsibility. So what's the latest, for you? It runs out at the moment.

00;00;55;25 - 00;01;09;21

Paul Vincent

So I'm now the, the global service design leader. So I am, if you just imagine what I've done with service procurement in terms of reconfiguring the offering, the go to market, how do we actually implement it operationally? I should like.

00;01;09;22 - 00;01;12;08

Not.

00;01;12;10 - 00;01;28;03

Paul Vincent

I can never say that with that. It's a good one. we want to do that on a broader basis. So yeah. MSP RPO kind of all different elements for the talent development landscape. So I'm now responsible for all of those different service lines.

00;01;28;06 - 00;01;42;17

Jonny Dunning

And so in terms of operationalizing it, just about got that. in terms of operationalizing it, is that kind of not not so much standardizing the process, but having the underlying architecture. Yeah. In place.

00;01;42;19 - 00;02;05;18

Paul Vincent

So I mean, very, very simple terms, it's having a whole series of common building blocks that you can then architect together, depending on whatever the customer requirements or situation or need. Whereas at the moment what happens is it's so easy to to fall into designing every solution. Yeah. Individual client by client basis. And obviously you need to be really mindful about the client context.

00;02;05;21 - 00;02;27;04

Paul Vincent

But the you know, at the heart of it, a lot of the delivery activity is what people want to buy. Which is it for experience and expertise. Yeah. So we have a large number of programs where we have, you know, very established way of doing it. So this isn't about, you know, a complete reworking, but it is trying to bring more, you know, uniformity, universality to the storytelling.

00;02;27;06 - 00;02;47;28

Paul Vincent

You know, when you talk about, you know, an MSP product now as an aggregated vehicle for all your forms, nonpermanent resourcing, how do you make sure you bring those pieces together? So it's trying to look at this as an accelerator. How do we continue to evolve our service offerings in the way the market is evolving as well? So it's very exciting to be give it a chance, do it.

00;02;47;28 - 00;02;52;12

Paul Vincent

And got a great team. So where if we're just about to start rocking rolling. Brilliant.

00;02;52;17 - 00;03;21;01

Jonny Dunning

Very exciting stuff. Yeah, I know you mean I mean, obviously for us, just purely focused on services procurement. There's always going to be configuration, different customer requirements, different scenarios. Services procurement has a very broad spectrum to it. Even just didn't. If you encompass just the services procurement world of a mine, the wider MSP extension workforce, etc., but having the underlying structure it there are always going to be commonalities and you need to have that scalability of offering.

00;03;21;03 - 00;03;42;23

Jonny Dunning

but then you need to be able to configure it to deal with that individual client needs. Yeah, that makes sense to me. cool. So something that came up at the recent CWS summit, something that comes up all the time, always on LinkedIn or wherever, people talking about statement of work services, procurement, outsourcing. What's what's the deal with the terminology?

00;03;42;23 - 00;04;02;17

Jonny Dunning

It's it's it's something that as a tech provider, we've been around the houses with and we've wrestled with and we're having conversations all the time with clients who are dealing with these problems. You're obviously in the same situation where you're talking to customers all the time about this sort of thing, and you've been, you know, spearheading the work around services procurement, within a fairly small community.

00;04;02;20 - 00;04;12;16

Jonny Dunning

People who've been doing that in the kind of MSP and staffing space for the last few years. What's your take on the terminology? Where where have you landed with it for me?

00;04;12;19 - 00;04;34;18

Paul Vincent

So I think there's a couple of ways to answer this question. The first is that we as an industry are almost, you know, Olympic quality over complicating things that don't need to be over complicated. And one of the reasons that happens is because many people in the service provider environment sort of feel that that is a way to differentiate.

00;04;34;20 - 00;04;57;09

Paul Vincent

Yeah. And if you're a customer on the end of that and you go along to a SIA summit or you read Everest information, whatever it might be, then you know, that tends to stick in your mind about what that must be about. I must be asking for it. Then this is how I'm going to differentiate. So the first thing is to strip it back to what actually you try to do.

00;04;57;11 - 00;05;22;24

Paul Vincent

So two things. One is I statement of work is a contract mechanism. It is a bit of paper that determines what you do for what money and how you going to do it. But you could apply that to any form of actual business service requirement. And so the best way to simplify this is to say I'm actually engaging somebody, a third party to do something for my business.

00;05;22;27 - 00;05;51;16

Paul Vincent

What are they trying to do? And depending on the nature of the work they're doing, it's either something that can be outcome based or is something that you're paying for their time. If you're fighting for that time, you contract in a certain way. If you're buying an outcome, you contract in another way. So this whole idea of services management is very, very simply, it's to bring in third parties to your organization, deliver a variety of different things to support your infrastructure and way of working.

00;05;51;18 - 00;06;14;20

Paul Vincent

Everything else around it comes up purely a contract mechanism. So if you strip it back to that first question, which is what do you want to do? Everything else then becomes far simpler to really understand. The challenge we have as an industry. It's by putting all these different definitions in place. You start with the type of work know the nature of the work.

00;06;14;22 - 00;06;39;21

Paul Vincent

I want you to start with the type of work, how you go down these different channels, and you try to put in rules and hurdles and policies and bureaucracies and all of those do is actually make it hard for service provider to actually bring value to an organization. Yeah, I think we've got to recognize and it's sort of the elephant in the room is that it also depends on how companies account for resourcing.

00;06;39;24 - 00;07;01;10

Paul Vincent

And if you give someone a budget to operate their function on, and it doesn't matter how they utilize third party resourcing like gives you a lot more scope in terms of how do you deliver a solution to this? V5 much harder and faster rules around will this counts towards headcount and this doesn't. Then again, it almost breeds complexity.

00;07;01;12 - 00;07;16;16

Paul Vincent

So I'm all for total boundary elimination. Everything is about the nature of the work. And then on top of that is whatever is the right way to engage at matter, to contract the third party, to deliver that top of it.

00;07;16;18 - 00;07;16;29

Yeah.

00;07;17;06 - 00;07;50;05

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, absolutely. You've gone right to the core of of what it is we're talking about. And this the management of these type of contractual engagements. for me, I always look at it from a procurement point of view. And I've had many conversations with senior people, well-respected people in procurement technology and generally within procurement. And when you talk about, for example, services, procurement, some procurement, you know, everybody knows what it is, you're procuring services, rather than procuring goods and materials.

00;07;50;07 - 00;08;10;04

Jonny Dunning

but when you actually talk to people about that, you'll sometimes get blank looks from some people because they're just saying, well, my organization doesn't think like that. My organization thinks in terms of category management. All of the various procurement categories that we manage and services procurement will go across multiple categories marketing, legal, consulting, IT services, facilities, perhaps lots of different areas.

00;08;10;10 - 00;08;33;10

Jonny Dunning

So so again services procurement. When you're trying to say what is the problem is being solved and how can it be categorized. And therefore who's responsible for it to a certain extent. Come on to later. but for me it's a it's a spend management solution or spend management problem we're looking at here. Both in terms of who owns it and in terms of what it is we're talking about.

00;08;33;13 - 00;09;03;09

Jonny Dunning

Because, as you say, a statement of work is just a contractual vehicle. I totally agree with you on that. But statement of work spend is something that I feel is definable because either is spend that's going under a statement of work type contractual vehicle or it's not. That's kind of black and white when you look at that from a from a technology point of view, if you're offering a solution that is statement of work spend management, then you're only dealing with that contract process that works for a statement work or what might be called by something a task order or a work order.

00;09;03;11 - 00;09;21;21

Jonny Dunning

so but there's different ways you can cut it. The CWS summit. Peter Regan was always kind of pondering or pushing the idea of outsourcing, but I heard I had just as many people disagree with that as did agree with it. So it's one of those things where it feels like part of the problem is working in an immature market.

00;09;21;23 - 00;09;35;09

Paul Vincent

Yeah, there's there's a lot of things in there to kind of unpack a little bit. I mean, the this I mean, outsourcing is not right to describe don’t tell Peter that as an oh I'm happy to tell it. you and I.

00;09;35;11 - 00;09;40;04

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, yeah, I don't, I he, I do he definitely be good for a debate on that sort of thing.

00;09;40;06 - 00;09;51;05

Paul Vincent

But I think, I mean pick up your issue about to categorization. I, I'm, I'm fortunate I'm old enough to remember buying text messaging as an IT category so.

00;09;51;08 - 00;09;51;28

That.

00;09;52;00 - 00;10;15;23

Paul Vincent

Now. Well, I mean, we're way past that but then morphed into part of a marketing campaign service. And so I think you can be too beholden to category dimensions, and especially when you start thinking about things like the -unclear- classification and all the rest of it. I let's be sure you know that there's fluidity. You need to have fluidity.

00;10;15;25 - 00;10;42;26

Paul Vincent

And what is a professional service in one direction might be a consultancy or advisory services or another. so I think that the thing you want to use categorization for is to say, well, what's the what's the nature of the requirement that needs a certain level of expertise to determine the success measures? So how do I know I'm getting value for money in it?

00;10;42;29 - 00;11;16;25

Paul Vincent

In solution integration or advice, whatever it is. How do I know I'm getting value for money when I'm buying legal services? That's where there's a difference. But in terms of the process around defining the requirement, finding someone to do the right work for you, adjudicating their proposal that their own category nuances in that those category me nuances come when you're determining what is successful or not like, and how do I make sure I'm assuring that through the actual contracting process?

00;11;16;28 - 00;12;01;14

Paul Vincent

Then the other element of this is this, you know, procurement spend management. there are certain words in the, in the lexicon, okay, which should be absolutely eliminated because that then breeds a center of gravity, which is how do I stop something. So you have a use of what rope spend or maverick spend. But when you think about the the problems with trying to fix how often does a starting point come much not respecting because the implicit behind that question is we're spending more than we should do.

00;12;01;17 - 00;12;23;28

Paul Vincent

Whereas actually, why don't you ask questions like, what is it we're actually buying? What do we need? Right? How do we measure success from these third parties that come trial, which is like, how do we make ourselves a better customer? How do we make sure we're attracting in a way that gives them the fastest route productivity? They're the ingredients of a good solution.

00;12;24;00 - 00;12;53;13

Paul Vincent

But because we start with how much are we spending? Everything rolls downhill from there. So center of gravity is really important. So I don't disagree with you at all. The spend management is a much better way of actually referencing an outcome based service. But I also think in terms of how do you create the environment for success. I really look at it much more through the lens of what is it the services actually doing to my organization?

00;12;53;13 - 00;12;56;28

Paul Vincent

How are they making a difference to our success?

00;12;57;00 - 00;13;24;08

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, it's it's a really good point. I think it plays into the maturity side of it as well. like, you know, we've been we've spoken to companies who who maybe don't even know how much they're spending on services or they certainly don't know necessarily what they're buying. So I, I agree, if you just take a if you truly take an approach of we need to cut spend, that's basically what people do when they've got no idea what they're getting for the money.

00;13;24;10 - 00;13;46;19

Jonny Dunning

and it can be very detrimental if they're if there's some consulting advise coming in on new product development that's actually driving their growth. they just cut consulting spend by 20%. That just that's just absolute ridiculous. So, you know, you always hear the kind of cliches of visibility and control. It just, you know, this is a massively important area of spend for organizations.

00;13;46;21 - 00;14;15;12

Jonny Dunning

50% of organizational spend across the globe, across all sectors, on average 50% of spend it buying services, procuring services, organizations to deliver services for your organization. And yet it's just not effectively, managed. People don't have the awareness of what they're buying, why they're buying it, what the result is, it's it's it strikes me as being a very obvious thing that organizations need to address.

00;14;15;17 - 00;14;34;19

Jonny Dunning

But because of the way the organizations are structured and because of the way that organizations have been limping along, just managing this in a or not managing this, you know, for years, it's and it's a complicated problem or it can be perceived as a complicated problem. It leads to that kind of barrier in a lot of organizations where AWS backup.

00;14;34;21 - 00;14;39;17

Paul Vincent

So people don't know who they're spending money with. what?

00;14;39;20 - 00;14;40;23

That. Yeah.

00;14;40;26 - 00;14;50;03

Paul Vincent

Yes I do. So if. Have you ever met an IT director who doesn't know?

00;14;50;05 - 00;14;57;21

Jonny Dunning

We'll find out. Finance. You know as well. I mean, obviously, you know, tally up invoices with purchase orders. You know, what you spent with Accenture in the last year or or whatever it might.

00;14;57;22 - 00;15;20;19

Paul Vincent

What I mean, Jonny is, you know, you have these you have a predominant procurement mindset, which is, we need to some I went through it just spent in a different way. And if if your goal is to influence spend in a positive way, it's how do we enable the best, you know, how do we really help to reduce speed to contract.

00;15;20;21 - 00;15;56;23

Paul Vincent

But how do we or should I say increase speed to contract? How do we make sure that we're giving our stakeholders the very best way to get to the service provider they want and need and trust? That danger is that when you take down a pathway, oh, that we're trying to control it from a process point of view, then that why are these programs fail, take out more, more times than they do because you have to involve stakeholders from the get go from this is how this can help you.

00;15;57;00 - 00;16;22;21

Paul Vincent

So let's ask how do how do you judge success? How do you judge ROI? How do we build that into the program? The other thing that I find fascinating is, swift generalization because there are funds, there are some fantastic program professionals out there, but many have no experience personally of what it feels like to experience a process as a customer.

00;16;22;23 - 00;16;24;18

Paul Vincent

I'm well, I tell you a short story, right?

00;16;24;22 - 00;16;25;14

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

00;16;25;17 - 00;16;50;27

Paul Vincent

So this is 25, 30 years ago, right? When I was a product manager in BT I had just moved into the product manager role from spending ten years in procurement, where one of the things I focused on was re-engineering really big, established relationships. So I knew a fair bit about strategic supplier, gave supplier management and also negotiation.

00;16;50;29 - 00;17;10;25

Paul Vincent

I go into a product manager role. I look at a whole series of third parties which should not do what I what do I want to reconfigure? Yeah, I talked to the procurement team and I say, fine, we'll, we'll we'll sort that out for you. What do you mean? Well, we'll handle the conversation with the suppliers.

00;17;10;27 - 00;17;12;01

Well.

00;17;12;03 - 00;17;37;01

Paul Vincent

How are you going to involve me? Oh, no. You. Yeah. You're just a stakeholder. Russell, wait. Where you actually do that process? So automatically you're kind of disenfranchizing somebody who actually knows what good looks like. But. And so when people say, oh, well, you know, how do I get stakeholders aligned to this, that the benefits of a program, they do it right from the beginning.

00;17;37;01 - 00;17;57;11

Paul Vincent

So if you then think, oh, we'll build it and they'll come, no, that doesn't happen. But so that's why the, the center of gravity is. Yes. Band manager. Yes. It's to help get more sort of chairman rigor commercial rigor in how organizations work. But the real customer for this is the people who's got the need and the budget.

00;17;57;14 - 00;18;08;20

Paul Vincent

And I think we we kind of missed that without too often to what interesting point. and that can be very varied.

00;18;08;27 - 00;18;28;26

Jonny Dunning

As you talked about earlier, when you were talking about the categorization, you talked about the outputs, the outcomes being very different things. You know, a milestone could be a KPI, an ongoing service delivery. It could be a sprint, an agile process, it could be a pure project deliverable, could be a block of consulting time. It could be all of these different things.

00;18;28;28 - 00;18;55;00

Jonny Dunning

The underlying architecture of all pi UX to deliver Y still remains with the added complexity of. Often there are changes in this process. So it's about defining what good looks like and recording that. So recording you're saying you're going to do this. And this is what we agree. Good is good is like right at the beginning getting those stakeholders involved.

00;18;55;03 - 00;19;15;15

Jonny Dunning

But then you've got to be able to say that through the process to manage the fact that the goalposts are going to move, times are going to change, prices might change, there might be problems internally, it could be problems with the supplier. There's a lot to it. so I think it's about striking the right balance. It feels to me in the sense of what you're saying makes a lot of sense if you don't get the stakeholders involved.

00;19;15;15 - 00;19;44;05

Jonny Dunning

I mean, I think there's various reasons why some of these programs get low uptake. it's like sometimes I feel like the angle of, with staffing, organization or the big kind of resourcing organizations tackling this problem, some organizations can sometimes get take that the wrong way in the sense that they will go, why? Why, why are these firms spearhead doing this service provision or some of these firms, like yourselves offering service in this area?

00;19;44;08 - 00;20;14;04

Jonny Dunning

Because buying services I'll pay X organization to deliver Y output. That's very difficult to I'm going to hire Paul Vincent on a day rate of X to work to do some work. So why do you think the kind of staffing industry mentioned the AWS some earlier? Why is it why is it that part of why why is there a drive from that part of industry to try and solve this problem?

00;20;14;07 - 00;20;22;01

Paul Vincent

So I think it's two reasons. The first is that, you know, we operate in a space where we are helping organizations to resource the right way to get work done.

00;20;22;05 - 00;20;23;18

Jonny Dunning

It's all about getting work done. Yeah.

00;20;23;21 - 00;20;32;05

Paul Vincent

So if you take that definition, it doesn't matter what forms of expertise you're bringing to an organization. But if you're on that journey.

00;20;32;08 - 00;20;33;05

And.

00;20;33;08 - 00;21;13;05

Paul Vincent

You can provide value for that. And so there's a natural evolution of large organizations like ours that says, if we're going to go in and help you with all forms of resourcing, then whatever you buy in from a service direction for part of that ecosystem. the challenge is when you then try and treat everything. Through the same lens, because that's where you're magnifying the differences, and that's where you're going to get the rejection and the the challenge to the organization, you know.

00;21;13;05 - 00;21;37;17

Paul Vincent

So once you get but also there's a there's a fundamental difference when you're in a staffing environment, it's about go find me me. When you're in a service environment, it's help me to engage who I want to. Yeah. So it's less about go find there are circumstances where let's go find in the May is have which we engage in the right way.

00;21;37;19 - 00;21;44;14

Paul Vincent

That's gonna actually give me reassurance. I'm going to get value for money. And when a company like us, which we try to do.

00;21;44;17 - 00;21;44;28

And.

00;21;45;06 - 00;22;26;21

Paul Vincent

Actually apply our solutions to those two different, very specific requirements, where then bring the mechanics and the overall model together, that's when it has maximum value. when you're trying to sort of go down the line of saying, well, I'm going to sort of treat, anybody coming to my organization with the same. Well, I won't say who the organization is, but we're having a very interesting dialog with a very large, established company right now where they spend an awful lot of money on statement of work activity, but they want the level of detail around the individuals doing the work they would do on staff.

00;22;26;24 - 00;22;29;05

Paul Vincent

But by treating as a statement of work.

00;22;29;07 - 00;22;46;26

Jonny Dunning

It's funny is that you get people talking about things like, well, you know, I've heard it plenty of times, people saying, well, I want to equate the costs to an hourly rate on every statement to work, I hear. And you're like, well, that's not what you're procuring. You're you passing on the risk. You're you're outsourcing to that intellectual property.

00;22;46;26 - 00;23;03;11

Jonny Dunning

You're you're bringing somebody to solve a problem. You can put a cost against that. And you can try and equate that to how much it would cost you to do it if you were to engage contingent workers, for example. But it's not as simple as just, you know, like people saying, I want to see all quotes broken down in that way, doesn't it?

00;23;03;11 - 00;23;23;23

Jonny Dunning

It work like that, you know, and it's such a broad range of services. I totally agree with you. And it's it fundamentally is that difference in how I, how an organization gets worked on the C-suite? One to know I remember a CEO once said to me, Johnny, one of the most important questions I need to be able to answer is, what is the most effective use of all of my resources?

00;23;23;25 - 00;23;51;02

Jonny Dunning

And that includes external supply chain delivering services, in many cases now very large organizations, the brand has become more important. their core workforce has become more important. But they have this big extended delivery network, which has also become more important in terms of how they operate, scale up demand when it's required, bring in external expertise, especially with everything moving so quickly that technology advancements and things like that.

00;23;51;04 - 00;24;19;06

Jonny Dunning

but I guess one area that we haven't really covered here, which is fundamental to why I think the entry point where staffing organizations have begun to transition to get involved in this side of things is the misclassification. Isn't that now, you know, we you know, I've spoken about this before and people tend to overcomplicate it. but ultimately it is something that everybody is aware of or certainly should be aware of.

00;24;19;08 - 00;24;27;18

Jonny Dunning

But what's something that struck me as quite interesting in, in terms of something you were saying the other day was just about the angle of approach that people are coming to this from.

00;24;27;24 - 00;24;28;11

Paul Vincent

Yeah.

00;24;28;14 - 00;24;37;20

Jonny Dunning

So what you're seeing sometimes is that people are saying seeing misclassification as a statement of work spend problem.

00;24;37;22 - 00;24;46;21

Paul Vincent

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's fundamentally what happened, which is that people say people are bypassing my staff or rules.

00;24;46;23 - 00;24;47;24

Jonny Dunning

They're hiding it.

00;24;47;26 - 00;25;09;06

Paul Vincent

And they're going into a statement of work. Therefore, I've got a statement of work problem. So if you've got a statement of work problem, you need a statement of work solution that. So now if the first interjection to the stakeholders is I'm going to tell you how to spend your own money, better than you can remove yourself. But yeah, you could.

00;25;09;06 - 00;25;37;05

Paul Vincent

It's going to shoot yourself in the foot. But it's not a big problem. It's will examine your staff or policy. Why are people doing something else? Surely that's because whatever avenue you're giving to engage, resourcing isn't working. So examine that. Get the decision making right at the point of need, and then you effectively put the problem in the right part of the equation.

00;25;37;07 - 00;26;02;08

Paul Vincent

Because misclassification means something should be staff org that you believe isn't is currently going to be so fixed. Definition the staff will work. and therefore you're going to eliminate the problem or worse. I mean, you you're then going to have a much clearer glide path into what is genuinely an outcome based service. But then you've also got to make sure you don't trip over.

00;26;02;10 - 00;26;13;07

Paul Vincent

Some companies do, which is to say what anything to them. It's staff. Okay. Anything not change. is I set w again.

00;26;13;09 - 00;26;14;05

Jonny Dunning

More to it than that.

00;26;14;11 - 00;26;45;25

Paul Vincent

Is practice right. So it's all about what triggers what you and I talk about all the time. But what triggers it? What is the thing that triggers the pain or something. And it's if it's the delivery or the achievement or milestone or deliverable, then it's an outcome based service contracted that way. And you can manage the commercial teams however you or if you want, if you're buying purely someone's time and you're going to pay them irrespective of quality, but it goes down, not the rate.

00;26;46;01 - 00;26;52;21

Paul Vincent

Again, these labels cause the problem, not necessarily the mechanics of the question.

00;26;52;23 - 00;27;09;21

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when you're saying about somebody wanting to draw and working through the services procurement channels and looking at state and work engagements, saying, I want to drive down towards the individual level, you know, really, should they care the my opinion, they shouldn't care. They're saying to an organization, I want you to do this for me.

00;27;09;23 - 00;27;27;00

Jonny Dunning

And, you know, okay, this should be the people at the requisite level if it's a consulting operation, for example. But ultimately you're paying for an outcome, an output, you're saying, do this for me. You're giving me, quote to me, a price. We're agreeing that price if it takes you longer or it cost you more money, that's your real problem.

00;27;27;02 - 00;28;01;29

Jonny Dunning

I don't want, you know, supplier. You're taking on the the delivery risk on. I don't have to worry about that. but but with it. So great point you made about starting at that that, the criteria to where does this where does this piece, what's the best way for me to this piece of work done? And like you say, there might be barriers to people going down a contingent workforce rate, but even if they make the the kind of guidelines clearer on the still potential issues with people just saying, yeah, but I haven't got the budget, but I have got the budget here.

00;28;02;01 - 00;28;23;15

Paul Vincent

Well, that's what comes back to, you know, that the accounting rules obviously read this. So, you know, I would when I back when I was consulting, you know, I remember a client where I was working directly with the CFO and it's like, well, how can I make sure I get proper value for money? Well, don't create artificial distinctions.

00;28;23;18 - 00;28;50;23

Paul Vincent

Yeah. Give people the budget and actually let them judge what represents value for money. But don't split it between headcount, not headcount, because all you're doing is you're creating, you know, a problem that you don't need to create. And once you go one step further, which is I mean, if you're then we're talking openly to suppliers and saying, well, how are you going to validate the you're giving us best value for money?

00;28;50;25 - 00;28;58;04

Paul Vincent

you change the how trajectory this conversation. But as soon as you start making more one counts as headcount, one doesn't. What are you going to.

00;28;58;04 - 00;28;58;20

Do.

00;28;58;22 - 00;29;20;09

Paul Vincent

That you're almost encouraging the organization to behave in this way. I mean, I mean, there's thousands of examples where people do that. and you can have the best asset management program in the world, but if your policy is left or right in terms of what council had and what doesn't, you're never going to change.

00;29;20;11 - 00;29;43;04

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. I mean, I always think that there's just more complexity in the procurement services. If you look at the clearing goods materials, it's fairly binary. You're buying a thing or a volume of some stuff, you can see it, you can weigh it. you can do price comparisons, things like that. And I'm obviously oversimplifying here. Yeah, but but it's fairly binary.

00;29;43;09 - 00;30;12;17

Paul Vincent

But you're right. It's about perceived value, right? I mean, think of anything in your past life, right. What I might spend more on the new. It's down to my perceived value on. yeah. We've had my wife and I use a decorator regularly that's become a very good friend of ours. Well, I know that I pay probably 25% more than I need to, but actually, to me personally, the quality at the finish is worth it.

00;30;12;19 - 00;30;34;14

Paul Vincent

So it's all becomes a personal judgment. And that's the other thing that, you know, you a lot of these requirements are situational. Something's going wrong. You know, I'm not getting something right in my organization. I bring someone in to help me do that. And so I need trust beneath the reassurance that that person and that company is going to be in tune with my requirements.

00;30;34;19 - 00;31;00;29

Paul Vincent

And so the value it brings to me is very, very different. And so that's why when you get into right, benchmarking things like that without the situational context, it's it's not worth the information, but it's not like fantastically worth because, you know, you think about, any large consulting firm, you've got people on the bench, you are going to charge less if you've got people sitting around on the bench than if they're all fully occupied.

00;31;01;07 - 00;31;22;29

Paul Vincent

You know, the way it works. Well, you need to understand those dynamics. When you have a partner organization, how much parking time you put on, different types of project that what are the dynamics of that cost equation? Well, if you're just literally saying you're charging me X and they're charging me, why is they right without any of that context.

00;31;23;01 - 00;31;23;18

00;31;23;20 - 00;31;44;17

Paul Vincent

You know, a reassuring value for money. But that's what we've got to try and look behind and encourage people to think, look, now there's a it's not binary. it's a bit like when you, call me on a roll here. There's a bit like when you get an RFP and someone says, I'm spending 200 million a year.

00;31;44;19 - 00;32;24;12

Paul Vincent

Do you think you can save me three? But it's like me telling you, I spend £300. I know we can shop shopping lot. And you've got no idea how many people in my family. Yeah, right. And what's on the shopping list? But. So theoretically, of course, I could probably save your money. But the question is, without the baseline of what you are actually doing and why you're doing it today, how can I help the other interesting people with this is the more spam you put in your program, the more attractive it is, and actually the cheaper it's going to take to actually service what we've got no idea of volumetric.

00;32;24;15 - 00;32;45;06

Paul Vincent

So how did me? It might be ten W's, but a could be 3000 that, and so what you've got to do is try and get people on the square of, look, how do we really get around trying this? And, you know, you made a point earlier and people don't know what. They often don't know what they spend.

00;32;45;08 - 00;33;08;24

Paul Vincent

Absolutely. So I don't think I've got a bucket, a magic dust mark. It just throw over you and say, hey, I can save 10% over something. You've got no idea what you're spending on today. So that's what we've got to try and do with these things is one give it that clarity definition. Secondly, really understand what are we trying to do here, which is to get companies to a point where they really are getting the right value for money for them.

00;33;08;26 - 00;33;18;28

Paul Vincent

And then three, create, a mechanism that's actually going to be agile, effective, streamline, and not act as a sort of a blocker and inhibit.

00;33;19;00 - 00;33;41;04

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, totally. I mean, it's it's funny for me because I tend to quite often look at it from process point of view. and that's just part of it, you know, from your point of view as an overarching service provider, you're looking at it from many different facets change management, advisory, getting actually involved and knitted into that services procurement landscape.

00;33;41;06 - 00;34;02;09

Jonny Dunning

For my point of view, I'm just looking at it as what what somebody's doing right now and how can that be improved? And it never ceases to amaze me how large organizations, not just in the UK in some ways in the UK, are actually further ahead than some other, countries. I mean, they've got literally nothing. So many companies have got nothing in place.

00;34;02;09 - 00;34;25;04

Jonny Dunning

They have no way of controlling this process. It might be very large organizations, but they're using Excel spreadsheets, email teams, phone conversations, black books of suppliers. It's unbelievable. And when you're talking about serious, serious amounts of money, and procurement, I've got absolutely no way of getting their hands on that. or certainly no way of getting it under control in a manual process.

00;34;25;07 - 00;34;40;26

Paul Vincent

So, who thinks that's appropriate? Don't you think it's a problem because you've got a potential fix? But if people don't think that's a problem because they're engaging people who they want, they getting the work done, who they want it paying.

00;34;40;29 - 00;34;43;29

Jonny Dunning

Eventually they've done it for years.

00;34;44;01 - 00;34;45;22

Paul Vincent

Yeah. It is, it is a the.

00;34;45;22 - 00;35;03;29

Jonny Dunning

People who don't see that as a problem are not the people I want to talk to. That's the big I feel like the biggest problem in the market is finding finding those enlightened ones, the people in the market who get this and understand the opportunity. Because if somebody does want to solve that problem, it's there's going to be various drivers behind it.

00;35;03;29 - 00;35;25;13

Jonny Dunning

We did it. We did a survey recently looking at the drivers behind this. Sometimes it's misclassification, sometimes it's cost savings, sometimes it's procurement efficiencies. sometimes it's wanting to understand supply performance. But that's usually kind of the few that are looking right down the road because you've got to get these other things in place first. but there are people that do want to do that.

00;35;25;16 - 00;35;44;06

Jonny Dunning

But and that's where I think there's a really important factor, an X factor in this whole scenario, which is genuine change agents, genuine people within procurement. You know, we've got we see it within our client base are people are just like, hang on a minute. This is ridiculous. Why are we doing this so badly? Must be a better way to do it.

00;35;44;13 - 00;36;03;21

Jonny Dunning

I can't. You told me to look at the misclassification risk, or to look at the spend risk, or to look at my supply chain within services. I can't because I can't see anything. All we've got is statements of work, PDF, sign documents, the scanned and stuck in a folder somewhere. What am I supposed to read? Every one of them try and work out if there are milestones.

00;36;03;23 - 00;36;20;22

Jonny Dunning

That's the sort of thing where we, the people that come out of that and say, there's got to be a better way to do this. That's why I think it's so important to have these types of conversations to just so that people become aware that other people are trying to understand this and solve this problem as well. and that was one of the good things about the AWS summit.

00;36;20;24 - 00;36;40;02

Jonny Dunning

It's round tables and everyone wanted to share their experiences. Oh, do you guys, do you guys do this because people are almost embarrassed to start with to go? Well, to be honest, we don't even measure X and Y. Other people say, oh, don't worry about it. This is same for us. That's I think that's really important for people to understand where the market is and what the opportunity is.

00;36;40;05 - 00;37;02;03

Jonny Dunning

but by no, it's not just the process. It's it's about an organizational awareness of the fact that they're spending lots of money in this area, and maybe they need to do something about it. Some organizations probably aren't interested because I just think, you know, where I use the example where an investment bank and where we're doing so well, we don't really worry about saving money, to be honest.

00;37;02;06 - 00;37;28;28

Jonny Dunning

But if there's a misclassification risk, maybe they'll address it. So there's different angles into it from different different, types of organization. but yeah, some, some people are going to want to solve the problem, but plenty of people do it. But it's just being able to actually drill down into who those people are. Which brings me onto another key point, which is whose problem is it?

00;37;29;00 - 00;37;30;09

Yeah.

00;37;30;12 - 00;37;35;25

Paul Vincent

So at the risk of kind of, you know, being Mr. Controversial Guy, which is, you know, is a cat.

00;37;35;25 - 00;37;37;03

Jonny Dunning

That has a chance, let's do it.

00;37;37;04 - 00;37;41;11

Paul Vincent

It never fits very well with me that cat.

00;37;41;14 - 00;37;42;02

You know.

00;37;42;04 - 00;37;48;20

Paul Vincent

It really should be the people with the need and the budget. I mean, where we often get into these quite circular debates around.

00;37;48;22 - 00;37;49;23

The.

00;37;49;25 - 00;38;22;18

Paul Vincent

Chart. It's an HR driven program because it's resourcing. Is it driven program because it's spent well, who are they working for? They're working for the business. He owners, stakeholders, the ones who are leveraging these resources. And so if I could put responsibility programs anywhere, I'd put it in the realm of chief operating officer, for example, or chief transformation, or somebody who is actually looking line of sight down the organization.

00;38;22;21 - 00;38;49;28

Paul Vincent

Because once you have that, then the rationale for improvement becomes clear. You had to say, right, you need to you need to change. You try to make inroads in doing this, but you need a sponsor. And there, I mean, I, I work with some very effective CPAs and those Cpos need to get sponsorship from somebody else to do a lot of the big change programs.

00;38;50;01 - 00;39;09;03

Paul Vincent

And so you need to look at this through the lens of who, who do I think is going to be the biggest beneficiary. And it's always a mystery to me where people will say, well, we can't go to consulting particular self-confessed because there's so much says to a track consulting you.

00;39;09;06 - 00;39;12;19

What are you, what are you talking about? Why go after consulting first?

00;39;12;19 - 00;39;23;29

Paul Vincent

Because that is where the real heat map is. That's where the senior people that really need to be assured. Yep. They're the ones with the best relationships for what you start there.

00;39;24;03 - 00;39;24;14

What.

00;39;24;20 - 00;39;30;12

Jonny Dunning

We're seeing more, we're seeing less people saying, oh, you couldn't do that. Are we seeing much less people like that?

00;39;30;15 - 00;39;50;06

Paul Vincent

so I think from an ownership standpoint, no, I think the other thing is about procurement are not the buying process right, to play a role in the party process? And that's another thing that you tend to often gets confused. It's all procurement centric. Well but got to do it. Say well what role does procurement play your organization.

00;39;50;06 - 00;40;18;04

Paul Vincent

How do you make sure that's really enabling your business. And then you have the processes to support that. But again, I keep going back to the center of gravity has got to be the people with the need run the budget. I've worked with organizations where HR played a leading role in this. It's a different mechanism, different perspective. But it also, you know, does create the ability for more holistic view on how we bring the resources into our organization.

00;40;18;06 - 00;40;40;06

Paul Vincent

and I think that's where we often get come we get stuck because some if you want Kemet to own it. But Kevin have got to have a transformational agenda, translational mindset. They've got to have the trust, the credibility credentials in the organization to get things done. They got to be listened to. They got to be ahead of the curve in terms of the requirements.

00;40;40;09 - 00;40;45;06

Paul Vincent

And that's not always definition of a lot of anyhow.

00;40;45;08 - 00;40;59;05

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. And if you get a change agent who's stuck in that scenario, they're going to go, and it doesn't, doesn't work. They don't have that that stake, that support and that backing from the C-suite or, you know, the senior party. They're just going to go elsewhere. They're going to get bored. They're going to do something else.

00;40;59;07 - 00;41;34;24

Paul Vincent

I mean, there are situations, I mean, I count myself in this where I, I spend time with my mom, my first kind of 12, 13 years were in different types of roles, and I spent eight, nine years in sort of, intermediate roles inside a into the organization where I was a client of different type of services. and, and then I went back into procurement land to drive sort of the broader transformation of, I mean, anything with, with a post basically was under my responsibility at one point, at that vantage point of how do we consume, how do we make decisions?

00;41;34;24 - 00;42;05;25

Paul Vincent

It's actually vital for success. So, you know, anyone who maybe comes into procurement, having had a broader business background, think that is going to be an ideal game changer. I'm a change agent in this space, and I would encourage, you know, a people to try and do that because, as I say, it's only by experiencing the other side of the table that you can really bring that instinct, that sort of real practical application for suppliers as well.

00;42;05;27 - 00;42;22;16

Paul Vincent

I mean, suppliers have a high cost of sale. And if you if you know that you work to reduce their cost of sale, sometimes the programs all and unintended consequences, you just increase their cost of sale. So course what do they do. They get more or less check coming in.

00;42;22;19 - 00;42;25;03

As well maybe. Yeah.

00;42;25;05 - 00;42;33;13

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. so when you, when you look at this within organizations and we look at the drivers.

00;42;33;15 - 00;42;34;08

00;42;34;10 - 00;42;52;20

Jonny Dunning

When you talk about ownership, it's to a certain extent it's ownership of what? So so we asked this within our survey recently. We did this up at the AWS summit. We did on LinkedIn. We did. And through various avenues with lots of really interesting stakeholders. And when you say, what do you you sort of say, who owns you spend within your organization?

00;42;52;22 - 00;43;10;07

Jonny Dunning

Some people will just go, well, I know who owns this. Adobe is the buyer, so that person owns that. So they're responsible for that project. But then you say you kind of drill into the well, who owns the spend? Is it procurement? The thing that always gets me with this is there's so little standardization. Like you're talking about in some organizations.

00;43;10;07 - 00;43;30;17

Jonny Dunning

You might be dealing with H.R. And tie on a service. It became an issue in other organizations. You might be doing the purely with procurement on that. In other organizations, it could be operational. but ultimately the kind of responsibility at the top level could be the CFO. For example, I'm in charge of all money going in and out of the business.

00;43;30;19 - 00;43;49;18

Jonny Dunning

but it's a fascinating area. And, what when we when we looked at that within the survey, the results varied. And, you know, when you talk about a lot of people said most people said it wasn't anything really that should be the responsibility of TI and H.R. But some people said it's kind of like procurement and a like a crossover.

00;43;49;20 - 00;44;09;06

Jonny Dunning

But a lot of people said when they said the stakeholders, what they meant was it's no one's responsibility to you. You know what I mean? In a sense that it's their individual responsibility for their particular project. But in terms of who's like looking after all of it, in a lot of organizations, it was nobody because procurement couldn't get their arms around it or they didn't have the mandate.

00;44;09;06 - 00;44;33;10

Jonny Dunning

And it was just basically this amorphous mass that was sat within their spend that it might go across multiple categories, but there wasn't one person that was saying, when we're buying stuff, when we're buying goods, materials, it's quite simple because we've got, software that's very well designed to do that. And it's a process. It's very well thought out when we're buying people contingent workforce exactly the same for absolutely proven.

00;44;33;13 - 00;44;56;12

Jonny Dunning

You got very proven technology that that you're doing those transactions around buying a person for a period of time and citing that all services are so complicated that generally it's not captured in the same way. So you got that added layer of complexity. Plus it goes across a lot of different categories. So in a lot of organizations, they were really struggling to say whose problem is it, whose problem it is.

00;44;56;14 - 00;44;57;04

Jonny Dunning

00;44;57;07 - 00;44;59;19

Paul Vincent

Now think or say but you kind it's sort of.

00;44;59;21 - 00;45;00;21

Hey.

00;45;00;23 - 00;45;08;01

Paul Vincent

You can't put that down. So for example, marketing. So expenditure chief marketing officer should own.

00;45;08;03 - 00;45;08;24

The.

00;45;08;27 - 00;45;42;05

Paul Vincent

I.T social expenditure CIO. legal Chief legal Officer. So you can actually define who should are not spend. But when you start because ultimately they're the ones who are accountable in what those people are doing inside their organization. That's where ownership should reside. So you got facilitation. Sorry then. So, you know, facilitating the process of engaging those providers.

00;45;42;07 - 00;45;53;19

Paul Vincent

That's when you get into the realm of okay. So that's the role of procurement. Yeah. Facilitate that ownership has to be surely people are accountable.

00;45;53;22 - 00;46;18;13

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. And I think sometimes procurement also feel put upon if they're being tasked with responsibility for this type of spend. but actually they're not very effectively the way they're measured doesn't really drive them towards wanting to do that, because they're going to be probably measured on cost savings up to the point of contract, and they're not necessarily going to be measured on things that happen post contract.

00;46;18;16 - 00;46;40;07

Jonny Dunning

You know, how long, how much, how many of these projects over run, what's the you know, what's the average cost over run for a supplier or X type of project or X department? you know, how many of these things go wrong? How many of the men did a bad result? Procurement don't really get the benefit of solving those problems in a lot of organizations, it seems, because they're just being measured on hard cost savings budget versus contracted price, for example.

00;46;40;09 - 00;47;04;01

Paul Vincent

Okay. But if you were to take, was a, a game changer procurement mentality. I mean, if I had any category managers working for me who actually didn't explore well in the project that suppliers just done finished, did they actually deliver value for money? Did that deliver what they said they would do before they start negotiating with them again in the future?

00;47;04;03 - 00;47;05;10

Paul Vincent

That's not good procurement.

00;47;05;13 - 00;47;18;07

Jonny Dunning

He but I don't think they got that information. Most people haven't got the information because they'll just think, okay, did they do a good job? And they'll say, say to the person who bought the project, you know, where's where's the contracts? And it will be a statement of work. It'll be the original statement of work. It might not have any variations.

00;47;18;07 - 00;47;31;23

Jonny Dunning

Included in it could have been a six month project that changed ten times, might not even capture milestones effectively, might have had a terrible brief. I know I'm coming out with the world's most depressing scenario here, but we see that a lot. And so therefore, if people are thinking, well, how am I going to negotiate with them for the next time?

00;47;31;27 - 00;47;34;22

Jonny Dunning

They have no idea what happened. The first on a great.

00;47;34;22 - 00;47;44;07

Paul Vincent

And that goes full circle to the question of so you are that person who has just engaged with that supplier, and you're telling me, yeah, I got value for money was my question.

00;47;44;09 - 00;47;45;12

00;47;45;14 - 00;47;48;25

Paul Vincent

What makes you so sure. Yeah. How did you judge. What was your measure of success.

00;47;48;25 - 00;47;50;19

Jonny Dunning

And is that a question in the procurement. Do you think you should be, you.

00;47;50;19 - 00;47;51;20

Paul Vincent

Know 100%.

00;47;51;23 - 00;48;14;09

Jonny Dunning

So that gets round to the nub of it where procurement are putting accountability on the buyer to say I can't help you. So so procurement need to understand the business. Exactly what you're saying earlier about people coming from diverse backgrounds and having work more within the business, they need to understand the business. I've had that drummed into me by by forward thinking procurement people over the last two years.

00;48;14;12 - 00;48;33;27

Jonny Dunning

You need to understand the business. What is the business? What is the business need? What's a good outcome? What's going to help make that business thrive? they need to hold the buyers accountable somehow without getting in the way. All right. and then somebody at the top of the tree, the CFO or CPO, somebody that should be looking at the numbers, saying what?

00;48;34;01 - 00;48;40;04

Jonny Dunning

You know, where's the value on they're passing that, accountability down through procurement.

00;48;40;07 - 00;49;02;20

Paul Vincent

But it's all about insight. It really, really is. So, you know, let's follow that train of thought, Mark. So, I come to you and I say, just letting you know, Johnny, you're dealing with a company X, they've done five projects in other parts of the business that you probably aren't aware of and just to let you know, in each one of those other projects, they overran on costs by 50%.

00;49;02;22 - 00;49;18;01

Paul Vincent

So when you negotiate with them, we can help you do this, of course, but just make sure you're really locking them in to avoid that. Now you're going to turn around and say to me, why don't you bother me with that information? Pull that. Just let me get on with it. I'll keep my blinkers on or you get a side.

00;49;18;01 - 00;49;46;19

Paul Vincent

Great. It's really great value. Thank you. And that's is the pathway. It's by bringing insight to the people who are very focused on their own particular need and challenge. They wouldn't otherwise be aware of because, you know, I'm not me, just come at you with a different process. But unless you are absolutely so fed up with the existing process that you're you're crawling up the wall, right?

00;49;46;19 - 00;50;09;01

Paul Vincent

You're not going to say, but what you are going to do is recognize where I'm trying to give you something you wouldn't otherwise know yourself. Now it's a longer play, but you layer up, layer up, layer up. But all of a sudden you create this great, big, powerful momentum. And also what happens? Well, suddenly chairmen are seen as being a business enabler, not.

00;50;09;04 - 00;50;10;15

They.

00;50;10;17 - 00;50;13;14

Paul Vincent

Supervisor of a process.

00;50;13;17 - 00;50;13;27

Yeah.

00;50;14;03 - 00;50;14;28

Jonny Dunning

Really interesting.

00;50;14;28 - 00;50;16;29

Paul Vincent

Because.

00;50;17;01 - 00;50;42;10

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. If you if you come with the insights, it's it's automatically, explaining the value of what you're trying to do. But, but getting those insights or certainly having those insights right now for, for most organizations, most procurement teams within organizations within their services spend. Absolutely. They don't have it. I mean, I've spoken to CPAs.

00;50;42;10 - 00;51;03;25

Jonny Dunning

You've told me I spoke to a CPA, you told me they had, was over a billion spend and around 75% of it was services. And they really do had no idea what most of those contracts were. they'd be in some sort of repository somewhere, but they literally would be scanned PDF, sign PDFs. And that was, you know, you'd have to literally trawl back through everything.

00;51;03;28 - 00;51;25;05

Jonny Dunning

the so with those insights, this is, this is a point that I find quite frustrating in the market, which is a feel like the where the market is at the moment, where it's kind of come from is typically been very hard to get these programs up and running because everything about it has required them to be big, they say.

00;51;25;09 - 00;51;34;01

Jonny Dunning

And generally that makes them more complicated, more people involved. And it reminds me of that webinar you did where you had your what was the box calls the.

00;51;34;04 - 00;51;35;07

Paul Vincent

Oh yeah, the two halves you've.

00;51;35;07 - 00;51;39;03

Jonny Dunning

Got. So you had to do box. There was all sorts coming out of that.

00;51;39;06 - 00;51;40;12

Paul Vincent

but it's true, it's true.

00;51;40;17 - 00;52;14;00

Jonny Dunning

And you know, this is, this is where, things fall down. So to get insights, you need to if you could provide insights, if you could say, okay, well, we've done some work over here and here's some insights. Would you like this sort of thing for your area of the business? You know, Mrs. Stakeholder? that's feel like that's a, an area that I, you know, I've been banging on about this for a while, but in terms of just being able to get started and make things simpler and provide evidence, it doesn't have to be a $2 billion program.

00;52;14;03 - 00;52;34;25

Jonny Dunning

It could be. And this is where the public sector has done it really well, because the public sector are quite true frameworks here. So basically they'll be dealing with stuff on a more kind of piecemeal, sometimes scalable basis. Obviously there's more mandates in the public sector as well. But that's been an interesting thing for for me to see looking across private versus public sector there.

00;52;34;27 - 00;52;38;12

Jonny Dunning

but yeah, it's that's I do feel that's one of the challenges.

00;52;38;14 - 00;52;58;10

Paul Vincent

I do in terms of, you know, you need to build on success. So you need to find an area of requirements, spend usage where there's a real opportunity to demonstrate that that's different to a pilot. Now, I often encounter people who say, we need to test the Toyota pilot.

00;52;58;12 - 00;52;59;09

And.

00;52;59;11 - 00;53;11;06

Paul Vincent

So let me just check. You want to pilot that? It's a good idea that you actually get what you thought you were going to get, and you pay what you thought you were going to pay. My not so basic base, it.

00;53;11;06 - 00;53;14;26

Jonny Dunning

Sounds like it might be you've got a business case. Yeah.

00;53;14;28 - 00;53;42;01

Paul Vincent

What's that? Well, in order to prove then, you know, we've got to prove we're getting. I mean, and if you're not careful. What I mean is you dilute what you're doing to such an extent, you can't possibly create something that's impactful enough to drive it. So I think it's a it's a better base. That is they picking an area which has got the biggest opportunity for impact, do some parallel running.

00;53;42;03 - 00;54;10;02

Paul Vincent

But again this is where you have to do it through full consultation with the people who are actually utilizing those services, because otherwise you it's procurement coming out with a different way of doing something. And then almost like say right now, who's going to use it first without actually getting to feel like they're shaping it and involvement. and the other thing that we need to do is be really clear about.

00;54;10;04 - 00;54;10;12

What.

00;54;10;12 - 00;54;20;26

Paul Vincent

Does success look like. So if you've negotiated 20 contracts really poorly and you haven't defined what you want very well.

00;54;20;28 - 00;54;21;26

In.

00;54;21;29 - 00;54;44;08

Paul Vincent

Administering them once they've been signed, it's not going to change the fact that you're not negotiating them very well and you haven't defined them very well. So it's really, though, I mean, I also talk about there being three ways to add value and I so cap context, it's about the up front making sure that you're managing demand properly and defining exactly the best way to get that word.

00;54;44;10 - 00;55;05;01

Paul Vincent

then sourcing contracting, not on lowest price but on value and then making sure that you do actually govern that. So you are managing everything through what's just been the break. Well, they're not kind of mutually exclusive effects. No. It doesn't mean that an organization may not have had all the to them. So we've got to look at those three things holistically.

00;55;05;03 - 00;55;19;17

Paul Vincent

And again, one of the challenges that when you make a start, you think that just by folks are one end of the process, you're going to demonstrate the effectiveness of everything. And then you can't. So you're going to look at that elastic fashion. Yeah.

00;55;19;17 - 00;55;47;02

Jonny Dunning

One of the other questions we were asking people was what's more important if you look at the process, is it sourcing, is it delivery or is it end to end? by far the majority of people were were saying that it's an end to end problem that we want to solve. But it was interesting to see that quite a lot of people, I believe, mistakenly felt that they had the sourcing side of it sorted, because I think we've got a sourcing process.

00;55;47;07 - 00;56;18;23

Jonny Dunning

We use it across all of the goods, materials that we buy. We have a sourcing process, but when you look at how that sourcing process needs to operate within services, procurement, the great variety, the difficulty in defining the requirement effectively and communicating that, I would say that kitting themselves in a lot of cases, but when it comes to this, the reason that some people thought that that was less of a priority than the kind of post contract delivery was, because almost nobody has any idea of what happens post contract with services procurement.

00;56;18;25 - 00;56;53;22

Jonny Dunning

They don't capture it effectively. Like hardly anybody in the Army that I talk to captures that effectively. So the so there was the consensus was it's all of it. you like you said, you can't just fix one bit and then get all the value out of it. It's a continuum. but people, people, it's very hard for someone to argue the point that they've got the delivery side of it covered in most cases, but the sourcing side of it, people probably would put up an argument, but I think maybe they're not getting into the detail of the the nuances because I always see like procurement of goods and services and, and giving a service,

00;56;53;29 - 00;57;15;04

Jonny Dunning

sorry procurement of goods, materials, other procurement of services almost being like opposites, procurement of goods, materials, easy to define. It's binaries a thing. and it's got a complicated supply chain. You're buying services. Germany has a simple supply chain in most cases, but it's a complex thing that you're buying. It's hard to define. So the sourcing requirement is for both a very different.

00;57;15;06 - 00;57;26;01

Paul Vincent

Yeah. Yeah. You know and you've got to look at companies. You say have you got any we've got any templates I see. Yeah. We've got one that's riveting.

00;57;26;07 - 00;57;26;22

Yeah.

00;57;26;25 - 00;57;43;09

Paul Vincent

So you go up I know. And how does that sort of flex. What do you mean. Oh and by the way, how many times do you actually contract on this basis versus on whatever. It's the supplier paper. Yeah. Oh we mostly contract on supply paper. Oh why is that. Oh because he's written in an easy way should I.

00;57;43;11 - 00;57;43;23

Yeah.

00;57;43;23 - 00;57;53;18

Paul Vincent

It's written about the specifics of the service. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, the sourcing is, is an area of, of really big opportunity.

00;57;53;20 - 00;57;54;07

00;57;54;09 - 00;58;01;28

Paul Vincent

But you've also got to we've got to shine a light on how does it adapt and flex for different types of to come.

00;58;02;01 - 00;58;25;29

Jonny Dunning

So one of the things you mentioned and you want to pick up on was just around stakeholder involvement at the beginning of the process, and of making a program successful by having that stakeholder involvement. he mentioned it on the podcast I did, but then, along with those who see any procurement guy at talent who we've been working with, he, they, they engaged what he called a it was I think it's target team.

00;58;25;29 - 00;58;42;23

Jonny Dunning

It was like target him or Hit Squad or Shark Tank or it was I think it was targeting basically where he had stakeholders from the business buyers who who were, you know, very effective buyers, but would be typically the sort of people who might look at this process and be very questioning about it. How is this going to work?

00;58;42;24 - 00;58;59;28

Jonny Dunning

What's this going to mean? Am I going to have to change this? What's the is this going to slow me down? Is this going to get in my way? And they they took a very honest approach to it. Alan is absolutely one of the, you know, change maker as we describe a change agent. but he involved they involved people from the business at that early stage.

00;58;59;28 - 00;59;21;04

Jonny Dunning

And I do agree that that definitely made a significant difference in how successful it was, because you kind of preempting the problems that may come up. And also if you can solve the problem for, for these people, you've got very rigorous requirements of what they will be satisfied with and what sort of process they're willing to follow and what sort of things like how they can see it in their mind, benefiting the business or benefiting their part of the business, even, it makes a lot of sense.

00;59;21;12 - 00;59;50;04

Paul Vincent

Oh, how do I mean, if I think back to, you know, my last role in in Beattie, back in 2007, you know, we we transformed the results, a category by asking two questions. What request you did. And if we gave you that choice would you use first floor list. Answer. Where. Yes, it's a second question. The first question is we brought everyone together, all that sort of power, as if you like, got their perspective and, and actually enacted them.

00;59;50;07 - 01;00;11;03

Paul Vincent

So I think it's a it's a very excellent idea. I mean, it's just not dumb, you know, that because there is this inbuilt fear that cos they don't appear to it, they don't see a problem you're pushing will drop it. And therefore the only way you're going to grab their attention is by saying, hey, I can save you money by doing this.

01;00;11;06 - 01;00;35;22

Paul Vincent

Well that actually want to save money, right? Or do they feel actually they get good value? But what they really irritate you by is a matter of time it takes to actually bring someone into the organization to contract with. and so it's just taking a very, very different lens from where I'm at. Remember a long time ago, I was, invited to a an implementation workshop.

01;00;35;22 - 01;00;41;08

Paul Vincent

Kickoff workshop. I'll have to be careful how I slide the slide. I give the game away with,

01;00;41;10 - 01;00;42;16

Jonny Dunning

Keep it nice. An omnibus.

01;00;42;20 - 01;01;12;18

Paul Vincent

Yeah. so, I was brought in to observe the session, and, and there was a pre meeting going on, and, we saw going through how we were going to be presenting the new process to the audience that were being brought in a bit later on, Data Plus. And the main procurement stakeholder, the client who was the one who determined who was I to get a come in and be the first cap off the right and about ten minutes and I thought, this is a car fresh.

01;01;12;18 - 01;01;13;00

Paul Vincent

Right then.

01;01;13;07 - 01;01;13;16

Yeah.

01;01;13;22 - 01;01;32;17

Paul Vincent

Right. And then as I get deeper into the meeting, the alarm bells work out in my head. We had a break and I went up to this guy and I said, well, first time we met, I really do think you need to reconsider what you're price do today. I really think it's going to end up a problem for you.

01;01;32;20 - 01;01;56;20

Paul Vincent

No no no no no, I think it's right that we're going to do so. What happens? Go forward session. I decided to pick the legal team as the first cap off the right. Now, anybody who knows this will never, ever start with the legal pain of the first spend category. Literally the meeting literally last five minutes for there was an open revolt for and they will track the rig.

01;01;56;23 - 01;01;58;23

Paul Vincent

and at the end of it you said.

01;01;58;26 - 01;01;59;29

Yeah.

01;02;00;04 - 01;02;27;22

Paul Vincent

I didn't see that coming, but it's like, and, and I think that's, that's how you us companies who trying to move change in this area can help because we can bring that real world perspective. now, you can't you know, Kevin is giving people a validated choice. it's not force feeding them with whatever they've got to do, and you've got to allow that to happen.

01;02;27;24 - 01;02;46;27

Paul Vincent

And so you have to think enabling you have to think facilitating. You have to think that we are literally acting. There's that pathway for them to do what they want to do here, when they want to do it. As soon as you start thinking, right, okay, we're going to try and stop them from doing this couple, we think they're not getting value for money.

01;02;46;29 - 01;02;49;02

Paul Vincent

Then you're an addict.

01;02;49;05 - 01;03;22;02

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. Just going back to the to the kind of title of all discussion to lie about liberating opportunity. I mean, that just is what we're trying to do. Because the thing is, you and I work with customers where we see the opportunity and we see them realizing the opportunity, so we know how massive that is. On the potential there is for other organizations to just do things so much better and be so much more successful, not just save money being, you know, have a better relationship with their supply chain, but be more a customer of choice for their supply chain.

01;03;22;05 - 01;03;41;25

Jonny Dunning

be more effective, be better at their business, you know, make their business more successful. It's it's so fundamental. But it's it's a bit of an education process because for a lot of organizations like just not they're not at the point where they're, they think is even possible. Yeah. It's either in the too hard to do box or they haven't really twigged in maybe a different way to do it.

01;03;41;25 - 01;04;01;13

Jonny Dunning

All that, all that. Maybe there's a there's a serious problem here because it's so diffuse across the business. but it is it can be frustrating. I'm sure you probably found it the same over the last few years in some ways, where you're talking to organizations and, and it's frustrating just to see them being so immature in their, in their understanding and approach to this.

01;04;01;15 - 01;04;25;01

Jonny Dunning

But it is nice being on the front end of something and trying to make change happen. It's kind of like there's two sides to it, really. I enjoy it and it definitely makes it. The challenge is definitely, is definitely there to communicate this in the right way because, obviously the more times you can show case studies and, and get people talking amongst each other who've actually been there and done it.

01;04;25;03 - 01;04;27;06

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, I think that's really valuable.

01;04;27;09 - 01;04;55;02

Paul Vincent

I think it's all about helping people to feel why the change is important. Yeah. There's a Beautiful Story is a book, by two brothers called, Chip and dad piece, and they wrote this book. And then inside there was a case study where there was just Kim, director somewhere for manufacturing organization. He discovered that his organization spent enormous amount of money, different types of money on, like, hundreds of different types of clubs across their organization.

01;04;55;05 - 01;05;19;02

Paul Vincent

And so it came up with beautiful spreadsheets to show the variation of cost and the opportunity to actually bring that together and to reduce cost. There was crickets when you send that information out to the organization. So sorry, how do I get their attention? Let's say what he did was he got a example pair. Every single set of gloves sold for across the organization, and he put an individual price on each paragraph.

01;05;19;04 - 01;05;31;19

Paul Vincent

And then he left them high on the boardroom table, and he invited all the exact same course. So the first one I saw, this crappy pilot, I was like, what's all this? Well, these are all the club. I why are we buying this?

01;05;31;21 - 01;05;34;05

But they know each other, right?

01;05;34;07 - 01;05;56;13

Paul Vincent

And so because he actually made them feel they absurdity in a way of what they're actually doing that then bred the reason for change. So that's what we have to do is I mean, I like you, I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't love to. The tribe spark change. And I do feel like we're we're on the march.

01;05;56;14 - 01;06;25;19

Paul Vincent

Nope. We're not on the cusp of success yet, but we're definitely by moving in the right direction. But we have to find a way of helping organizations to feel that need for change. And it is not a why do I get my my requirements done better, quicker, easier. It's if I feel like you're really given me insight so I haven't got before, you know there things I can taste and feel a bit of all I see this is like another barrier.

01;06;25;19 - 01;06;26;27

Paul Vincent

I kind of.

01;06;26;29 - 01;06;28;22

why would I, why would I apply?

01;06;28;24 - 01;06;39;09

Paul Vincent

And that's like compasses, case study stories, right? All the things that we talked about, that's like, oh, we have to make a profit sometimes.

01;06;39;09 - 01;07;04;09

Jonny Dunning

You know what? We obviously the the pain points are different for different people in different organizations. But certainly some people became professionals. If you could just take a week's worth of the statement of work, segments of work that they're meant to be looking at, and stack them on the desk and go, this is, this is this is how many statements of work you're asking or take to the CPO and say, that category manager is being expected to deal with this many statements of work per week manually.

01;07;04;11 - 01;07;22;12

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. And just read through it all and they're not being brought into the process at the beginning and it's not captured effectively. do you think that doing anything strategic, you know, do you think that literally just doing admin effectively, that that's the sort of thing I sometimes feel like, I don't know, I think I was gonna ask you was, you know, who's your customer?

01;07;22;13 - 01;07;39;19

Jonny Dunning

Who do you see as your customer? And it might well vary, but which wouldn't surprise me because I'm in this industry as well. I know how the lack of standardization is, but but we quite often get procurement people coming to us and saying, I'm having an absolute nightmare with this. I can't deal with this manually or you get a procurement excellent person.

01;07;39;21 - 01;07;58;23

Jonny Dunning

Come to us and say, big organization. We've got really good processes and everything is managed through technology, but I've got a hole. Every time we buy something for a statement of work, it falls in a hole. Or I might get a CPO that just says, I'm I see nothing. But below I call any information below a P.O. Level for any of this spend.

01;07;58;23 - 01;08;21;13

Jonny Dunning

And it's a lot. So it's kind of different things that you'd need to illustrate to different people, which is where I think conversation is important. But but going back on that, who do you see is the kind of your customer, the type of people you, you want to engage with within an organization's and how we got any things you'd like to make them feel about this problem.

01;08;21;15 - 01;08;27;02

Paul Vincent

So I talked about my ideal contacts, all the people that we tend to speak to on a regular basis, just.

01;08;27;06 - 01;08;48;17

Jonny Dunning

Kind of like and it might it might be a difficult question to answer, but the people that you feel should be your customer, that you're going to with a solution, where's, where does that. And obviously it's going to be a multi point. Yeah. Internal stakeholder because MSP relationships traditionally with an end organization you've already working with them on an MSP basis.

01;08;48;20 - 01;09;13;24

Jonny Dunning

You'll have an H.R and tie relationship. If procurements then you need to get involved. Sometimes that could be a side step. And that's well-trodden ground. We all know that's a challenge. when you're coming from that MSP background. But if you just look at it from a service perspective, you want to come in and solve this problem. Who is it that you think should be getting excited about the solution and wanting to push that forward within their organization?

01;09;13;27 - 01;09;43;09

Paul Vincent

So probably won't surprise you to say the CIO, the CMO, the chief operating officer, or CFO. Now, if 50% of your spend in an organization is on third party expertise, isn't that C-suite issue, right? So I think is a C-suite issue because but they, it manifests to them in different ways. It manifests through presentations on strategy or in different types of improvement projects.

01;09;43;12 - 01;10;08;14

Paul Vincent

They don't necessarily see the connectors that actually lead up to that particular scope of work. And so it's trying to sort of draw out a picture, I think also, when organizations go through change, like, so if you are acquiring or you've got a new competitor in the market, you know, you know you're going to be changing the profile for what you're spending.

01;10;08;17 - 01;10;26;08

Paul Vincent

So who are the people that are driving the conversation because you want to get ahead of it, get out to help. So absolutely, it's the kind of overall authority where different types spend would be my ideal contact. Obviously, the category leads those areas of spend.

01;10;26;10 - 01;10;27;04

01;10;27;06 - 01;11;02;28

Paul Vincent

Provided they actually want to be enablers and actually they understand what those requirements are, they're probably well established. And the third layer really. I'll just pause that because to me, one of the biggest stakeholders, the program that is often overlooked is the supplier, because yes, you're trying to enable the users to have a great experience, but you're also trying to make it really easy for the suppliers to be successful, but reduce their cost of sale, make it easier for them to do business with like me.

01;11;03;01 - 01;11;25;18

Paul Vincent

And and if they can reduce the cost of so what can they do? They can look at the commercial terms who get the benefit that they're in. And all you're doing is you're creating that pathway for them that makes them feel like you are trying to help them be the best they can be, and actually create a platform for future work.

01;11;25;20 - 01;11;32;12

Paul Vincent

So if you hit those bases right, that's when you know you've got the right center of gravity for a successful brand. Yeah, that's a.

01;11;32;12 - 01;11;57;10

Jonny Dunning

Very good point. And it's interesting when you talk about suppliers, because it's also about how competitive, you know, the competition for the best suppliers. And we've seen this with some of our clients in the kind of like highly secure aerospace market where they've run specific programs designed to bring, for example, innovative SMEs make it easier for SMEs to do business with them, which obviously ties into things like government targets on working with SMEs as well.

01;11;57;13 - 01;12;20;07

Jonny Dunning

That's been massively successful. Suppliers love it because you're making their life easier. And even with the talent. Example, when I asked Alan, what's with having rolled out the program being really successful? you know, what was the biggest surprise? And for him, one of the biggest surprises and one of the things he was most proud of was a supplier feedback, unsolicited, unsolicited, unsolicited, supplier feedback.

01;12;20;07 - 01;12;37;09

Jonny Dunning

That was just really positive. Yeah. Glad you put this in place. We can see when we're due to get paid, we can see where we are with stuff. It amazes me when you look across the board, when you see how many suppliers like forget to invoice on milestones and things like that, and they just, you know, it's these the projects, you know, become quite convoluted.

01;12;37;13 - 01;13;00;21

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. yeah. It's the this is what a success looks like. side of it as well I think is I feel like that's something sometimes something that scares people. Like when you, when they just go, you've got to do a project. I've got to get a project done. If you just say, I'm just going to hire some people, I'm just going to hire some Java developers to do this development, and I'm going to pay them on an hourly basis, and I got to get it done.

01;13;00;25 - 01;13;14;26

Jonny Dunning

I don't know how long it's good. If you really pressed then that buyer to say, how long is it going to take? What's the overall cost going to be? what's the net value to the business? What is what it could look like at the end of this? They don't feel like they're in a world where they have to define that.

01;13;14;28 - 01;13;36;06

Jonny Dunning

Whereas when you take it through a statement of work type engagement, suddenly if it's done properly, you're having to look at genuine outputs and people sometimes feel like that's a lot of work, I think. I think, oh, do I have to really work that out? But the value to the business is just so much greater. You're actually having to think, what's the outcome, what's the output that needs to happen for this.

01;13;36;08 - 01;13;52;21

Jonny Dunning

And then in terms of judging it if you can, as you talking earlier about defining a requirement, effectively defining what the deliverables the outputs are, whatever they may be, if you can capture that and you can measure against that, then you've already defined what good looks like really, haven't you?

01;13;52;22 - 01;14;08;12

Paul Vincent

Yeah, not so sure, I know, but I think there are some questions you can ask just to help your thought process. Like, you know, the how do I want the world to change when that supplier is finished when they've left our office building?

01;14;08;14 - 01;14;10;16

Jonny Dunning

What's the what has changed?

01;14;10;19 - 01;14;27;27

Paul Vincent

What is different, you know, and how are we going to measure that? Know how are we going to judge them? How are we going to measure it. Because also you need to understand it from a supplier perspective. What do you want your there's an old adage, I'm sure you've heard it, which is you're only ever as good as your last project.

01;14;27;29 - 01;14;50;14

Paul Vincent

But so you want a great case study, like, say, do you want a case study that says, hey, I pay them a lot of money, no idea what they came in and did, but they came to door right? Or do you want someone that says, you know, what has the problem statement they came in? I absolutely helped me to re-engineer our process to identify the improvement I needed.

01;14;50;16 - 01;15;19;13

Paul Vincent

And I can't imagine me getting any better value for money. And I'd easily I I but that's you have to facilitate that. You know you have to try and commonwealth that I'm on that you know let's be real. There are there are suppliers out there who actually make a lot of money from being opaque. Yeah. But there's also a lot of suppliers, service providers who really want to build up to create that whole trajectory of success.

01;15;19;15 - 01;15;24;14

Paul Vincent

So you've given them a very, very fluffy a W doesn't help that.

01;15;24;16 - 01;15;53;07

Jonny Dunning

No. And like you said, if if you're you could bring the supply chain, somebody within the organization and say, are you aware by the way there's these other suppliers you could use. That's right. For those suppliers, they're getting greater visibility of opportunities across the business. so so coming back to the other side of the title of this, this discussion around avoiding excuses, and you've spoken to me before about kind of being the architect of their own problem.

01;15;53;09 - 01;16;00;25

Jonny Dunning

What's your what's your view on that? Who who is it this potentially making excuses on how can they avoid that.

01;16;00;27 - 01;16;02;02

And.

01;16;02;05 - 01;16;04;07

Paul Vincent

so.

01;16;04;09 - 01;16;06;08

Let me.

01;16;06;11 - 01;16;18;14

Paul Vincent

2 or 3 examples. Let me talk about this from lens of what people ask us for. Yeah. So it's what makes my heart sink and what makes my heart sore when I read and write.

01;16;18;16 - 01;16;21;16

Jonny Dunning

I hate rainy days at the best of times.

01;16;21;18 - 01;16;27;05

Paul Vincent

That's what makes my heart sing, is when someone comes out and says,

01;16;27;07 - 01;16;28;02

Okay.

01;16;28;04 - 01;16;32;09

Paul Vincent

This is what I want to do. How much are you going to charge for it?

01;16;32;11 - 01;16;34;05

Yeah. Yep.

01;16;34;08 - 01;16;52;17

Paul Vincent

And what they want to do is one of misclassification that they want to stop people doing using by the back door, and they want to reduce the amount that's spending because inherently they think they're spending too much. That makes my heart sink because you know where you're going.

01;16;52;21 - 01;16;53;12

Jonny Dunning

Yeah.

01;16;53;14 - 01;17;17;22

Paul Vincent

And by the way, they said they should make it up. Right. So then what happens is they will choose someone based on what they want to hear, not the reality of what actually can be done. And then someone comes in, they get appointed and they there's the playlist portal route. Right? That's how it plays out. What most people saw when comes out and says, here's my problem, here's my landscape.

01;17;17;24 - 01;17;34;15

Paul Vincent

How could I do that differently? And I by the way, I'm not going to do this at some point in time in the future to be undetermined. Right. And I want to fix pricing for three years, irrespective of whether I start doing it or not. If I say, I want to work on this now, I want to co-create.

01;17;34;18 - 01;17;57;06

Paul Vincent

I want to actually develop very clear understanding about what I problem opportunity is, what the solution principle should be, the how we actually put it together. Because then, you know, you're dealing with someone who is wants to be a change agent, somebody who really wants to make a mark in their business. And they're all those people out there now, how often do you think I get?

01;17;57;08 - 01;18;04;22

Jonny Dunning

I always get an asking what question? What percentage of RFPs are of that heart sore type?

01;18;04;24 - 01;18;07;03

Paul Vincent

absolutely. No, I know 20%.

01;18;07;03 - 01;18;08;10

Jonny Dunning

50%. Would you?

01;18;08;15 - 01;18;11;07

Paul Vincent

I mean, I'd probably put it at ten, 50%. Yeah.

01;18;11;14 - 01;18;36;15

Jonny Dunning

You genuinely got a problem. Got a burning problem. Need to to solve that problem. Yeah. I mean, you and I are in the, in the business of problem solving. And I think that's another as a fundamental area where the staffing industry and the large economy, very capable staffing organizations, they're problem solvers. They're very, very good solving, solving complicated problems.

01;18;36;17 - 01;18;59;16

Jonny Dunning

And and that's where I think there is a great deal of credibility to be taken from what an organization has been able to achieve. For example, on the contingent side, the staffing is on and managing resourcing. Yeah, being able to take that cross with the with the appropriate internal procurement expertise to address the bigger procurement problem as well, because it is a problem, is there are similarities in the problem solving exercise there.

01;18;59;20 - 01;19;10;13

Jonny Dunning

There are large differences in the mechanism of how the work is being, the works being, achieved or how you're contracting that work to get it done. But there's, there are similar problem solving exercises.

01;19;10;16 - 01;19;37;28

Paul Vincent

I also, I think it's been brutally honest with where your staff work. So if you come to me and you say, here is my spent data file for the last 12, 18 months. And here's some examples of our typical statement. It works. And here is the sort of templates that we use. And here's a degree of understanding about what we're getting by suppliers based on what we've done.

01;19;37;28 - 01;19;43;25

Paul Vincent

And here's a synopsis of conversations that I've had with the key users taught doing this.

01;19;43;28 - 01;19;45;03

And.

01;19;45;05 - 01;19;47;23

Jonny Dunning

You know, at that point you're setting up kind of that, right?

01;19;47;26 - 01;20;02;28

Paul Vincent

I'm sitting up thinking, you know, well, you've thought about this. Yeah, you thought about this. But, you know, as soon as you start getting down to the lines of, so as part of implementation, we can introduce your stakeholders to the solution for the very first time.

01;20;03;00 - 01;20;04;02

01;20;04;05 - 01;20;31;27

Paul Vincent

Okay, I saw that. Do you think that's going to play out well? And I you know, I don't want to be flippant about this, but that you really you really do know very early on whether you're on a glide path to success or you're on the glide path to pretty you. So failure and you want to be really out the doorway, the thought process and get desperate to help shape and guide them.

01;20;31;29 - 01;21;00;13

Paul Vincent

but people need to want. Yeah. Do it. And when often people get sucked into going down a particular pathway, that's the direction we're going. And if you don't say yes to X, Y and Z, there's probably more that the will do that. It becomes a very hard judgment call because you think, well, okay, well I'll stick with it, you know, and hopefully, you know, when we get in deeper into the process, we can then have a more kind of open dialog, co-create a dialog.

01;21;00;15 - 01;21;02;01

Paul Vincent

but maybe it's,

01;21;02;04 - 01;21;04;17

Okay, you, you.

01;21;04;20 - 01;21;09;19

Paul Vincent

You've value you when you really connect with a game changer.

01;21;09;21 - 01;21;10;11

01;21;10;14 - 01;21;14;02

Paul Vincent

You go down that co-creation pathway, you validate.

01;21;14;04 - 01;21;33;11

Jonny Dunning

The massively. I 100% agree and that definitely from a from a tech check provider point of view, it makes all the difference in the world. You're working together to solve a problem, and you know, all parts of the all elements in the process can add value experience of what else has happened in other programs you've dealt with. What do I what are the customers doing?

01;21;33;18 - 01;21;57;11

Jonny Dunning

What what's happening in the market? I know a question I was going to put to you actually, was when you look at the market where it is, it's an immature market. this maybe sometimes a lack of understanding. It's early, but there's progress happening. What can tech providers do? You know, if you use a wave magic one or you sitting there thinking, come on, guys, what could tech providers do, to help in this market?

01;21;57;13 - 01;22;02;04

Paul Vincent

So I think it's quite interesting discussion because there are so many different types of, you.

01;22;02;04 - 01;22;03;07

Know.

01;22;03;09 - 01;22;32;01

Paul Vincent

Functional tools out there. so I think, you know, you need agility. So you need to sort of have something where, you know, you can you relate different types of requirements. Right? I think increasingly you're already in the space of, well, I've got something already. So therefore this is something else I've got to plug in to. So ease of operation, ease of learning, integration is another issue.

01;22;32;03 - 01;22;56;27

Paul Vincent

But for me I think it's all tools that are designed to reflect reality, which is things change. Yeah. You know, things change. You need to be able to like, for example, you know, yeah, you know, if I create an S or W, and the only way I can effect any change on a tool is by completely reentering the whole thing all over again and starting all over again.

01;22;56;29 - 01;23;18;22

Paul Vincent

Come on. You know, I mean, you go, well, you have decided. I'm really. Yeah. With that user in mind. So that's what the tech companies can do. But also I think they can help to kind of shine a light on the the possible building the business case because that fundamentally is what people need to see is that it's the pain of the same.

01;23;18;25 - 01;23;50;06

Paul Vincent

It is, however, the pain of changing. And often people feel like, well, you know, heart valve. It it's going to be a nightmare. Is there anything you process guys could be a nightmare. Difficult. Okay. And then the final thing is change much. It's how do you have this ability guide people for so they feel comfortable now that no there's a there's a pathway I think we are dealing with with a, an industry where lots of people won't be first.

01;23;50;08 - 01;24;02;13

Paul Vincent

Yeah. They, they wait with somebody else. I mean, how how often do you get our, you know, I want to do something that was ever tried in the history of the universe, and I want to be first. That's like my show, right? Where you've done it before.

01;24;02;19 - 01;24;03;25

Jonny Dunning

Yeah.

01;24;03;27 - 01;24;14;21

Paul Vincent

so I think that partnership also, you know, building that ecosystem, everyone's got a part to play, but you want to sort of stitch all together. Lead. That's an important part. Forest play too.

01;24;14;24 - 01;24;38;29

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. Everybody everybody contributes. And it's partly just about having these type of problem solving conversations like, say, the round tables at the AWS summit. Great people, people talking about the it's not just about, you know, you and I sitting here going, oh, we you know, saying we've got the all the answers. No one's got all the answers. You know, no one can even agree on what it should necessarily be defined as because it's an early market.

01;24;39;01 - 01;24;56;13

Jonny Dunning

but the bottom line is conversations like this where we're trying to talk about problem solving exercise, that's what I feel quite passionately about. People need to get involved in that and and get, you know, put their head above the parapet a little bit and just understand a bit more. But but these have got to be the people that are motivated to do that.

01;24;56;13 - 01;25;20;08

Jonny Dunning

And I think that's something that's becoming, more required in procurement people. you know, organizations have got to keep up with their competitors. And part of that is going to be how they affect how they how effective their procurement processes are, how effective their procurement teams are. And if teams are just stuffed doing stock, doing very transactional activity on a very manual basis, they're not effective.

01;25;20;10 - 01;25;33;13

Jonny Dunning

They're not if they're not engaging their time to strategically benefit that organization, understand how the organization works, understand the supply chain, understand the needs of their buyers. They're never going to be able to deliver that value to the C-suite.

01;25;33;15 - 01;25;52;08

Paul Vincent

Yeah, they're going to be almost a business. People in in spend managed groups. Yeah. You know, they go off fake like that. but, you know, again, in the real world, you know, you have some people that just don't want to have that kind of strategic. They wouldn't know what to do if you said, look, I can liberate half your week.

01;25;52;10 - 01;26;18;04

Paul Vincent

We're going to do with it. You can have some conversations with the stakeholders, but we're not going to talk to them about. Well, again, I'm not like sharing real stories in the past, but remember when I inherited, now, in every respect, you know, try to protect the heritage area, respect and, half the world. I just got to speak to a very senior press in the company who's actually orchestrating them.

01;26;18;07 - 01;26;38;29

Paul Vincent

So I go and have a conversation with them. Gail. Very well. Talk about their vision, their objectives, how what can help them? How am I taking my team Marshall, to that direction? just back to later. What's your question, Paul? Yeah. Shopping in this job five years, you're the first person procurements. I've come to see me with.

01;26;39;01 - 01;26;42;29

But it's like, go figure. But.

01;26;43;01 - 01;26;49;20

Paul Vincent

I when I went back and I, I shared that with my team room, I said, how come no one's ever had a conversation before?

01;26;49;22 - 01;26;50;09

Yeah.

01;26;50;11 - 01;26;51;20

Paul Vincent

Never been asked.

01;26;51;23 - 01;26;55;02

Yeah. I think one thing that.

01;26;55;04 - 01;27;16;11

Jonny Dunning

Comes back to the change agents, and I think that's something that we will start to see more of, is people that have been successful in transforming this area in one organization, going to other organizations and doing the same thing because it's such a complete open opportunity at a greenfield opportunity to really make a massive change. And and that's something that I think we will start to see.

01;27;16;14 - 01;27;30;28

Jonny Dunning

but just to kind of, just kind of finish with a slightly different view on it. because I think you and I could debate this for literally we could spend the rest of the day, there's plenty more stuff we could cover, and no doubt we would at some point.

01;27;30;28 - 01;27;33;09

Paul Vincent

But what do you buy the beer?

01;27;33;12 - 01;27;43;11

Jonny Dunning

Well, there we go. what do you see as. Like what? Or something? What are the things that are really good that are happening in this market at the moment?

01;27;43;13 - 01;28;10;02

Paul Vincent

Oh, just picking up on the last part. I think definitely you're getting more people who are really motivated to do something different. and going into organizations, sometimes they go into the wrong organization. They've got the right motivation, ambition, structure, wrong organization. And so you have to find the right hard. But, definitely, there's more of those.

01;28;10;04 - 01;28;23;15

Paul Vincent

Second thing is conversation with that. I mean, this is a new area in a sense that we haven't quite got critical mass now, but maybe by the services pharmacy is.

01;28;23;17 - 01;28;29;09

Jonny Dunning

Is pretty niche. When I tell people I do a podcast in this area, they're like, okay, it's fairly specific.

01;28;29;11 - 01;28;46;08

Paul Vincent

Yeah. So you know, so we get let's keep real well, but then, you know, let let's be honest, like now you talk about professional Pokémon. I mean, if someone said to me two years ago was like, well, you told me to be a professional to buy, well, you just need to be professional in how you go about.

01;28;46;10 - 01;29;20;21

Paul Vincent

And we do sometimes to get that, you know, that I'm really a professional per person. We knows in your and ins and outs of that stuff. People spend money every day and because we're talking about perceived value, everyone makes those decisions every day. And so you have to approach it with that mindset. That is how you help him, you and others like you to actually go through that selection process in the right way.

01;29;20;24 - 01;29;27;25

Paul Vincent

So I think what what's going on at the moment is hopefully that kind of thinking is starting to take effect.

01;29;27;28 - 01;29;44;08

Jonny Dunning

Long may it continue and long may the conversations continue. really appreciate you coming and joining me today. It's nice to be able to do it face to face. Absolutely. And, and really kind of go through the points in detail. but obviously with the with the podcast, we'll timestamp it so people can jump in and out.

01;29;44;08 - 01;29;50;28

Jonny Dunning

Various points will create clips and things like that. But I really appreciate you coming down. And I've really enjoyed the conversation.

01;29;50;28 - 01;29;56;01

Paul Vincent

Thanks for I hope we got people like some nuggets out of it. I'll be great with me. Absolutely. Okay.

01;29;56;03 - 01;29;59;02

Jonny Dunning

Let me. Thanks a lot. Excellent.