The Heart of Procurement with Tom Mills
WE'VE GOT A SLIGHT GLITCH BETWEEN 10:00 - 11:30 MINS OF THE PODCAST. IT WILL COME BACK ON :D
We had Tom Mills on the World of Procurement Podcast to talk about his views and ideas around what Procurement truly is. At one point in the episode, Tom referred to The Heart of Procurement and I instantly knew that would be the title for this episode.
We cover an incredible amount of conversation pieces as summarised below. If you want to, please refer to the transcript which you can find as you scroll down the page that cover the entire conversation we had. As always, it’s better to give this episode a listen.
Show Notes:
Introduction into Tom’s career
Procurement versus Purchasing, key differences and what Tom loves about Procurement
Why Procurement having a seat at the table is the wrong question and the wrong angle to come from
The Role of Procurement Pros moving forwards
Managing conflict and “office” politics as a Procurement Professional
Integrity as a Supply Chain/Procurement Professional
Check out the transcript for this Podcast here:
00:00
Daniel Barnes
Tom welcome to the podcast. It always feels really weird doing an intro to a podcast cause we've literally just been talking, but welcome here and our open up the floor.
00:11
Tom Mills
Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate being on. I've enjoyed watching some of your podcasts in the last few months, so it's quite an honor to be here. But yeah, I'm Tom Mills. I'm Head of Procurement, at Bibby Financial Services. I've got a passion for procurement, so I love talking about it. This is absolutely what I love to do. I've been in procurement and buying roles for the last 20 years and I think it's worth just pointing out that I think there's a definite difference between buying and procurement. I love both elements. I'm passionate about procurement particularly on the kind of negotiation elements and, the psychology of procurement as well. I, I, I'm passionate about procurement particularly on the kind of negotiation elements and, the psychology of procurement as well. It's great to be on the show.
01:04
Daniel Barnes
Yeah, I like that distinction you made. Cause I, when I first started out, I was doing like commercial work, which was a bit more of the legal staff doing procurement and I left that role and became a, it was like a buyer lead, or some buyer role. And it just completely like changed. It was very transactional. It was very, high volumes of stuff. Just nonstop, just working with, I can't remember the system at the time, just blitzing and stuff through. I was like, oh, I've kind of lost of the stuff that I was enjoying there, and I didn't stay in the role very long because of that.
01:39
Daniel Barnes
I, I , but I definitely I'm with you very passionate about more of the, what I consider to be the procurement part. The, I was trying to avoid the word strategic because we I've used that, but it's pretty fit in here that the more of the, yeah, more of the strategic, the forward thinking, side of things.
01:59
Tom Mills
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a danger sometimes when you work in procurement, particularly when you're, when you've got pressure for you, from your CFO, from the budgeting perspective that you can fall back into a pattern of being a purchasing team, really focused on cost commodity buying, but you're right. My passion is for actually what value does procurement deliver to an organization? And it's far beyond things like savings. The metrics of a good procurement department should be so much broader than just what can you deliver to the bottom line? and I think most businesses are beginning to recognize that, but I always feel like it's a journey you have to take people on.
02:44
Daniel Barnes
I was just, I I've actually just next week, I've got a podcast coming out with Martin from talent talks and we're talking about job descriptions, all kinds of them look the same. I've kind of found like when I've had conversations with, hiring managers over the last few years now on paper, every role looks like it's a procurement, quote on quote procurement role is talking about, they are our key suppliers that we want to , nurture and build these collaborative relationships. Quite procurement row is talking about, they are our key suppliers that we want to nurture and build these collaborative relationships. When you actually get down into the weeds of the conversation, they actually just focused on, oh, can we just knock another five, 10, 15% off? Let's just hammer that more short term price in and well, we'll do that be we tick off those boxes, but I think we've seen the last couple years when things start to go wrong and go bad and you lose that ability within your supply chain to have that resilience, the backups there and you need your suppliers to come in and really help you.
03:41
Daniel Barnes
If you've not spent that time doing the, why would call proper procurement work, where you've built a nurture those relationships. I think a lot of companies have kind of screwed themselves over. Yeah, so I, I agree.
03:53
Tom Mills
It's interesting. He made the point on the last couple of years because I think that there's been plus sides to, the impact of the pandemic on procurement and a negative aspect. I think the negative aspect is around, it's driven a kind of short term view on, we've got to save money, we've got to save overheads, we've got to save costs. So therefore we need good procurement. The positive side is that I think businesses have recognized the importance of having a resilient supply chain and having good strong partnerships with the supply chain that support each other. So, and even thinking about things like cashflow, where you can have really good proactive conversations with your supply chain and vice versa around where there might be cashflow issues that I found really interesting in the last couple of years, because if you take transactional, then you're right, your supply chain falls apart.
04:47
Tom Mills
We've seen that in the public domain recently. Lots of lots of instances. So, I think that comes to the value of procurement is far beyond what the costs are. It's it's how was it when you met your supply chain and how sure you can be that you've got the right partnerships to support your long term? Yeah,
05:05
Daniel Barnes
I, yeah, I completely agree. I, I know we're both quite active on LinkedIn and I see what he's saying. Okay. If it's been great for procurement, everyone thinks procurement's the best thing, but actually I think part of your point there was that we might have set up procurement teams in bad ways. Still the importance of procurement is still not on the right stuff. Whether that's asked the, any egotistical around the role of procurement, and I think we might come onto that, but I, I was just looking here. We, we arranged like a loose set of questions that we talked to you, and I kind of pick where we're on 0.1, which is effectively, how do we stick to procurement principles, but remain pragmatic. I, I, and obviously the flexibility, because I guess that's kind of what we could be talking about here, because from last couple of years, I think there might have been actually a real need for procurement teams to try and hammer down on price in certain scenarios.
06:05
Daniel Barnes
I just wonder whether that's a result from not doing procurement well in the first place. I, I, I, I'm going to stop talking cause I felt I'm going to ramble here and just that.
06:14
Tom Mills
Yeah, no, it's a good topic though. Isn't it? It's a good topic. I think, it's something I, have to reflect on, coming in relatively new to my current business in almost setting up procurement as a function, because you can create lots of good templates, things like RFP documents about actually, the true value of procurement is by kind of being really flexible and pragmatic and understanding the scenario and understanding what's needed. That doesn't mean that therefore there's situations where, oh, we don't need to procure properly. We don't need to buy, any competitive tension in our process. I think there's some poor principles that I think remain true wherever you run a really thorough, comprehensive RFP document or you do just go out to three bits and that is firstly making sure that you understand your requirements. Secondly, making sure that you're really clear on what good looks like, thirdly, having some clear auditability around the decision making process.
07:17
Tom Mills
I think for affiliates around making sure that, what you get back clearly does meet your requirements. That doesn't have to be all the time put together in some kind of really comprehensive RFP, that can be done in many ways. I think, what I try to do when I'm talking to teams, stakeholders, wherever I'm working in the business is to kind of talk through those core principles and then work out how are we going to deliver that rather than start from the basic principle of you've got to run this full process end to end that's how it should work. Because to be honest, all we then achieve is you just get lots of people wanting to bypass procurement because they think they haven't got time for the price.
08:03
Daniel Barnes
Yeah. I think that's a really sound point. Like when you were starting to reel off those, of your principles, that I completely agree for me, the whole requirement capture piece, how to build requirements, how to work with your business to get the requirement. Right. It's, it's so vital. I think, yeah, like your point on coming into a, like, from your perspective, coming into a new organization and building a new procurement team is fairly daunting. I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like they're trapped that and lots of people in your position could be in is that they come in and they kind of recycle some template documents and everything where they've worked elsewhere. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, but then if you just rely on that and just say, like you said, oh, everything has to go through this RFP process or this competitive tension, or we have 3 suppliers.
08:57
Daniel Barnes
We have to document, we have to use this documents that every single time we have to do with this every single time it's gonna create tension within a business. That to be pretty works a lot faster than procurement, but it just creates a lot of delay. I think that's a great point on showing, like, actually we should be able to make that judgment call early on. If we understand our supply chain, I don't know, within your business, whether you have approved suppliers and everything like that, you might do, but it's not too relevant to the point. If you understand your own internal supply chain, the wider supply chain what's happening in the market and the requirement, I think you're in a fairly good position to be flexible, but you’re right, like it starts from that requirement.
09:40
Tom Mills
Yeah. And I think, well, let's face it. What the most procurement teams want to achieve. They want to achieve, I guess the golden egg is early contact ahead of a procurement decision. We're wondering if stakeholders will get in touch with you very early on in the sourcing process.
11:42
Daniel Barnes
I guess this could be maybe another, well, I think there's two avenues to explore. We could probably explore this. Like I think the first one is that whole egotistical view on procurement. I kind of feel like we can't avoid talking about it, but sometimes I feel like us as procurement professionals, you can get into a role. I think, oh, procurement should be doing this regardless. Like we should be managing every single supplier. We should be talking to every single supplier. No one else in the business is good enough to do that. We should just, we should do all of that and I would kind of be interested on this point. I'm trying not to put words in your mouth here or any inference, so I'm happy to rephrase the question, but like what's your view on what procurement should be doing and maybe what the rest of the business could should be doing? Like, are they cool to go out and talk to suppliers and have conversations?
12:33
Tom Mills
Yeah, absolutely. We're not the spend police. We're not here to kind of man mark or, kind of monitor how the business transacts with its suppliers. We're here to support them, to get the best value from that supplier relationships and to guide around what the options could be. Great point that you raised on ego, because I try and I always challenged myself to strip ego out of all of my interactions and all of my thought processes around procurement. One thing that I, I get sick of it's that whole debate around, should procurement have a seat at the top table?
13:12
Daniel Barnes
I liked your message to me on that this week?
13:15
Tom Mills
Why is that an important question actually, how successful you are as a procurement team should depend upon what strength of your relationships are with all elements of the business. It doesn't matter where you're at the top table, you're scraping the floor at the bottom. You literally, ultimately your inference is dependent on how good you are at selling procurement to your stakeholders and demonstrating how you can support them to do what they need. You can be backed by a good COO, a good CFO. It doesn't matter where you reporting line is, as long as you demonstrate your procurement, it doesn't really matter. The point on ego, I think, and it probably trips into a second point that I wanted to talk to you about is being really clear that as an, as a procurement leader, you're not interested in self promotion. What I mean by that is if I deliver, if I were, if I talk about I've delivered X savings to the business, I've just worked with a very competent stakeholder and helped them to deliver it.
14:25
Tom Mills
I'm very careful that I don't talk around procurement savings around, oh, look what I've delivered this year. It's like, look what we, as a business have achieved this year. Actually coming to that to the point on strength of engagement, you want to encourage people to want to work with you, and you want to be able to show your success through their success. So I think that's really important. The third point, I just wanted to mention on ego, and I think this is where comes to a core point for me on procurement integrity. If you have an ego about your kind of self promotion, you're in danger of doing all the wrong things, because I think one of the powerful, most powerful elements of procurement is to get away from any hierarchy politics or that kind of, oh, well, the director of the business wants to do this and they've just sat through it.
15:17
Tom Mills
If you're, if you're interested in your own career or self interested, you won't actually do what's right by the business in the long term. I think it's always important to kind of separate yourself from that. I think if you have ego around procurement, then you'll find that struggle quite passionate about the point, Daniel.
15:42
Daniel Barnes
Yeah, no, I, I think, well like that. I wanted to explore around some of these points more because I think they're too good. Yeah, I see that whole procurement should be at the table point all the time. I had Phillip, from I'd Art of Procurement, I love his podcast. We discussed, like, we literally just don't get this phrase, but yeah, it gets thrown around all the time. I see people talking about it and I genuinely think it is the most egotistical question and I don't get, where it comes from. I might be considered a procurement professional. I didn't actually ever think of myself like that. I just think of myself as, and when I'm in a business, we're part of that business and our end goal isn't to improve the standing of procurement as it is, it’s to improve the overall business, whether that's better profits, better resilience.
16:37
Daniel Barnes
We've got more suppliers, who've got good relationships with us. If stuff starts going wrong, we know that we can give them a call on their search out quicker than anything else that we may have in a contract, things like that. I just think when, like people are like having genuine conversations, but that is the sole question. I'm confused. I, I just wondered, like if they didn't go into that businesses, and this is what I'm talking about, like maybe the audio, like an all hands meeting with our procurement team, they're like, we need to get to the top why we need to be at that table. Like I don't get it.
17:13
Tom Mills
Yeah. I think sometimes it's hidden behind the view that, oh, that's the only way that you can deliver strategic procurement. Actually no, the way to deliver strategic is just to make sure the forefront of the conversations at the right time, as long as you're brought in at the right point around the sourcing decisions, then it doesn't matter where you are on the table. I think that comes back to the point on ego on your life. I think my suspicion is that people who are obsessed with that question of, should we have the top table, I was interested in the self promotion element as they are in their success. I'm, by the way, I'm not saying that areas or teams that have procurement at the top table are doing it wrong. I'm just saying that shouldn't be the goal of procurement.
17:59
Daniel Barnes
Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. Like, and I don't want to get exposed to that. If he gets a bad thing, if there's a chief procurement officer, sorry, the CFO, I completely get, like I genuinely think it is now it can add value to a business. I just don't get why people keep talking about it. I think now the way you actually get to this proverbial seat at the table was just by, like you said, at the, start it building a really good culture in your business where people can engage you early on and know that you're going to add value. Not that they're trying to, they want to go buy something and they're like, oh wait, what can I do to avoid going through procurement as soon as, and I kind of feel like people were asking the question, or should we be at the table are probably not focusing on that early stuff.
18:45
Daniel Barnes
That businesses are probably more likely to be, oh, we've got people are avoiding us rather than people actually come into us. Yeah, I'm good. I'm going to stop talking now on that particular point.
18:58
Tom Mills
Just the judge and that's where I tried to strip hierarchy around, out with my conversation, because I think procurement and how you deliver procurement and the message you give should be the same at whatever level of the organization you're talking to. It doesn't matter to me whether I'm telling the CEO of our business, this is how we should do things or talking at someone really to junior, ultimately, how you procure when it comes back to that framework, it doesn't change, our responsibilities around good procurement doesn't change. Yeah, I'm really passionate about that one. I, unfortunately I've seen where that goes wrong, where, and I won't bring out examples for obvious reasons, I think it comes back to what is at the heart of procurement for me is integrity. I always say to myself, at the end of the day, what have I done that will help protect the long-term interest of the business and the longterm interest that stretches well beyond the current C-suite that's in the business is okay in 20 years time, what legacy will I will human team has led, or what impact will we have had on the business, because that's how you really measure value.
20:22
Tom Mills
It comes back from a point on, kind of not measuring things by in the year savings. It's actually, what's the longterm sustainability of what you're doing and the legacy that leading. By the way, if you can hear a cat in the background,
20:37
Daniel Barnes
It’s Fine, I’ve got these headphones whichare insane as well. I've just gotten this week. I can hear anything. I can't hear.
20:45
Tom Mills
It. You might be joining the podcast in a minute if he does that,
20:50
Daniel Barnes
Probably like I can just do like a cat meme or something with you. That'd be a good fun. Now. I was just, I was just thinking that, I had a lot of conversations on this podcast and I've never really had someone say about the whole integrity piece and being like, what's out there, what's at the heart of like, what are we actually trying to achieve? I don't think people ask that question enough. I think it was a really good point. Like, it was something, no one quite, I probably should be more self reflective at sometimes. Like sometimes when I finished my day, I'm just like, well work's done. I'm done now, I go away with the family. Let's work 10 hours on this podcast at night time. Yeah. Maybe I should spend a couple more minutes just thinking like, oh, what have I done today to, protect this business to make things better?
21:41
Daniel Barnes
I think, yeah, like the whole cycle of, this in your savings. I, as soon as I hear that, I start to worry because typically companies you focus on in your savings, don't invest in the time to realize those savings. We talking about like forecasted savings. They just, they pick it up in a year's time and notice that they found a ton of scope creep. The rest of the businesses engaged with that supplier. And they needed more staff. The money has gone up, but maybe they didn't. I think you've said at the start, like, what does good look like at the start of this procurement activity that we're going to do? And I don't think enough teams manage that whole life cycle still. They, they're very focused on the start of getting that contract signed up, getting the, almost like the sexiest stuff, over the line.
22:36
Daniel Barnes
They forget about it and they leave it with the rest of the business to almost in endure it and ensure that they deliver on it. I kind of feel like that's a, there's a big disconnect there, as well. I, and I do think a good way to add value is right at the start, then throughout the life you need to know as a procurement team, you do need to show that you can make your business more profitable, get what they need, build more resilience. I think that the key themes there for sure,
23:08
Tom Mills
The other problem was obviously focusing on things like, in the savings targets or annualized savings targets, wherever you measure it is it actually, all you're doing is you're kind of addressing repeated historic spend, but in the meantime, your business can be investing lots of money that you're not involved in. So, one of the ways that I kind of think about measuring success is ultimately if you've delivered good, strong procurement you've should have reduced the opportunity for spend regret within a business. What I mean by spend regret is into over a year's time, is the business going to look back and say, why did we invest in that functionality? Why did we work with that supplier who delivered this contract? and actually, if you minimize your opportunity for that last kind of way, evaluate is probably where your legacy is in a business. It's a difficult one because I think procurement sometimes feels that they have to almost justify their existence by kind of in the air return on investment.
24:15
Tom Mills
Actually the true justification is in a few years time, what supplier relationships do we have? How are they working? And actually, what have we invested in, which is now delivering a return on investment to our business?
24:29
Daniel Barnes
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That's a good take on that for sure. I know, I feel like we may have skipped it seem to have a point you made. I think it might tie in nicely here, and if it doesn't, well, that's the beauty of editing. I can get rid of this question and that's around, we kind of discussed the hierarchy, the self promotion. Yeah. You had the other point of politics and that's something when I was contract in consulting and it was the business, I would just come in and I was completely, yeah. I just stopped getting involved. I didn't need to be, I'd even look at it. And I still have that mindset now. Since going into, back into employed work, I do see some of you realize like how that I think is in every business, you almost can't do it. How much like office of virtual office politics there are.
25:28
Daniel Barnes
I think that can be very toxic when it comes from our procurement team. And, I mean, I'm just leaving this kind of open to you here in terms of, your thoughts on this, how to avoid that and where it's.
25:42
Tom Mills
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it to varying degrees in a number of businesses. I think you were toxic is property the right one to use in terms of, it really does potentially undermine the credibility of procurement if you get involved in politics. One way is, as I've just described to kind of be purposefully ignorant of hierarchy, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't show you the right level of respect for the people who have in the organization, but being very consistent with your approach. A way that could be damaging if you don't follow that is let's just say, you've got a really senior exac in your business who absolutely sure that they know which supply they need to bring into a business. It worked with them in their past lives. They've got a really strong relationship. You just say, do what, okay, because of your position in the business, I'm not going challenge that we don't need to run a procurement process.
26:46
Tom Mills
How do you then expect if you delivered that message that the rest of the organization is going to follow for some of the smaller levels of, so I think, yeah, purposefully ignorant of stroke of hierarchies are really cool for me. I think, as I said, that doesn't mean being disrespectful. That just means just being very consistent with the way you approach procurement. The other thing is, I, I do try to keep a kind of element of separation from the business in terms of almost not worried about, the interconnectivity of people and, who speaks to her and which departments are kind of at loggerheads. If there's a, if there's a kind of a political situation, then I kind of avoid it for my thinking or deliberately avoid even having that conversation. Because I think is this going to help me deliver good procurement? Yes or no.
27:41
Tom Mills
I think, that way it's easier said than done, by the way, I'm not trying to make this sound but I think, maybe it's come with experience. Maybe I've become even more aware of what conversations I need to avoid. I can just get on with delivering my job because, I think, I'd like to think I am good at procurement. I know what I'm doing. Actually the only barriers to that are all of the other things that go on immune organization, which could get in the way of it. If you almost ignorant of it, then you were able to become quite consultative. Almost act like a contractor, even if you were permanently employed by that organization. Yeah.
28:30
Daniel Barnes
Yeah. For me, I see some form of this view or not agreeing with one another teams or whatever quite often, and I always have done, and I, I'm just purposefully naive to it all. Now I will talk to anyone exactly the same and that's not in a disrespectful way. It's completely like, oh, what can I do to help you here? Let's make it as easy as possible. Cause, actually funny enough, I like what I do, but I don't want to actually do hard work. When I say this to people, they look at me like, what are you talking about? Oh, that just sounds stupid. I still think if you simplify everything and I think this is, I can sound really egotistical here. I'm going to go there. This will, this will work for anything effectively, Yeah, that's it. I think if you look at simplifying every aspect of what you do, whether that's the process, whether that's how you engage with people or actually how you talk to people in your business, if you make it simple, which is I'm here to help you, regardless of what's going on in the business.
29:38
Daniel Barnes
That's my sole focus is to help you. I think that just goes away. If you come at it with emotional responses or if you come at it like, oh, in the background, oh, I know maybe you complained that we didn't do something quite so well in our procurement team, not so long ago, we brought a supplier on, maybe we didn't get something quite right in it. Now when I next talk to you're going to know that I'm not impressed that you've made that an issue. I see. I've seen things like that in the past. I Don't actually care about that. I'll talk to them exactly the same. If someone's called out the procurement team, cause you're not performing. I actually think you should look into that. Because I do think people try and fight for the fun of it at work or make the political landscapes.
30:28
Daniel Barnes
I actually think we should always look into what's the root cause here. Whilst also being naive, which sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but I think you look, should look to adjust the problem, but don't bring the problem through in your engagement. Yeah.
30:42
Tom Mills
I think you've probably touched on a couple of points there. Cause one is resilience because you've always got to become, emotionally detached because if you start worrying about every bit of negative feedback that you might get, then you'd probably, again, it's going to deter you from delivering strong Germans. The point on being self-reflective and reviewing is a really important one. Where I try to challenge yourself is if I've delivered a big piece of activity, even if there isn't a kind official wash-up process within the structure, I'll perhaps, reach out to the stakeholder to say that, how do you think it went? is there anything we could do differently? and I don't mean that in as kind of subservient we'll change the way we work, but in a kind of listen to the stakeholders and just get feedback. I think it's surprising how much we still have to learn.
31:39
Tom Mills
I don't think we should ever go into a procurement activity thinking, oh, we've done that before. I know exactly what works. It changes every situation changes. I think being reflective is a really important bit. The danger with procurement is it is always perceived as, oh, there's a policy, there's a process we've got, it's rigid. It needs to be done this way. To be honest, apart from the fact that I find that boring, It won't actually deliver good procurement. It won't deliver good engagement. Coming back to what I think the kind of golden egg is, it's getting people to want to talk to you at the start of the process. So yeah,
32:26
Daniel Barnes
Yeah. I was just, I was just thinking, why am I talking about the whole feedback loop there? And I kind of, I wouldn't say I hate on the civil service for what they do in terms of their procurement teams, but I've watched a lot of them and some things they do, I'm just so perplexed by news. A lot of it has governed by regulations, legislative, pieces, and it is a very rigid process, but one thing I found so amazing within the civil service and typically how they, review big supply chain programs or projects where the spend is astronomical. You're probably never going to in private sector procurement never come near the amounts that you spend, but they normally do that. It never come near the amounts that you spend, but they normally do that. Like you say, a wash up a learning from experience point, which is, wherever that's at the end of the whole, RFP, or it might be called a tender or whatever.
33:19
Daniel Barnes
In that world, or right at the end, once you've delivered everything, you might do another, then from an expression of how do we manage this contract for its life cycle and how did that work? And I've always found those learnings to be wonderful. Like I had to procure something that was similar before and within the documentation that was on that contract on what we did. There's a whole piece on learning from experience, what went wrong at that RFP stage? What would we need to do differently? And you can, it doesn't mean you have to follow all of that, like for like, just because someone else's or a committee has put that together and said, this is what we should do differently. Next time you might find that things have changed, but it can be a really good way to build up a lot of knowledge within the business.
34:02
Daniel Barnes
I've always liked that, and I've not really seen it in the private sector being adopted so much, probably because it takes time. If I'm being honest,
34:11
Tom Mills
It does, you kind of, well, let's face it. All businesses, all procurement teams are busy. She almost have to kind of remind yourself, actually, there's a spare moment here. I'm going to, I'm going to reach out to whoever in the business and just get some feedback, and remind yourself from the conversations as well that you don't have to make it so formal as the one that you've just described, but there's still value in that conversation. One point it's probably slightly different point to the one we've just discussed is around. Despite everything I say about being kind of, I guess, agnostic of, hierarchy and politics, and going back to stakeholders, looking for feedback, I think you've got to be careful not to become subservient. Just because we're here to try and serve and deliver good procurement and work the stakeholders, that doesn't mean that you don't have a powerful voice or you shouldn't use it.
35:19
Tom Mills
I think one of the things that I learned, and I think is really powerful is firstly, the power of silence. Just listening to within meetings and just understanding what's going on, understanding what the politics are, but not getting involved in it. The second one is knowing at what time it's valid to speak up and when escalation is important, and make sure we do so in the right way,
35:46
Daniel Barnes
I've, I'm asking that's a great point. It's funny, like I've noticed that sometimes they actually most meetings I'm in. I try not to talk to them. I just sit there and I listen and this podcast has been great because I try and use the skills that I've had to do about to listen to people like yourself when maybe you're talking for free for five minutes at a time. It's like, whoa, there's a lot to take in here. I find when we go to meetings, most meetings are 30 minutes long when they could be two minutes long, which is my biggest frustration at times. What are people talking about? What's the real issue there, or what are we trying to solve? And actually just fine. Just let in one or two people talk is pretty useful way to get to that. I think as a procurement professional, I think we should listen more than telling them what we should be doing.
36:34
Daniel Barnes
We should listen to what they want to achieve. I've been in a lot of meetings where people in procurement teams have that waiting to talk because they've already got the script in their head about, so we're going to do this. We're going to follow this process and you're going to help us along the way, rather than just listing and right at the start, that's almost, if you get them, the, on the worst thing you can do is tell them what is going to happen rather than listen to what they need to achieve. I've seen that way too much over the last few years.
37:07
Tom Mills
Yeah. I mean, it’s probably going off topic from procurement, but it's a good conversation meeting etiquette, I think, always being clear on what the purpose and what the outcomes of the meetings are. Also, yeah, just knowing when w when it's actually best to step back and let's face it. If you're in procurement, you should have a fairly good understanding of firstly negotiation, but secondly, the power of influence and actually a lot of that is just understanding. It's, it's not what you're telling people. It's what other people are telling you, that's important. I think coming back to that earlier point around ego, and we must have a seat at the table, I think there's a kind of almost, an innate kind of feeling around procurement individuals of, oh, if I don't talk lots and tell people how important, but to me, then I'm not doing a good job.
38:01
Daniel Barnes
So true. I, I think that is, yeah. I think this comes back to ego, right? It's not egotistical point as well. Like, oh, we're procurement. We need to tell them everything they need to do. Yeah, I think there's so much, so many factors that kind of go into that one point. I think it's actually really pertinent to talk about that whole meeting culture, because typically the way we are working now, I know you've been there in the office a couple of times and actually probably had a few face-to-face meetings, but actually a lot of how we engage just like this. Yeah, it's not always with video on sometimes it's video off. I have my video here a lot of the time because actually I find it really hard to like right now. I can, I, I love being honest about everything. It's really difficult when you're looking at someone and you're thinking about what they're saying, and you're thinking about what to talk about next.
38:50
Daniel Barnes
There's so much that so many different thought process there, and it's used to be exacerbated virtually as opposed to in-person where if it was very natural, you flow a lot better. I feel like it's really the whole way in which we are converse in now, at work to build out requirements and things is a lot of no faces. It's hard to get a gauge on like, oh, that's is what I said something stupid or is it good? Cause you can tell a lot by like, someone's face, if you say something face to face, you're like, obviously you want this. They're like, no, like when they just give you that face, like, no, you're an idiot. I'm not going to say that I'm just going to do the space. You can't see those tells anymore. I, I just think there's a lot now with that, the best way to do things is just to listen a lot more.
39:36
Daniel Barnes
But, before we close out, there was one point I was just reading here and were talking about integrity and I kind of think we've spoken about the integrity of a procurement professional, but one of your notes was around the whole supply chain, the wider worldview. You've, you've mentioned some things here around like fraud, sustainability, all of those sort of things. I thought it'd be really cool just to maybe touch on that as a, and it might be a fleeting point here, so we might not get a huge amount of value, but I think these are great things to start talking about more and more going forward.
40:10
Tom Mills
Yeah, yeah, you're right. It is such a broad topic, isn't it? But procurement has been far more in the news recently, partly because of the, very obvious impacts in terms of the supply chain issues that have affected everyone, particularly in the UK. Thinking currently about the diesel and petrol crisis, it's a big one. The perception of procurement as well around the, PPE contracts that were delivered through the government in 2021. That whole point around having the integrity to make sure that those contracts are awarded in the right way is so important, obviously in the public sector, because it's about how you're spending the public's money, but it's just as important in the private sector too, in terms of, we're kind of there as the kind of guardians of the business's money to make sure that it's spent in the right way, but touching on the wider points around all of the other value elements of a good supply chain is around, okay, what does a sustainable supply chain really look and actually challenging perceptions around that? thinking about things like, fleet and actually, what is the future of company car schemes, what should we be doing in Australia? and actually, what's going to be the most important.
41:52
Tom Mills
Should we be addressing it? When we look at things like travel and expenses, should we be looking at how we work with property management companies to reduce rates, or actually, should we be looking at how we can just reduce the need for travel? I think unless you've got that wider world view on the kind of value of procurement and what we're here for, you're going to miss a lot. And, and I think that's where, without wanting to sound too, I'm going to sound egotistical and sound too preachy. We, we do actually have a role to play in terms of the future worldview. Things like how we treat people, modern slavery, all of those elements are cooked. We should become core to our purchasing decisions. Decisions are actually key that we take away wider world view of, what impact we could have. What's your thoughts on that? Yeah,
42:54
Daniel Barnes
No, I, I, it's something that I've been thinking a lot, just like career wise, actually at the moment I've been thinking about what is the modern role or what's the future role. What is the right terminology of the procurement professional, rather, what would I want to be doing? And I've avoided. We, we, when we spoke a few weeks back, we specifically said, let's not talk about procurement tech and things like that, because yeah, let's avoid that. I think that I am going to mention it, and I'm not asking you that, but when I look at procurement tech and, I'll say that probably largely in this, and this could cover supply chain, tech, contract management, tech. This can cover all sorts of different tasks and bundle it all in here. I've seen the power of new automation that some of these technologies have the way in which we can.
43:44
Daniel Barnes
Now I've had the team on Fairmarkit on recently and about how they do enterprise level RFPs, and they can do a hundred a day. One business, you do a hundred RFPs in one day, they take three to five minutes to set up. Okay, so what's that introduced that needs to actually be re-skilled RFPs because the tech is actually gonna govern a lot of that. What is our role now? And I think our role is to start promotion one, supply collaboration. I think all the focus is going there more and more. We've kind of touched on that, or we've touched on that in terms of, that's what we think a good outcome of good procurement. It should be based. It shouldn't just be on cost. I think, yeah, look at sustainability, environmentalism, things like that know we've got a really good here to have a voice around that.
44:32
Daniel Barnes
I think you're going to get to that level, though, if you got the good relationships with the suppliers and actually the good culture in the business to say, okay, let's have a think about what we're actually doing. Someone comes to you with a requirement. Should we start thinking about that? Is that good for our planet? Is that good for our community? Is that, how can we bring more diverse suppliers in? And I think actually this is where supply tech, sorry, procurement tech is going to come in and really help us. I just think our role is again to drastically change. Well, they are changing now, I would say. I think that's where the skillset or where people need to start thinking. I think it's probably a bit different for you at your company where you're building out a new team. I think you're, you'll probably start trying to look at that, but these things do take time, for sure.
45:19
Daniel Barnes
I think the more established procurement teams, supply chain teams out there are a million miles ahead of everyone else. The work is to catch up,
45:29
Tom Mills
I guess it doesn't matter where you are on your journey in terms of kind of embedding Kilmer within a business in some ways it's quite good to be able to start from scratch where there are no preconceptions of.
45:40
Daniel Barnes
That's a great point. Yeah. Yeah. I think you are right and, and that might contradict the point I made in terms of being a million miles ahead. They might be ahead in terms of, you've got the tech, they've got the people, but actually they may have all the history within the business of how they've done things. Whereas a new team can be like, I see our role isn't to govern costs. We're going to, we're going to think about how we can work with suppliers to make the world a better place to protect our business. Make sure we've always got suppliers who can deliver. I think that's a great point. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think that was a good little bit. I'm glad I asked the question now, cause at the end I was like, I could just see it and I've been wanting to ask and I was like, we talking about such beautiful things.
46:24
Daniel Barnes
I just thought that this question is either going to be great or it's going to fail. I actually think that was a great exchange that we've just had there to end a podcast. I just want to say like, Tom, this has been really pleasurable. What I think this is one of the longest podcast I've ever recorded. Like typically we'll do 20 to 30 minutes and I don't know, I'm sure this will do very well. So, and I think it was just a very engaging conversation that we've just had at least.
46:55
Tom Mills
If the great thing was Daniel, there was only a couple of times that I had to remind myself that I was being recorded and do what I mean? Cause having a chat, and that's why I purposefully didn't want to, write any notes or having anything like that. Cause I think that's just, let's just let it flow. I know they want, we're talking about it and I, yeah, I find it really interesting getting your perspective on these things too, so yeah, really enjoyed that.
47:22
Daniel Barnes
Someone else. Yeah. That was great time. I just want to say thanks for coming on and sharing some good knowledge. It's been really like, I've done a lot of tech focus conversations over the last few months and I absolutely loved that, but I still think we need to talk outside of tech about all these good things, culture, principles of procurement. What are we actually there to do? Where's this going? And I think those questions should be had outside of what technology is bringing in. So yeah. This was Great.