Our “Procurement Experts on CPO Rising” series continues today with Part One of an excerpt from my 2022 episode of the Procurement Rising Podcast – John Dickson, Chief Procurement Officer at AstraZeneca (click to listen to the full interview). Note that this excerpt has been edited for readability.

John Dickson

Andrew Bartolini: One of the things that I really like about procurement and doing research in this space, is the commonality that you find cross industry. As the industry advanced and matured and codified best practices, the playbooks that organizations use to drive value have many similarities. One of the major similarities we’ve seen in our research over the past decade is that more CPOs are not operating on a quarter plan or an annual plan, but rather a much longer-term horizon. I know that you recently launched a new five-year strategic plan. Tell us about that process and some of the decision-making involved.

John Dickson: I’m very keen to establish the brand or the identity of the procurement function. And not just for ourselves to come together as a unified procurement function and feel proud of what we do or define who we are. That’s an important part of any approach I’ve ever taken in procurement, which can look and feel different depending on the organization and industry drivers. Instead, it’s having something that people can bond around and unify against, regardless of where they are in the world or whether they support R&D, manufacturing, or the commercial business. There are many key similarities with how you need to engage in the business. You need to understand the value creation that you bring to that organization. So, we created the value proposition of what procurement was and who we are.

When I came into the organization three years ago, I didn’t feel procurement was talking enough about the patient. That’s ultimately the reason anybody in AstraZeneca comes to work; we’re incredibly patient-centric as an organization. It was important for procurement to recognize that it was in service of the patient as it supported the rest of the business providing critical medicines to the patient group. So, we established a vision which connects the corporate strategy of what we call ‘growth through innovation.’ We want to be innovative around science and accelerate innovative science, as well as deliver growth through our therapeutic area with a leadership approach.

Thus, the vision for procurement is to support that ‘growth through innovation’ agenda by optimizing our ecosystem of partners across the value chain to maximize patient outcomes. Our ecosystem of partners is both internal and external. How we engage with partnerships externally is a critical part of what a procurement organization should be doing. But as important is truly connecting and understanding the business that you are supporting. We push very hard around how we optimize the relationships with our internal partners and across the whole value chain.

Our R&D organization connects strongly to our operations organization, which strongly connects to our commercial operation, which is then underpinned by very strong enabling function’s set up. It’s an end-to-end value chain not specific to one dimension. Maximizing patient outcomes is the reason and rationale for us to really turn up to work — it’s the vision.

Next Monday’s “Procurement Experts on CPO Rising” series will feature Part Two of our discussion with John Dickson, including the four distinct elements that drive his team’s procurement approach at AstraZeneca.

MORE CPO TOPICS

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Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Furthering the Mission in Higher Education

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Transitioning Into a New CPO Role

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising (Mergers, Acquisitions AND CPOs)

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