Episode show notes
“This is actually a great time to be in procurement, because it’s a time to shine.”
Andrew Smith’s career has taken him from huge roles in Royal Mail to international leadership with Avid Budget in Copenhagen, an industry forced recently to rapidly evolve.
As a result of such impressive experiences across several decades, Andrew has a keen eye on what it takes to create impact while respecting the various stakeholders one might have.
Andrew joins us on Talent Talks to discuss how he grows a relatively immature function, builds relationships, handles hurdles, and why now is a fantastic time to be in procurement.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- The route to grow from a small function into one with global reach
- Understanding an organisation’s culture before implementing change
- Utilising industry-wide issues as an opportunity to evolve
- Shifts and trends towards localisation and quality of supply
This episode of Talent Talks is sponsored by 4C Associates – a leading European procurement and supply chain consultancy, who work collaboratively with forward-thinking clients to deliver real business value across a wide range of transformation and cost optimisation service offerings. Visit https://www.4cassociates.com/ for more information.
Episode Highlights
“Royal Mail was building a new international mail centre. It was a brand new startup, greenfield operation and I was part of the management team working on that.” – 4:25 – Andrew Smith
“For the last five years, I’ve been based out in Copenhagen running the Avis Budget business in Denmark and Sweden. It’s a totally different set of experiences as a General Manager/Managing Director for those businesses with responsibilities for all functions. I think that’s where some of the procurement skills for me are quite transferable.” – 7:00 – Andrew Smith
“What you first have to do is to understand the culture of the organisation. What’s the organisation trying to achieve? How does it work? How do things get done in an organisation? In my experience, two organisations aren’t the same.” – 10:05 – Andrew Smith
“Let’s not promise the world and then deliver none of it, let’s actually work out where some value can be delivered quickly, maybe some high profile projects, making sure it’s got the right sponsorship around the organisation, also the right reputation and doing a little bit of internal PR as well.” – 15:05 – Andrew Smith
“We had to really reshape the business, using some of the skills from procurement, some of the areas that I think procurement, CPO and supply chain folk often get involved in without even realising.” – 23:30 – Andrew Smith
“There’s clearly a big challenge around managing the cost inflation. This is actually a great time to be in procurement, because it’s a time to shine. It’s a time when high performing folk can do a fantastic job and demonstrate the value in their own organisation.” – 31:00 – Andrew Smith
“We have to accept in procurement that cost will always be one of the critical goals. Yes, there’s really important goals around diversity and around other areas as well. But I think the way organisations think of procurement will continue to have cost as one of the top metrics, whatever people may choose to think.” – 37:20 – Andrew Smith
Links & References
- Andrew Smith, Non Executive Board Member at Dynamon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-f-smith-3991a56/
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive
