702: Meeting Supply Chain Volatility with Agility and Resilience w/ Frank McKay
Release Date: 06/03/2024
Art of Procurement
“The world as we know it in procurement and tech will change beyond recognition over the next couple of years.” - Adam Brown Procurement teams are grappling with a wave of new digital solutions and AI-powered tools, making it harder than ever to stay ahead. The role of the CPO is shifting, as leaders must balance business risk, speed-to-value, and a tech landscape that doesn’t wait for anyone. In this ProcureTech Insider episode, Adam Brown joins host Jyothi Hartley to demystify how procurement organizations can innovate faster while remaining practical. Adam, a founding voice in the...
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“The goal isn’t to create a room where people consume content, it’s to create a room where they come ready to work on their organization.” - Philip Ideson, Founder and Managing Director, Art of Procurement The pace of business change has made traditional procurement conferences feel outdated. Senior procurement leaders can’t afford passive learning; they need real conversations with peers who face the same challenges they do. That’s what the Art of Procurement Catalyst event series was built to deliver. This week, AOP Founder and Managing Director Philip Ideson and Jim...
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Procurement talks about “the data” as if it’s neutral. It rarely is. For years, we have talked about “the data” as if it were a single, uniform thing… a stack of invoices, a dashboard of KPIs, a quarterly business review deck handed over by a supplier. Here’s the problem: invoices are curated. Reports are crafted. And, most of the time, suppliers decide what you see… unless you know what to ask for. In this episode of Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement, Brian Gamble, COO at FineTune and a 30-year veteran of indirect services, joins podcast co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich...
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“You don’t want to over-engineer orchestration. The goal is progress, not complexity.” - Philip Ideson, Founder and Managing Director, Art of Procurement There has never been more tech available to procurement, but navigating the orchestration market is anything but simple. In this episode, Philip Ideson and Kelly Barner unpack the findings from AOP’s upcoming “State of Orchestration” report, which is based on conversations with CPOs, digital leaders, and orchestration providers. They share the big trends, the evolving definition of orchestration, and candid advice on what to...
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In this episode of the ProcureTech Insider Provider of the Week, host Jyothi Hartley speaks with Imran Shaikh, Head of Pre-Sales and Business Development at Samsung SDS America, about how AI-powered design-to-source-to-pay orchestration is transforming procurement’s role in product development. Samsung SDS Caidentia is an AI-powered platform designed to shift procurement upstream, connecting product design, sourcing, and supply decisions before spend occurs. Acting as an orchestration layer between PLM and ERP systems, the platform enables procurement teams to influence cost, risk, and...
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“The strategic rationale of selling is not really to make money. It’s about preserving 200-plus jobs and making sure your colleagues have continuity in their lives.” - Alessandro Comerci Strategic divestitures and factory closures have become more common as organizations reshape their portfolios and seek agility. For procurement, these aren’t just commercial events: they affect livelihoods, brand trust, and supplier ecosystems. Navigating them well demands a broader set of skills, perspective, and empathy than most of us learn in our core work. In this episode, procurement veteran...
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Procurement doesn’t have a data problem. It has a data delusion. For 25 years, the function has told itself the same story: if we can just clean up our spend, we’ll finally be in control. And yet here we are… swimming in the same dashboards, drowning in fields, and still struggling to answer a simple question: what do we spend? In this episode of Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement, Jason Busch, founder of Spend Matters and now a self-described builder of AI “co-workers,” returns to the podcast to pressure-test BuyLaw #5: “prioritize comprehensive, high-quality data.” If...
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“Procurement tools traditionally look at history. To make better decisions, we need to start looking forward.” - Tomas Wiemer, Global Multi-Industry Procurement & Digitalization Executive Procurement teams are under pressure to contribute much more than just savings… They’re being asked to provide strategic intelligence, support faster decisions, and become true business partners. But as organizations look to digital platforms and unified data, many leaders find that legacy models and fragmented systems hold them back. In this episode, global procurement and digitization...
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In this episode of the ProcureTech Insider Startup of the Week, host Jyothi Hartley speaks with Ricky Ho, Co-Founder and CEO of SourceReady, about how AI and big data are transforming global supplier discovery and sourcing strategy. SourceReady is building an AI-powered sourcing platform designed to automate the most time-consuming parts of the sourcing process – from supplier discovery to quote comparison and risk analysis. With access to 1.2 million suppliers across 100 countries, the platform helps procurement and sourcing teams uncover new suppliers, analyze risk, and streamline supplier...
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“The winners will be the people who make it happen themselves. The losers will be the ones that just bury their heads in the sand.” - Andrew Daley, Managing Director, Digital Procurement and Supply Chain at Edbury Daley The AI revolution is transforming procurement faster than ever before. Whether you’re upskilling your team or rethinking your operating model, the choices you make now will set the pace for your entire function tomorrow. In this episode, Andrew Daley, Managing Director of Digital Procurement and Supply Chain at Edbury Daley, returns to share what he’s seeing on the...
info_outline“You have to make investments in your supplier network if you want to be successful. The old days of ‘I have to win, and you have to lose’ are gone. We are so transparent. We are using technology. Relationships are key.” - Frank McKay, Chief Supply Chain & Procurement Officer, Jabil
In 2023, Jabil conducted a 2023 Supply Chain Survey in collaboration with SIS International Research. In this episode, Philip Ideson sits down with Frank McKay, Chief Supply Chain & Procurement Officer at Jabil to discuss the results, which pinpointed things like cost reduction, customer satisfaction, communication, and visibility as some of procurement’s top-of-mind challenges.
In addition to sharing his own experiences as a practitioner for over 25 years, Frank also discusses his perspective on the evolving role of procurement and how they can better reduce supply chain operational costs, as well as how Chief Supply Chain Officers should be adjusting their strategies in response to rapidly shifting global supply chain dynamics and volatility.
In the episode, they also explore:
- How procurement should be integrating AI and machine learning technologies into their processes to elevate their function and drive greater impact
- The complex nature of managing global supply chains and how to meet these challenges
- How procurement can help build more resilient supply chains that can adapt to geopolitical tensions, market volatility, and rapid technological advancements
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