In his new book AI Unleashed: Harness the Power of AI to Transform Your Business, Reddy Mallidi, formerly a senior executive at Intel, offers a transformative guide for business leaders, navigating the seismic shift AI brings to business and society. It offers a practical roadmap for harnessing AI's potential, going beyond technicalities to focus on strategic implementation, the art of possibility with AI, and creating exponential business value. 

In conversation with Globality's Seth Catalli, Reddy's key callouts include: 

• Why just one percent of companies have successfully adopted AI within their operating model.
• The steps that business leaders need to take to identify the right AI tools for their organizations and how to implement them across the enterprise.
• Practical examples of how companies can use AI to automate their financial processes, increasing productivity and reducing OPEX.
• How the organizations that will win in the future are the ones that will use AI to enhance human creativity by freeing employees from repetitive, low-value work and tasks.
  
  

With more than 40 years experience in global workforce management, helping leading companies find the right talent to meet their operational needs, Bruce Morton, Allegis Global Solutions, Head of Strategy, has unparalleled understanding of the transformative changes across the industry. He joins the Spend Sessions podcast to discuss how the use of new AI-powered digital technology is enabling companies to reinvent their staffing solutions and drive better business outcomes, even with fewer resources.

In conversation with Globality's Seth Catalli, Bruce highlights key trends including: 

• The pivot to an outcomes-based model that companies are adopting when it comes to contingent workforces and staffing.
• How Allegis' partnership with Globality delivers cost savings of 20% across leading organizations' indirect spend.
• Why AI won't replace people's jobs but other workers who know how to use AI will.
• And how thinking outside the box led to the discovery that wedding planners make some of the best corporate project managers. 
  
  

Read the full report to find out why procurement needs to adopt AI-powered sourcing technology to drive cost savings and efficiencies, and also allow the business to ‘self-serve’ so that procurement teams can focus on more high-value strategic initiatives: 

• Procurement organizations that do not embrace AI technologies will find themselves at a cost and agility deficit compared to their competitors.
  
  
• Organizations will have the ability to run more sourcing events, driving incremental cost reductions to the bottom line while increasing policy compliance. These advantages will give them competitive advantage.
  
  
• AI will dramatically change how work is done through skill augmentation, allowing people with little proficiency to execute at par with a relatively well-skilled procurement practitioner. 
  
  
• Interest in AI use cases for procurement has increased by 17 times in 2023 versus 2022.
  
  

Predicts 2024: CPOs Adjust to Technology’s Impact on Procurement by Micky Keck, Kaitlynn Sommers, Naveen Mahendra, Ryan Polk, Meghan O'Doherty, Lynne Phelan, Fareen Mehrzai 4 January 2024

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

As a true leader of digitalization in procurement and the ‘Digital Garage’ concept, who better than Cyril Pourrat to kick off the new Spend Sessions series with his view on the major challenges currently facing leading global enterprises as they seek to optimize their spend management models in today’s uncertain economic and geo-political environment.

In conversation with Globality's Seth Catalli, Cyril discusses: 

• The 'digital-first' principle on which BT Sourced was founded to manage more than £13 billion of the telecom company's global spend.
• Why he puts 2/3rd of that spend through Globality's autonomous sourcing platform and wants to raise the figure to 100% as the platform now caters for "way more than just indirect".  
• How the Platform's generative AI enables his team to create accurate sourcing briefs from just one single sentence.
• The close working relationship he has built with his CFO Simon Lowth and how they measure spend management value.
  
  

Graham Moore sat down with Tesco’s Sarah Conway and Stuart Blackery to discuss how Globality is enabling their teams to work more efficiently and generate better value for Tesco customers, while helping attract and retain the best procurement talent. Watch the video to learn more

Watch this 2-minute video to get an overview of how Global 2000 companies are leveraging Globality's autonomous sourcing platform to automate their indirect procurement and significantly cutting costs and reducing OPEX.

Watch our webinar with Art of Procurement to discover how leading companies are utilizing innovative technology such as our agile sourcing Platform to provide a better experience for their stakeholders, resulting in improved business outcomes.

Watch our insightful keynote session from DPW22 with Dr. Elouise Epstein, Kearney Partner and digital futurist, and Vanessa Pepperell, COO and Chief Strategy Officer, Aquanima Santander Group, as they highlight the benefits of digitalization and identify the next steps every forward-thinking procurement leader should take. 

Discover how to overcome economic challenges and cut costs up to 20% using Globality. 

Do more. With less.

Learn how Globality can bring unmatched efficiency, effectiveness, and impact to your enterprise services spend.

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Watch this 3-minute video to understand why Globality is the leader in autonomous sourcing and revolutionizes the buying process for Global 2000 companies, delivering substantial savings. Using sophisticated AI, the platform creates precisely scoped requirements, identifies the most qualified suppliers, provides negotiation insights, and enables data-driven decisions.

In association with the Financial Times, our CPO Spark Think Tank brings together a hand-picked group of progressive CPOs from market-leading companies around the world who want to drive positive change and top-line growth in their businesses. Over the course of four in-depth virtual sessions, the group focused on the strategies, new technologies, and bold ideas helping CPOs innovate and add value to the wider business while responding to the pressure to reduce costs and mitigate risk in a time of unprecedented change. 

In the final session, HFS Research Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst Phil Fersht shared his insights on key drivers for today’s enterprise and how the most successful companies will capitalize on the future of work with an ecosystem approach providing a connected customer, employee, and partner experience that creates new thresholds of enterprise value. Read the key takeaways from the insightful and inspiring discussion below: 

We spoke with Amy King, Strategic Insights Director at The Connell Group, about how Globality can help women-owned businesses succeed, and the gains she hopes women will continue to make in the years to come.

Download our White Paper to discover the key considerations and actions required to adopt a best of breed ecosystem:

• The importance of adopting an ecosystem management mindset
• How to determine your best-fit strategy
• Step-by-step guide to mapping out the opportunities in your organization
• How to select the right vendors that meet your needs

In TRANSFORM—a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality—we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies that are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.

Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap for building the procurement function of tomorrow, today.

In this episode, host Philip Ideson talks with Vanessa Pepperell, Global COO and Strategy Procurement Vice President of Aquanima, the procurement company of Santander. With two decades of expertise, Aquanima now works with Santander and external clients.

In this interview, Vanessa explains how Aquanima is driving digital transformation in services procurement by discussing:

• how investing in ESG can help companies build brand value and minimize risk;
• why strategic partnerships require transparency and investment from the buy-side organization;
• what change management is required as companies build a sustainable supply chain over time.

Download this infographic from The Hackett Group with Globality to discover leading global companies’ ESG strategies and key elements of a successful supplier diversity initiative.

In TRANSFORM—a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality—we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies that are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.

Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap for building the procurement function of tomorrow, today.

In this episode, host Philip Ideson talks with Adam Brown, Head of the Procurement Digital Garage and Senior Manager of Transformation at BT Sourced. Adam and his team are leading the way in transforming the role and impact of procurement to push it beyond traditional boundaries.

In this interview, Adam discusses the importance of building a digital procurement ecosystem to enable a lasting transformation. He covers:

• why procurement needs to think about transformation as a process of constant reinvention;
• how procurement talent needs to evolve with a best-of-breed digital ecosystem;
• the importance of building self-service capabilities that can transform the experience for distributed buyers.

Find out how you can elevate your team’s impact beyond savings and compliance to accelerate growth and increase enterprise value through procurement's five bold, new guiding principles.

In TRANSFORM—a thought-provoking new podcast series from Art of Procurement in partnership with Globality—we spotlight the agenda-setting procurement leaders and companies that are changing the game and redefining the Future of Procurement.

Leading procurement organizations are constantly reimagining their processes and operating models, but in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing world, they are under more pressure than ever to deliver a high-level roadmap for building the procurement function of tomorrow, today.

In this episode, host Philip Ideson talks with Dr. Elouise Epstein, a partner at Kearney and the acclaimed author of Trade Wars, Pandemics, and Chaos: How Digital Procurement Enables Business Success in a Disordered World. She is at the forefront of driving the procurement profession to have a better future.

Dr. Elouise shares her perspectives on:

• how she thinks most procurement leaders need to change their thinking about the profession;
• how technologies like AI can enable companies to achieve their ESG goals and tap into new sources of innovation, growth, and enterprise value;
• distinguishing traits that best position companies for long-term success.

Download a free exclusive excerpt from her book, Trade Wars, Pandemics, and Chaos: How Digital Procurement Enables Business Success in a Disordered World.

In association with the Financial Times, our CPO Spark Think Tank brings together a hand-picked group of progressive CPOs from market-leading companies around the world who want to drive positive change and top-line growth in their businesses. Over the course of four in-depth virtual sessions, the group is focusing on the strategies, new technologies, and bold ideas helping CPOs innovate and add value to the wider business while responding to the pressure to reduce costs and mitigate risk in a time of unprecedented change. In the third session of the four-part series, the focus was on how CEOs are increasingly turning to the CPO to help create the transformative operating models that will drive long-term growth. Today’s CPO must enable and support better business performance by adding strategic value; being more agile; opening gateways for innovation; and positively influencing sustainability and supplier diversity across the value chain. Additionally, they want to be recognized for doing this by the board of directors and executive leadership, who may have an outdated view of the procurement function as a transactional entity instead of one that can lead the digitalization of business processes to enact positive change.

Read key insights from Globality’s recent roundtable with HFS Research and learn how global enterprise leaders are utilizing technology to transform their procurement processes and identify new sources of growth and value.

Read the report to discover:

• This year’s technology trends in sourcing and procurement
• Recommendations for leaders responsible for sourcing and procurement technology solutions
• Why Globality was named by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in Strategic Sourcing

Download our infographic to discover:

• The critical supplier diversity priorities of leading companies around the world
• Global corporations' diversity spend goals for the next five years 
• The key enablers to maximizing the benefits for your company
• The four essential components of a successful supplier diversity initiative

Enjoy Dr. Epstein's thought-provoking insights and discover:

• Why digital has not made its way to procurement
• How digital solutions can help procurement expand its role in creating value
• How you can lead the change in your organization
• What procurement's new ecosystem should look like
• How to know if your digital transformation has succeeded

Digital technology can help global companies ease the burden of higher input costs in the coming months through improved sourcing, Joel Hyatt, CEO of Globality told the Reuters Global Markets Forum on Tuesday, October 19. Hyatt said that streamlining procurement processes and boosting competition can raise companies’ efficiency and savings by about 20%, adding that less than half of the more than $4 billion spent annually by the average Global 2000 company on services is allocated in a transparent, competitive manner.

Read the report below, or click here to download.

In association with the Financial Times, our CPO Spark Think Tank brings together a hand-picked group of progressive CPOs from market-leading companies around the world who want to drive positive change and top-line growth in their businesses. Over the course of four in-depth virtual sessions, the group is focusing on the strategies, new technologies, and bold ideas helping CPOs innovate and add value to the wider business while responding to the pressure to reduce costs and mitigate risk in a time of unprecedented change. The second session focused on actions that CPOs can take to transform the procurement function today by turning spend into an asset. This accelerates growth and creates enterprise value in different ways, including driving an organization’s ESG agenda, creating new sources of innovation for the business, redeploying teams from repetitive tasks to value-creating roles, and delivering a superior user experience.

Learn more about the unique opportunity procurement has to use performance spending to enable a company’s ESG strategy and help create a more sustainable and inclusive world.

Why Procurement Has a Unique Opportunity to Enable a Company’s ESG Strategy

During his keynote session at DPW2021, Globality Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Joel Hyatt discussed with HFS Research CEO and Founder Phil Fersht how CPOs can impact one of today’s top corporate priorities. Here we outline the key elements of this new vision for performance spending:

“Procurement has always been asked to deliver on the core value proposition of identifying high-quality suppliers at a good price, but CPOs and other procurement leaders are increasingly required to help advance a company's all-important ESG strategy. CEOs are not only talking about ESG – they've done that for a while – but they are now prioritizing company performance against stated goals.

And the reason they care so much about it is because it turns out that all their stakeholders – investors, shareholders, employees, and customers – care about it. So procurement is being asked to help, which makes a lot of sense because the biggest asset a company has to advance its ESG agenda is how it spends its money. As a result, procurement now has a second core value proposition that it needs to deliver on. How can it do this? The answer is very simple – by using sophisticated AI-powered technology.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TO DRIVE TRANSFORMATION
Digitalization is the enabler, adding value to both procurement’s traditional focus on costs and supply, and the top new priority: ESG. In fact, we can put them together under a new framework termed ‘performance spending’. This means the impact that procurement can have today is far greater than it has traditionally enjoyed, making it a very exciting time to be in the sourcing industry. So how can procurement leaders lead the revolution and put this digital transformation into practice at their own companies?

For the most part, CPOs want to transform the way they source goods and services, even though change management is hard and transformational innovation is tough. CPOs want a seat at the table, and they want to have a meaningful impact on their company’s overall performance, but they don’t currently feel empowered to do it.

That’s why this framework of performance spending and understanding how AI-powered digitalization can lead the transformation is critical – it means CPOs now have the ability to deliver what nobody else in the company can.

IMMEDIATE IMPACT ON THE TOP AND BOTTOM LINE
With Globality’s AI-powered Platform, the CPO of a global enterprise with $6 billion a year services spend can walk into the CFO’s office and say I've got a billion dollars for you in immediate costs savings, which you can take to the bottom line or reinvest elsewhere. That sum is obtained by capturing enormous efficiencies, making OPEX savings, and delivering faster speed to market, all thanks to new digital technology.

They can then walk straight down the hall to the CEO, and say, “I can have a bigger impact on this company's ESG strategy than anybody”, because how a company spends its money drives performance on sustainability and creates more inclusive economies and better governance by building an ecosystem that's transparent, fair and open to all.

ENTERPRISE SPENDING FOR GOOD (ESG)
ESG used to be simple. The E rated a company's carbon footprint and its own environmental practices, the S referred to the diversity of its workforce and the G was simple compliance measures. Today it has a much broader impact – Enterprise Spending for Good.

The E refers not only to the environmental impact of the company itself but also that of its value chain – a complex, sophisticated network which digital technology simplifies and brings visibility to. The S communicates how a company is helping foster social inclusion and helping create more inclusive economies in the 100 plus countries in which most global enterprises operate today.

And the G refers to the ecosystem a company creates for its business globally. This ecosystem must be transparent, fair, inclusive for smaller and diverse companies, and judged solely on the merits of price, quality, proven performance, and passion.

SEIZING THE MOMENT
ESG has overtaken geopolitical risk and uncertainty as the most pressing consideration for global business over the next two years, according to new research from Oxford University and Globespan Insights, offering procurement an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate the value it brings to an organization.

Previously many CPOs believed they lacked the ability to be game-changers, but procurement leaders now have the tools to become the key drivers of overall company performance. The result of this is that CPOs are not only going to have that seat at the table but their teams will become a very exciting place for employees to work because it's within procurement that they can actually help create a better world with greater environmental sustainability, more inclusive economies, increased transparency, and better corporate governance.

Procurement can lead a company’s performance on each of these key deliverables, but its leaders must act now and adopt the digital technologies required to enable this transformation before the moment passes.”

The time is right for procurement to drive greater strategic value
and growth by embracing these five guiding principles:

• Turn spend into an asset to drive growth, create enterprise value and, crucially, lead the company’s ESG agenda
• Empower business partners with autonomous, intuitive, consumer-like user experiences
• Evolve procurement’s operating model to a best-of-breed ecosystem that allows multiple digital solutions to work together
• Use new technologies to free procurement talent from repetitive manual tasks and redeploy across value-creating roles
• Redefine how value is measured to align with the new vision for the future of sourcing goods and services

We're thrilled with our employees’ continued engagement and connection with Globality’s mission, enabling us to win three Comparably 2021 awards – Best CEO for Diversity, Best Leadership Team and Best Career Growth. 

Read the press release below, or click here to download.

Do more. With less.

Learn how Globality can bring unmatched efficiency, effectiveness, and impact to your indirect spend. 

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Ana Botin, Executive Chairman of the Santander Group, and Globality CEO Joel Hyatt explain how Globality empowers the financial group’s ESG strategy and commitment to responsible sourcing across all the countries in which it operates. Originally posted by Aquanima, here.

In its commitments to innovation and corporate responsibility, Aquanima, the global procurement arm of the Santander Group, is using its procurement expertise and Globality's AI-powered B2B services marketplace to significantly improve customer and supplier processes to build a better world for all.

With Globality, procurement teams have a unique opportunity to help create a better world by advancing ESG, the environmental, social, and governance strategy that is of increasing importance in all companies today. Procurement in the future will be much more strategic and valuable as we shift to “impact spending."

Impact spending will influence suppliers to operate more sustainably – in great part by using technology to select suppliers with best practices in sustainable performance. This enables global corporations to help create more inclusive economies by spending more money locally in the countries in which they operate, and by sourcing from outstanding smaller and diverse firms. And impact spending will assure transparency and compliance, both of which are far easier to achieve in an AI-powered digital universe than in the old analog world.

Through our partnership, Globality and Aquanima are providing the leadership in making procurement be about impact spending, creating value for Santander throughout the procurement process, and at the same time building a sustainable and inclusive global economy.

In association with the Financial Times, our CPO Spark Think Tank brings together a hand-picked group of progressive CPOs from market-leading companies around the world who want to drive positive change and top-line growth in their businesses. Over the course of four in-depth virtual sessions, the group is focusing on the strategies, new technologies, and bold ideas helping CPOs innovate and add value to the wider business while responding to the pressure to reduce costs and mitigate risk in a time of unprecedented change. The inaugural session looked at the effects of the pandemic on procurement functions and began to explore the ways transformative CPOs are revisiting their operating models and processes, as well as the composition of their teams, to place procurement at the heart of organizations' growth during the economic recovery.

This article was originally published at https://artofprocurement.com/moving-procurement-from-a-cost-center-to-a-transformation-engine/

This article was originally published at https://artofprocurement.com/episode390/

Leading global communications company deploys the world’s only AI-powered Smart Sourcing® Platform and Marketplace for sourcing all its services

Through a new partnership with Globality and BT’s new procurement company, BT Sourced, BT launched Globality's AI-powered, Smart Sourcing® Platform to transform how BT employees source and procure services.

“BT is changing and so is procurement. Digitization is the driving force for long-term growth and value to the BT customer and operating model,” said Cyril Pourrat, Chief Procurement Officer, BT. “Partnering with Globality will help us to embrace digital technology and simplify our processes.”

“Having immediate access to our current suppliers and Globality’s diverse global network, will bring agility and new value to our teams,” added Pourrat.

BT now uses Globality's AI advisor, Glo™, to quickly and easily source the best suppliers for consulting, marketing, IT, HR, legal and other service categories.

“BT is revolutionizing the way it sources services in order to deliver exponential value to its stakeholders, while at the same time, helping to create a more inclusive and sustainable global marketplace,” said Joel Hyatt, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Globality

“I’m very proud to be partnering with Cyril and his team, in unleashing the power of procurement to add value throughout BT — increasing efficiency, lowering costs, improving quality and advancing BT’s important ESG strategy,” added Hyatt.

This downloadable brochure describes the challenges and best practices for CPOs leading innovation within their procurement organizations.

Wondering how to achieve digital transformation and yet manage change effectively? Take a look at these best practices.

We surveyed 101 procurement executives on the state of digital transformation at their companies. Here are highlights of what they said about the future of procurement.

Our CEO Joel Hyatt joins CNBC Squawk Box Europe to talk about the future of work, and the impact digitization and AI are having on globalization.

AI engineer Pierce Freeman examines the way that the Globality Platform helps your company identify complex intent, and how Globality’s cutting-edge AI is able to match your company to the best supplier at the right price for every project.

AI engineer Pierce Freeman describes the way Glo, Globality’s cutting-edge AI engine, matches your company to the best supplier at the right price for every project.