Joanna Martinez, CPO, Global Transformation Executive, & Founder at Supply Chain Advisors LLC, shares her best advice for procurement leaders. Content captured at the Tradeshift Digital Leadership Circle in New York City, June 22, 2016.

1. My Top 10 Procurement
Takeaways
Business and career advice for procurement leaders
Joanna Martinez, CPO / Global Transformation Executive/
Founder at Supply Chain Advisors LLC
Images: Keynote: Redesigning Procurement for Agility,
Tradeshift Digital Leadership Circle, New York, June 22

2. ““I've been fortunate to hold great supply chain and procurement
roles that have allowed me to understand and contribute in
different industries, often on client-facing teams, including
Johnson & Johnson, AllianceBernstein, Diageo, and Cushman
& Wakefield.”
-Joanna Martinez, CPO

3. My Top 10 Procurement Takeaways

4. “Traditional Procurement savings are getting harder to find. We’ve had a
great 25-year run of cost reduction with the same basic process. It’s
time for new tools and new types of value delivery.”
1

5. “Recognize that unless you
are in a direct manufacturing
company, your firm got along
quite well without formal
procurement and can still do
well without you.”
2

6. 6
“One of the best things we can
do for our firms is to figure out
how to ‘turn on a dime’. As
processes become more agile,
efficiency improves and
cost comes out in unexpected
ways.”
3

7. “Tidy supply chains exist
only in textbooks. We
shouldn’t design for
stability, we should
design for messy,
dynamic situations.”
4

8. 5
“How many times do you walk
around the office and see someone
who is trying to input a requisition,
approve a requisition, or do
something on the systems we have
in our companies and they are
tearing their hair out? That same
person is buying shoes from
Zappos at lunchtime. The systems
we put in place years ago are aging
and out of sync with today’s digital
world.”

9. “Procurement should take a bilateral
approach to spend. Strategic sourcing makes
sense for high dollar goods and services, but
that tail spend usually represents many low
value transactions and the emphasis there
should be on speedy and efficient
processing.”
6

10. 7“During the recession, I lost my staff but
was able to negotiate funds to hire
subject matter experts on a per project
basis. This ended up being a blessing in
disguise because we created an agile
organization without realizing it. When
the economy improved, we continued
with a significant agile component
instead of going back all the way.”

11. 8“When you’ve bonded with the
revenue side of the business and
you understand where your
company’s products are headed,
you can turn to the supplier
community for strategic
assistance. That’s the kind of
conversation your supplier wants
to have, and that Procurement is
uniquely positioned to support.”

12. 9
“Agility doesn’t just apply to our process,
we need talent agility as well.
Categories are changing, such as
software moving into the cloud. A
CAPEX spend yesterday is OPEX
tomorrow, with a different skill set
required to support it. ”

13. 10“In the most forward-thinking firms,
procurement’s value is measured on its
overall contribution to the company’s
strategy, whether that’s product
innovation, cash flow improvement, cost
savings, and anything that helps the
company get to where it wants to be.
Procurement must be focused where it
counts.”

14. “Recognize that unless you are
in a direct manufacturing
company, your firm got along
quite well without formal
procurement and can still do
well without you.”
Good luck!