James Symonds

Background

About James Symonds

The design and implementation of a company's procurement architecture represents a fascinating challenge. You need a mix of agility and resilience; control and innovation. And that mix must be able to evolve as business objectives shift and change. Technology marches forward providing new options for optimising that balance. While the act of effectively procuring goods or services may not have the glamour of "new product development" or even "sales", it is a major foundation of any company. Companies that strike that balance and can evolve as their business changes are in a position to outperform their competition. This is the challenge that I want to help companies address - I have 12+ years of experience in procurement, some consulting and some developing and rolling out technology products. Consulting within procurement showed me that the role of a strategic business partner (from within procurement) is hard, but has a massive potential to generate value if the right momentum can be generated. Technology product development (within procurement), sales and implementation showed me how important and difficult the change management process is, however small the perceived change is. Both showed the value of combining - making decisions based predominantly on data with - empathy for, and understanding of, the end users that any change will affect Ultimately, adoption is king. Decisions may be signed off on PowerPoint slides and in meeting rooms but value is generated only through adopting better ways of working. My starting questions for procurement processes boil down to - how easy is it for budget holders to spend the money the company has entrusted them- do the activities that procurement (and other central functions) conduct have a high value?(versus the business doing them themselves) Happy to discuss my procurement worldview over a coffee meeting