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How AI Agents Will Reshape the Manufacturing Operating Model

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Evolving Past ‘Procurement in Title, Purchasing in Mindset’ with Euan Granger

6th February 2025 Spotlight Interview Evolving Past ‘Procurement in Title, Purchasing in Mindset’ with Euan Granger Euan Granger, a seasoned procurement professional at Morgan Sindall Construction, shares his take on why the function needs to move beyond its purchasing roots to deliver strategic value, the endless possibilities of an AI-empowered team, and why sustainability is a must for modern procurement. https://youtu.be/7tX0xEnfZOo With 15+ years of experience spanning multiple industries including defense, consulting, public sector, and construction, plus his thought leadership at Procurious, Euan champions the strategic evolution of procurement. With a sharp focus on sustainability, Euan has successfully deployed sustainable procurement processes across three organisations, leading to significant reductions in carbon emissions and overall spend. Previously, Euan managed a team that delivered a 15% cost reduction in procurement for a manufacturing business within a year. His expertise extends to improving on-time delivery, recovering time in critical build programs. Digital Transformation Q Why do you think there is still resistance to digital transformation in procurement?  A You know the positives are there. You can quantify them, they are tangible, but that might not be tangible until 12 months, 24 months, so on. So selling that within the business is very challenging. You hit this buffer of other stakeholders who are trying to reduce the number of solutions or systems that are being used or are concerned about “how much is it going to run us a year?” As procurement, the right people are now bubbling up to the top, who are open to these conversations. It’s how positive or open-minded you can be. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re 20, 40 or 70. It just largely depends on your perception of it. Then it’s about selling it into the business. People have been trying, with a variety of systems and are still coming up empty. I think we just have to be persistent. There’s a certain inevitability about it. If you’re not getting on board now, then you’re going to get left behind because somebody will. There will be that tech leader who jumps onto it and says, right, we’re going to take this risk. And if it works, then we’re going to fire way ahead of our competitors. Q You said that AI can actually enhance the human factor in procurement. Where do you think the opportunities lie when AI and humans work together? A The removal of these manual, time-consuming processes. AI will enhance procurement, but because procurement is so people-focused, it will never ever replace the human in the chair. You can have an amazing team of procurement professionals and they just get bogged down in the day to day tasks. They’re on the phone to suppliers saying, “is that still the right date?”. And then they’re updating a system, having to tell the stakeholders who are waiting for it, if it is on time. Or if it’s not on time, why is it not on time? It’s these repetitive tasks that you want to remove. You shouldn’t have to spend your time doing this. What you’re trying to do, is on the people side of it. You might have a supply base of three to four hundred suppliers and you might only engage with 30 of the strategic suppliers. For each of them, you need probably a set number of hours a month to manage that relationship properly and make sure that they’re feeling the benefit of the relationship. That doesn’t happen if the only conversation that they get with you is on a Monday morning with you picking up the phone and going “I need to know whether that order is coming in on Thursday morning like you promised”. It’s too transactional. Purchasing Mindset Q What do you think is holding the profession back from being truly strategic? How can organisations shift the function away from this transactional mindset? A There’s two forces holding procurement back. One of them is the operational mindset of that traditional KPI set up, the method of cost, quality and delivery. The other factor holding procurement back is procurement itself. If we’re not banging the drum loudly enough to change our role within the organisation, no one’s going to do it for us. You see a purchasing mindset in organisations where the day-to-day operational side of things is still very much the old fashioned sourcing, day to day order placement, order management, goods in, goods out and that’s it. There’s nothing else built on top of those transactional tasks that we end up doing. The transactional is critical but it makes up such a small percentage of what we could be doing and should be doing. How do we integrate with the rest of the business properly? Align strategic objectives with the overall business? Who are your key stakeholders in the organization, your key internal customers? Work with them, understanding what you drive for them, how they can help you and how you can help them. You start building this strategic mindset and you begin to push procurement up into the conversation elsewhere, because nobody’s looking at you and going, “you’re just delivering nuts and bolts onto the shop floor”. Yes, that is part of the job, but you are supposed to look back around to things like sustainability and social value, For us to do it properly, we need the time and the resource. The first step is having that mindset that says, “my job is much wider than pushing that button for a purchase order on an online system”. Sustainability Q Sustainability is one of the key metrics for procurement to demonstrate success to the board in 2025 (GEP Outlook). What are your thoughts on how procurement teams should evolve to meet these expectations while somewhat still balancing traditional KPIs? A Been advocating for sustainable procurement probably for a good 10 years, from when sustainability was very much in its infancy. It’s a very tricky balancing act. As much as you would like to push on sustainability, social

Behind the Wheel at Octopus EV: Alvin Castillo on Honest Procurement

30th January 2025 Spotlight Interview Behind the Wheel at Octopus EV: Alvin Castillo on Honest Procurement From launching a procurement function at an early-stage disruptor to leading in a thriving EV space, Alvin Castillo, Vehicle Procurement Director at Octopus Electric Vehicles, shares his roadmap for procurement success that kept him on course along the way. https://youtu.be/7P4f4lmLZD8?si=Y0A5bKc12LGzngjl Alvin has spent over 16 years in the automotive industry, with experience spanning dealer groups, OEMs, and leasing companies. Currently, he leads vehicle procurement at Octopus Electric Vehicles, a company he joined as the 9th employee and has helped grow into a thriving business of over 400 people. Alvin is responsible for procuring both new and used vehicles, nurturing relationships with established OEMs and supporting the launch of new entrants into the UK market. His efforts have been pivotal in introducing Chinese brands like BYD and OMODA, positioning Octopus Electric Vehicles as the preferred leasing partner for their EV programs. Alvin’s strategic leadership continues to drive innovation and growth in the rapidly evolving electric vehicle sector. Digital Transformation Q How would you describe the difference between a strategic and a transactional procurement function in today’s AI-driven world?   A Procurement has pretty much lived off Excel and Google Sheets for a very long time. A lot of the day-to-day is spent so focused on just getting stuff done. There’s not a lot of space for the strategic. The strategic bucket is almost an afterthought because you’re so busy just delivering what you need to deliver based on your current business needs. Being able to reduce those transactional day-to-day tasks (which don’t get me wrong, are still very important), but don’t necessarily require people to do – that is the goal here. Being able to utilise the people that you have to really help drive forward change in strategy, while being a little bit less stuck in the day-to-day. Q What would you look for in a tech vendor that would resonate with you? A This isn’t just for tech vendors, but in general for anyone that we work with, is the ability to grow. With any partners or suppliers that we take on and that we decide to work with, it’s on the basis that: yes, right now you solve a need for X, Y or Z, but actually what you’re going to help us do is solve needs that we don’t even know exist yet. As you grow as a business, no doubt your needs are going to change. The way that you work is going to change. The systems that you use are going to change. Is that program or is that piece of tech still applicable? The answer that we always want to have is ‘yes’. Not because it’s the same bit of tech that we purchased or partnered with you on three years ago. It’s the ability to have those constant iterations to work together, to continue to develop, to make your proposition better, and to also ultimately help enhance ours as well. Q What excites you most about the future of procurement? A In my own particular industry, it’s the amount of new product but in a more general sense, procurement is now becoming the industry that’s being focused on with regards to improve efficiencies. And procurement’s not had that time to shine yet. We are now highlighting that procurement is a role and it’s a desirable role to go into in the business. The thing that I’m most excited about is that, for the first time, procurement’s really starting to come to the forefront from both a tech and people perspective and that’s such a great place to be. Professional Journey Q You started your own career in sales. How did you find yourself moving into procurement, and in what ways has your sales background helped? A A lot of the automotive space was based around sales or operations. So you either had a sales role or had an operational role. As we were transitioning from becoming a broker into a leasing company, my CEO Fiona said to me, “Well, Alvin, we’re going to need to buy some cars. We’re going to need to talk to car manufacturers and set up a dealer network”. What I realised is, procurement is sales. The difference being is, you’re selling yourself and you’re selling your business, to be able to then buy products or services for your business. When I moved into procurement, I ended up transitioning from owning the number to being a facilitator of the number. What I mean by number is, sales is very target driven. There’s always a number to chase.  My whole career, I was so focused on hitting that number. What I ended up becoming, was a facilitator of the number. If someone asked me if I wanted to go back into sales, the answer no. I love procurement.  I love what I do. I love looking at the supply chain, being there from end to end and really understanding how the decisions that I make are impacting the whole business. Stronger Supplier Relationships Q You’ve said your role involves connecting with amazing people and brands. What’s your secret to building strong relationships? A It’s my own values. It’s the honesty. People buy from people, whether you’re in sales or procurement or whatever role you do. I was having this conversation with my son the other day. One of the things that’s free in this world is your word. If you’re going to give your word to somebody that you’re going to do something, then just do it. And if you can’t do it, you can’t deliver it, then don’t tell them that you will. The secret to my success is that I’ve always strived to be a man of my word. I was building those relationships, and people saw me as someone that they can rely on, someone that they could phone up or they can send an email to. If I told them

All Points Fibre’s Courtney Rowlands Reveals the Wild West of Procurement

15th January 2025 Spotlight Interview All Points Fibre’s Courtney Rowlands Reveals the Wild West of Procurement From her take on transactional procurement and why digital transformations fail, to sustainability in modern procurement, Head of Category Procurement Courtney Rowlands shares some refreshingly honest insights on what it takes to thrive in the industry. https://youtu.be/XNn4IIcWg5Y?si=Gp58p5-r7WmeXTGq Courtney is a strategic procurement leader known for managing annual spends of up to £20 million across categories like energy, infrastructure, and materials. She has delivered impressive cost savings, including a 25% reduction (£875,000) in high-spend categories within six months and a 15% decrease in raw material costs, equating to £500,000 in annual savings. Courtney has successfully implemented e-procurement platforms and led procurement transformation initiatives, aligning procurement strategies with business goals while promoting sustainability and ethical sourcing practices. Her leadership extends to mentoring emerging procurement professionals, enabling collaboration and continuous improvement within high-performing teams. Digital Transformation Q How would you describe the difference between a strategic and a transactional procurement function in today’s AI-driven world?  What are some of the biggest bottlenecks you’ve noticed due to transactional, manual workflows? A Transactional functions generally are cost-first, and there’s a lack of accurate data. There may be a plethora of data, but it might not be accurate. Tactical functions tend to kind of use these phrases – edgy asleep buying, last minute stuff, firefighting. It turns into a little bit of the Wild West eventually if it carries on like that. You’ve got a lot of mavericks burned. It’s difficult to tidy up if you then want to move into a strategic place. As a result, you don’t have any time. Also, there’s a lack of curiosity when you’re in that fight or flight mode. You don’t have time to think about- can we look strategically at this? Who are our vendors? How are they performing? What contracts have we got coming up? You just don’t have time. It means that curiosity, which is so fundamental, for procurement and supply chain professionals, just gets parked. But when you get that cross functionality between the policy and the process working well with the P2P- you can focus on the strategy because the background noise is muted to some degree. Data, if it’s accurate to an extent, can then be pushed into AI or digital transformation. And that’s when it really gets exciting because then you can actually look for opportunities, risk, and sometimes hidden costs. Things that you just wouldn’t necessarily have picked up in a short space of time because it would take you another two weeks to go through all of that data manually. It just enables strategic mindset and workflows to be embedded into procurement. Q Digital transformation still needs humans at its centre. What are your thoughts on the human element for procurement in this AI driven era? A You’ve got no chance in hell of integrating something if you haven’t spoken to your people about it first. Leadership roles tend to be guilty of thinking that something’s going to fix all their problems and just implementing it, and not really worrying about the impact on the front line in terms of operational efficiency. It’s a panic from leadership to control as much as they can so they over-engineer so many processes. The bottlenecks it creates downstream costs a massive impact in terms of operational efficiency, cost, and the time it takes. When integrating these processes and these technologies, you really need to talk to your people first. Go out and speak to the engineers in the field. Go and speak to the people that are delivering health and social care services to your end user. Go and speak to the people that are buying your products or making the products in the factory. Find out what their problems are upstream and work backwards. I look at a workflow from start to finish, and I’ve done that at every business I’ve gone to. I’ve looked at the start and the finish and looked at the process and gone, “That’s really not actually very helpful, we’re over-engineering things. We’re making people’s lives harder than they need to be”. You need to get that buy-in, first and foremost. It’s fundamental that you engage your stakeholders as soon as possible. The key thing with people is you need to get their trust that what you’re doing is going to benefit them. You need to get their trust that it’s not going to inhibit the way that they work and it’s going to actually accelerate the way that they work. Implementing that change is not something that’s gonna happen overnight. Managing expectations when it comes to system integration is fundamental. There will be glitches along the way. There will be teething issues. It’s just being really honest and upfront about those milestones as you go through those changes. Because if you integrate something that works for you, great. But five minutes later, you’re to have everybody emailing you saying, you’re causing me a headache, we need to get rid of that. And you’ve spent a lot of money for something that doesn’t work. Q Any advice on this you would give to organisations aiming for a successful digital transformation journey? A There is an oversaturation of products in the market and systems that companies use. You go out to market, not really knowing what you need. It probably ticks two or three boxes, but does it feed into your other systems? Does it track your spend? Does it cultivate all your CRM information as well? And often the answer is no. You’ve got five or six different systems doing different things, all tracking different metrics and deliverables. And none of them are actually talking to each other. There’s definitely an educational gap in terms of tech offerings. That’s mainly because procurement have only really started looking for tech for procurement recently. That market has exploded recently and there are so many offerings out there when it comes to supplier