Shelley Salomon, VP of Global Business at Amazon Business, discusses her company’s commitment to fostering gender diversity in procurement… Procurement’s…
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Shelley Salomon, VP of Global Business at Amazon Business, discusses her company’s commitment to fostering gender diversity in procurement…
Procurement’s gender imbalance isn’t new.
Traditionally, the function was regarded as a male-dominated profession. But change is afoot, in more ways than one. While a digital transformation amidst technological innovation is well-publicised, another evolution is underway within the workforce.
Gender diversity has become an important component of many company strategies globally. While progress to encourage more women into procurement has already started. There still remains an imbalance, particularly among those holding leadership positions. With current statistics suggesting around one in four leadership positions are held by women, there is still room for improvement.
So, is progress happening quickly enough? Shelley Salomon, VP of Global Business at Amazon Business, discusses her organisation’s commitment to fostering gender diversity and how women can reach parity in procurement.
In your opinion, where is procurement today in terms of women’s representation in 2024?
Shelley Salomon: “Women’s representation in procurement has seen progress these past few years, but there remains room for further improvement. Gartner’s data shows that women comprise 41% of the supply chain workforce. It’s encouraging to see greater gender diversity within the industry.
“While these statistics are encouraging, they also highlight ongoing challenges. Particularly at the leadership level. Only 25% of leadership roles are held by women. This disparity underscores the need for sustained efforts to promote gender diversity and support women’s ascension to senior positions within procurement.
“My perspective on this trend is one of cautious optimism. The progress we see is promising, reflecting a growing recognition of women’s unique contributions to procurement roles. Diverse perspectives and gender equity are vital for effective decision-making and problem-solving. Additionally, multiple credible studies show that companies with the greatest gender balance in the C-suite are likelier to achieve above average financial results. However, much work must be done to ensure these advancements translate into lasting change.”
While progress to encourage more women into the workforce seems to be underway, there is still a major disparity in the number of women leaders in procurement. What is the best way to go about rectifying this?
Shelley Salomon: “I believe there’s a significant opportunity to welcome more women into procurement leadership roles. By establishing robust mentorship and sponsorship programmes, organisations can provide invaluable guidance, support, and networking opportunities. Thus empowering women to thrive in their careers and gain visibility within the organisation. Investing in inclusive leadership development programmes is essential. These initiatives focus on building inclusive skills and readiness for leadership roles, continuing to foster a more inclusive and dynamic workforce.
“In my opinion, implementing inclusive hiring practices that actively promote gender diversity, such as using diverse hiring panels and conducting blind recruitment processes, is essential to minimising biases.
“Lastly, setting clear, measurable goals for increasing the number of women procurement leaders and regularly reporting on progress to hold leadership teams accountable can drive meaningful change. By taking these proactive steps, organisations can create a more equitable environment that supports the advancement of women into leadership roles within procurement.”
Modern software supply chains are emerging as a critical point of vulnerability to cyber attacks.
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Supply chain attacks have long been recognised as one of the most effective ways for hackers to gain access to their targets. Traditionally, these attacks involve compromising a partner or supplier in the target’s ecosystem in order to gain access to the target’s network.
Today, however, cyber attacks targeting software supply chains are proving even more effective. Concerningly, cybersecurity teams have even less recourse to prevent them.
The traditional supply chain cyber attack
This occurred in 2013 when hackers gained access to the computer network of US retailer Target. The breach resulted in the theft of financial and personal information belonging to as many as 110 million Target customers. This information was then removed from Target’s network to a server in Eastern Europe.
The breach occurred when Target granted network access to a third-party HVAC company in Pennsylvania. The company, according to insiders, did not appear to follow broadly accepted information security practices. This allowed attackers to gain a foothold in Target’s network. Despite multiple alerts from anti-intrusion software, Target did not respond adequately. The attackers progressed from less sensitive to more critical parts of Target’s network. This escalation indicates that the company failed to isolate its most sensitive data.
The shape of this attack is one that became familiar to cyber security professionals in the subsequent decade. Network breaches affecting third party suppliers and partners could easily escalate into major intrusions by hackers into an organisation’s system. Cyber security practices have tightened as a result. By and large, zero trust policies and other measures have cut down on the severity of third party risk.
However, the greater concern today is an attack targeting the software supply chain.
Software supply chains are uniquely vulnerable
Rather than using a third party network in the supply chain to gain access, a software supply chain attack is embedded directly into the digital tools and applications. By doing so, hackers can affect all the users of a particular application or tool. This means that a successful attach could potentially compromise thousands of users and millions of individuals.
In 2021, 84% of security leaders said they believe software supply chain attacks could become one of the biggest cyber threats within the next three years.
This problem is being exacerbated, according to a report by Crowdstrike, by the fact that modern software is “not written from scratch,” but built piecemeal from “many off-the-shelf components, such as third-party APIs, open source code and proprietary code from software vendors.”
In 2020, the average piece of software had 203 dependencies. If a single dependency is compromised in an application, then every organisation using that app is compromised. Crowdstrike’s report notes that, if this occurs, “the number of victims can grow exponentially.” They also note that, because pieces of software are often reused throughout the enterprise, a compromised piece of software can remain dangerous beyond the original software’s lifecycle.
Most concerningly, many organisations could be considered underprepared to mitigate the effects of a software supply chain cyber attack. Crowdstrike found that, in 2021, 59% of organisations that suffered their first software supply chain attack did not have a response strategy.
Our cover story this month… Marriott International Inc: A more sustainable supply chain With science-based targets approved, Marriott is accelerating…
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Our cover story this month…
Marriott International Inc: A more sustainable supply chain
With science-based targets approved, Marriott is accelerating work to help make its supply chain more sustainable. We speak to Stéphane Masson, Senior Vice President, Procurement, Marriott International, Inc. – for our exclusive cover story this month – to find out how…
“Like many global companies, Marriott recognises that serving our world helps the communities where we operate and is also good business,” Masson tells us. “This Earth Day, we announced the approval of our near-and-long-term science-based emissions reduction targets by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), with a goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by no later than 2050. Approval of these targets is bringing heightened focus on our work to embed sustainability in our operations.
Specifically, the company has committed to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 46.2% by 2030 from a 2019 base year. Marriott also commits to reduce absolute scope 3 GHG emissions from fuel and energy-related activities, waste generated in operations, employee commuting, and franchises 27.5% within the same timeframe.
Importantly for our team and the suppliers we work with across the globe, Marriott’s targets include 22% of our suppliers by emissions—covering purchased goods and services, capital goods, and upstream transportation and distribution—which will have science-based targets by 2028.
In the longer term, Marriott also aims to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 90% by 2050 from a 2019 base year and reduce absolute scope 3 GHG emissions 90% within the same timeframe.
Our Global Procurement organisation plays an important role in setting up Marriott as we work to achieve the targets within this timeline. And it will require an evolution in how we engage Marriott associates, our suppliers, and other members of the industry.”
Grupo Modelo: Procurement and sustainability in action!
We speak to Soqui Calderon, Regional Director of Sustainability for Grupo Modelo and the Middle Americas Zone, to see how the beverage giant is tackling sustainability from a procurement perspective…
Grupo Modelo is a giant. A leader in the production, distribution and sale of beer in Mexico, Grupo Modelo is part of the Middle America Region (of the AB InBev Group) and boasts 17 national brands, among which are Corona Extra, the most valuable brand in Latin America, as well as Modelo Especial, Victoria, Pacífico and Negra Modelo. The company also exports eight brands and has a presence in more than 180 countries while operating 11 brewing plants in Mexico.
Through more than nine decades, Grupo Modelo has invested and grown within – and with – Mexico, generating more than 30,000 direct jobs in its breweries and vertical operations, located throughout the country.
Grupo Modelo, like many forward-thinking companies, is currently focused on a drive towards establishing a truly sustainable business. This endeavour is best exemplified in the Middle Americas Zone (MAZ), where sustainability efforts have been led by for the past five years by Soqui Calderon Aranibar, Regional Sustainability and ESG Director. Ambitious targets have been established for the region, but some remarkable achievements have already been made. As Calderon says: “For our team, sustainability is not just part of our business, it IS our business.”
SDI International’s Brendan Curran and Joaquín Morales discuss empowering procurement innovation, the importance of effective tail spend management, and how its Master Vendor programme transforms the function
In a world of greater complexity and risk, technology adoption and digitalisation, and an ever-evolving compliance and regulatory environment, procurement teams still grapple with a perennial challenge: cost reduction. Which is why tail spend management – often overlooked and unmanaged while procurement focuses its attention on strategic, high-spend categories – is so important. Indeed, for many organisations, taking effective control of costly, one-off buys and high-volume, low-value purchases involving numerous suppliers can deliver as much as 5% to 10% of cost savings, according to Boston Consulting Group.
But tail spend, by its nature, is complicated. It requires significant focus to effectively manage high volumes of data, often has a perceived lack of strategic importance within both procurement and the wider organisation, lacks visibility, involves vast numbers of transactions, many product categories, and a largely anonymous supplier base, and can bring potential compliance risks because of poor onboarding processes or inconsistent terms and conditions.
Tackling the problem can be daunting for procurement teams. But, according to SDI International, it doesn’t have to be. The organisation, one of the world’s largest diversity and woman-owned procurement outsourcing and technology providers, delivers industry-leading holistic tail management solutions based on a successful formula: simplify, digitalise, innovate. Its Master Vendor programme provides procurement teams looking to tackle their tail with a one-stop solution for tail spend that leverages the latest and most efficient technologies to handle supplier onboarding and on-time payment, and manage the entire tail supply chain, stakeholder servicing, and escalations. The result is a procurement department better able to drive cost saving, efficiencies, and more strategic outcomes.
SourceDay has announced a strategic partnership with industry cloud company Infor to deliver supply chain visibility.
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SourceDay has announced a strategic partnership with industry cloud company Infor.
It is expected that the alliance will bridge the gap between ERPs and supplier networks. This will also be while enhancing the efficiency of direct spend purchase order lifecycle management.
Delivering supply chain visibility
As part of the partnership, SourceDay is now an Infor Certified Solution Partner. It will deliver deep, bi-directional technology integration across Infor’s Discrete Manufacturing ERPs. Shared customers can now manage direct material POs proactively and comprehensively from creation to receipt.
SourceDay is a supply chain collaboration platform that integrates with any ERP system to overcome the risks and costs inherent in manual PO lifecycle management processes. It helps manufacturers and distributors achieve supplier on-time delivery rates as high as 96%. This is through providing unmatched visibility and control over inbound supply.
Further, Infor is an official reseller of the SourceDay platform, which validates the SourceDay solution while significantly expanding customer reach.
Strategic partnership
“I’m thrilled to partner with Infor as the supplier collaboration platform of choice for their customers and prospects. This is the culmination of a rigorous process where Infor selected SourceDay based on the quality of our technology and shared commitment to our customers’ success,” said Clint McRee, co-founder of SourceDay. “SourceDay will continue to focus on proactive supplier engagement and data accuracy that today’s supply chain teams require to mitigate risk and unlock next-level business outcomes.”
Mark Humphlett, Industry and Solution Strategy Director at Infor, added: “Infor is focused on creating and sustaining collaborative relationships with partners, such as SourceDay, that have considerable vertical market expertise and are well aligned with our solutions and CloudSuites. This new partnership demonstrates Infor’s continued focus on quality and commitment to its customers.”
Tom Kieley, CEO and co-founder at SourceDay, discusses his company’s secret sauce and how it has risen to the top of the pile, delivering unified supplier collaboration for manufacturing customers.
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Some of the best innovation is born through frustration with existing offerings.
Having built their careers in manufacturing, SourceDay’s founders grew tired of unnecessary costs, increased risk, and wasted time and productivity caused by ineffective supplier communication and incorrect ERP data. This led them to create a solution that would prevent direct materials inventory surprises and unnecessary costs and also rebuild trust between manufacturers, distributors, and their suppliers.
Today, SourceDay is a bi-directionally integrated platform for any ERP where the purchase order (PO) demand is generated. The company delivers 100% of purchase order demand to suppliers through the lifecycle of a PO. This is to ensure that suppliers have no surprises and always have the most real-time, accurate source of truth. An ERP streamlines many of a company’s internal processes, but when it comes to keeping track of critical PO changes in a timely manner, procurement teams are still stuck in manual work, such as spreadsheets, emails, and post-it notes.
By digitising and creating configurable smart rules for PO change management, SourceDay removes up to 80% of the manual procurement work. This is while eliminating the persistent question marks around end-product delivery times and costs. Through seamless integration with a customer’s ERP, SourceDay ensures that every purchase order is delivered to suppliers without fail and allows for true 100% supplier collaboration through a portal, email, or EDI.
With the transformative addition of complete PO visibility, SourceDay doesn’t just enhance existing ERP capabilities. It sets a new bar for PO accuracy and on-time delivery for direct materials procurement. In today’s digital age, embracing such clarity and intelligent use of technology isn’t a luxury; it’s the key to ensuring a business remains agile, robust, and ahead of the curve.
Since its inception, SourceDay has been on a mission to eliminate manual work, production delays, and inbound supply inaccuracies from the procurement lifecycle. In just under a decade, SourceDay went from an idea on a whiteboard in a small office to nearly 300 customers and more than 80,000 suppliers globally who interact through the solution daily.
Tom Kieley, CEO, SourceDay
People are a huge difference-maker
As CEO, Tom Kieley is used to making tough decisions. However, he explains that hiring the best people for the right stage of the journey is the most challenging aspect of the role. Without great team members, a business can’t be successful long-term. While the organisation’s requirements dictate part of the job criteria, finding people who are already equipped with knowledge of the industry and the customer set plays a crucial role in the hiring process.
“We want to deliver value to the customers efficiently and effectively,” he explains. “We’re fortunate we have executives who are visionaries in their fields. They can help carry the business to be the industry-leading solution while disrupting the supply chain technology space.”
Experience across the company
“Hiring people with highly relevant industry experience has been very important. For example, we have former buyers on our sales team. They’ve walked in our customers’ shoes and had to live with the pain that SourceDay solves,” explains Kieley. “We have team members who were manufacturing operators, so they understand the challenges of manufacturing first hand.”
The impact that relying on external suppliers can have on a manufacturer when things aren’t going according to plan is often significant and costly. “A minute, an hour, a day of downtime from a missing part or component drastically impacts the bottom line of manufacturing, which is already a low-margin, highly cash-sensitive organisation.”
Removing the Buyer/Supplier Communication Gap with Unified Supplier Collaboration
A major frustration (and point of risk) in procurement, especially for manufacturers and distributors, is the constant PO line changes impacting production scheduling. Buyers are caught in a nearly no-win situation. They can waste hours they really don’t have manually chasing down and staying on top of changes (hoping they or their supplier didn’t miss something critical) or they can wait until the ERP updates (often the next day) and be behind on time-sensitive decisions.
“There isn’t a manufacturer or distributor who hasn’t felt the painful ripple effect of missing a critical PO change,” says Kieley. “It impacts inventory costs, expedite fees, production and labour schedules, and end-product delivery dates.”
The historical challenge has been the absence of a closed-loop supplier collaboration platform that accounts for supplier workflows as much as buyer workflows. SourceDay has solved this issue with Unified Supplier Collaboration (USC), a simple, yet powerful workflow tool that allows buyers and suppliers to communicate and collaborate through their preferred channel. That can be the SourceDay portal (even without a login or training), an EDI connection, or through normal email communications. The SourceDay solution captures and updates critical PO line changes–in real time–directly into the ERP, retaining a single, accurate source of truth for shipment, demand planning and production scheduling. “With USC, there’s no more supplier surprises, no more guesswork, no more inaccurate ERP procurement data, no more “where’s my part?” and no more ripple effect across the organisation,” Kieley adds.
SourceDay: How everyone benefits
Receive and manage timely PO confirmations and changes from suppliers.
Find MRP inaccuracies with accurate PO data.
Build strong, performance-driven supplier relationships with supplier scorecards.
Robust US-based training, onboarding, and support.
Buyers
Accurate lead time and MRP data to significantly improve on-time delivery.
Increased visibility into KPIs for data-driven decision making: OTD, move-ins/move-out, price changes and more.
Streamlined integration and onboarding for speedy time to value.
Robust implementation and ongoing support.
IT
Quick integration ensures speedy time to value and return on investment.
Lightweight IT integration with any ERP.
Training done by SourceDay’s team to take pressure off IT teams.
Executives
Reduce business risk caused by external suppliers.
Decrease customer SLA penalties.
Lower average inventory on hand to increase inventory turns.
Increase ERP data accuracy for key business decisions.
Increase visibility into repeatable and accurate revenue forecasts through improved demand and scheduling data.
COVID-19 drive
The COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 highlighted many inefficiencies in supply chains. Pre-pandemic, the supply chain technology space was limited and there wasn’t much innovation beyond traditional ERPs. Kieley explains that boardrooms were not yet at the stage to buy technology as a “differentiator” and were instead throwing people at the problem. “When the pandemic hit, it really highlighted challenges that had always just been overcome through brute force and people,” reveals Kieley. “You were forced to send everyone home other than essential workers in the warehouse and shop floor. This significantly impacted visibility and communication with critical suppliers.”
The pandemic exposed the gaps that manufacturers and distributors had in their business model, which created a great deal of risk in operations. Kieley illustrates the stark paradox manufacturers were experiencing with and without SourceDay to help keep the lights on. “We had several hundred customers we were able to get data from that showed their buyers never skipped a beat because of SourceDay,” he reveals. “Many customers were able to tell us they were getting 90, 95% on-time delivery even through Covid. In contrast, companies that weren’t using SourceDay ground to a screeching halt for six to 12 months while many of them were trying to get visibility and communication back with their suppliers. Outside of email, everyone was back at home, lost.”
Choosing the best emerging technology
Indeed, technological transformation is a big part of most organisations’ puzzle. With new technology causing significant waves of interest in procurement and supply chain, there is a rush by technology providers to quickly bring technology advances to market, often before actual value delivery has been vetted out. SourceDay has taken a different approach. The company has bypassed some hotly discussed emerging technologies because of the low impact to customer success.
One area of tech SourceDay has researched and tested extensively is artificial intelligence (AI). Properly utilised, AI has the potential to drive millions of unnecessary manual hours out of the procurement process. “We’ve added strategic experts from supply chain and data science backgrounds to deliver more solution value to customers. This is more proactive visibility, change tracking, and analytics; information that used to live in error-prone spreadsheets and email or was otherwise unusable,” explains Kieley.
Gen AI drive
One of the biggest crazes of the past few years has been generative AI. Since the rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT model, leaders have been rushing to find ways to leverage chatbots into their processes. But, it comes with risks attached because large language models are not always reliable and often incorporate made-up data.
In contrast, Kieley explains that SourceDay’s data set solves the accuracy problem with AI. “The problem is that gen AI models are often opinions and points of view that are not always factual,” reveals Kieley. “Our dataset is factual and action-derived. It reflects what has happened in the past on a supplier’s ability to hit on-time delivery, price changes, quality, responsiveness, ability to ship on time in full, and all of the components that happen through those transactions that again, otherwise existed in email or voice that were uncaptured. As a result, our AI is able to use fact-positive historical data to provide insights and recommendations to customers.”
Customer case study: Chatsworth Products (CPI)
Chatsworth was facing a number of supplier-related challenges with their Epicor ERP, all of which centred around how they were managing the process of acquiring parts and raw materials. They predominantly relied upon email, phone calls, faxes, and spreadsheets to manage supplier communication, none of which facilitated visibility or easy tracking.
As a result, before working with SourceDay, Chatsworth’s suppliers were chronically late delivering materials. The manufacturer had to amass significant buffer stock to keep production going. After watching a demo of the SourceDay platform at an Epicor user group, Chatsworth immediately knew they needed this solution to resolve supplier issues.
SourceDay enabled Chatsworth to improve supplier collaboration to such an extent that on time delivery (OTD) went up to 90%. In doing so, the company was able to shift to a just-in-time model and reduce on-hand WIP inventory needs by 66%. This allowed 90% of warehouse space to be freed up and converted to a manufacturing floor.
Chatsworths’ Products Senior Director of Materials and Logistics said: “Three years ago, we were living in chaos. Now, with our hyper-growth and with the new tool, I can’t remember the last time we were short a part.”
Not only did SourceDay help minimise risk impacting Chatsworth’s business, but the benefits allowed them to optimise factory operations to drive more revenue through production.
Eye on the future
Looking ahead, Kieley is optimistic about the upcoming years at SourceDay. Having achieved considerable success in a relatively short time, he is showing no signs of slowing down amid an exciting time for procurement and supply chain. “Our future is bright. We have built strategic partnerships with organisations that are additive to our platform and/or we are additive to their platform,” he says. “It’s vital in helping SourceDay reach a bigger market and start going more global. Today, most of our customers are in North America.
“There’s truly nobody doing this in the way we do it. And explicitly, I think groundbreaking, transformational technology for manufacturers and distribution companies enables them to succeed in otherwise challenging environments. Global conflicts are becoming an increasing challenge to supply chains. If you’re shipping into parts of Europe today, you’re having to spend 25% or 30% more. Technology is here to stay in this space, and there’s not enough awareness of our platform. We’re about the specific supply chain procurement market we’ve created and solved. For us now, it’s about building awareness in the manufacturing and distribution verticals and helping organisations to thrive.”
