[Editor’s Note: Our colleague at Ardent Partners, Matt York, wrote an excellent column last week highlighting three key takeaways from our CPO Rising Summit in Boston and I thought his insights would be valuable to share on PayablesPlace as well. Two weeks ago, delegates, speakers, and supply management solutions providers descended upon the historic Harvard Club of Boston for Ardent Partners’ fourth-annual CPO Rising procurement executive summit. The amount of knowledge and information shared at the event was extensive. Below are Matt’s key impressions from the Summit.]
Three Takeaways
One — The Face of Procurement is Changing. The crowd at CPO Rising 2019 was more diverse than in recent years, and that’s something for the procurement industry (and us) to both acknowledge and celebrate. Ardent welcomed a beautiful array of men and women from all walks of life — Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials; people from all over the country and all over the world; and professionals from other industries and verticals, whose roles are touched by procurement and supply chain. Speakers, panelists, and roundtable hosts brought their authentic selves to the event, and looked out at an audience that not only looked like them, but also represented them and their challenges and opportunities to make an impact in supply management today.
Two — The Paths to Procurement are Winding Still. Speaking of diverse backgrounds, I was thrilled to see two friends in the audience who typify the ways in which professionals find their way to procurement (names and employers are being withheld to protect the innocent).
- One, a college friend who has spent nearly two decades climbing the ranks in procurement. A social sciences major, she decided instead to pursue a career in business, earning her MBA and progressing from vendor management, to category management, to sourcing, to ultimately procurement. As a senior manager, she is one procurement pro who is continuing to rise.
- Another, a dear friend who I’ve known for nearly a quarter century, returned to Boston after working abroad for more than a decade. As a former country Chief Information Officer for a major insurance company, the breadth and depth of experience he brought to this conference — as a collaborator of procurement, as someone who has vetted and implemented procurement technologies — was so unique. Although he was not a procurement pro, per se, his exposure to and experience with enterprise procurement teams offered delegates an opportunity to share perspectives with one of procurement’s most important stakeholders.
Three — Procurement Runs in the Family. 2019 saw the second consecutive parent-sibling duo at the conference. Last year, we had Tim Fiore, SVP and CPO at Ryder Corporation, and daughter, Meghan Truchan, VP and head of procurement at Bain Capital, in attendance. This year, we had Mary Kachinsky, CPSM, CPM, and VP of Strategic Sourcing at Kaleido Biosciences, and daughter, Amanda Kachinsky, senior manager of global sourcing at blue bird bio, not only in attendance, but also delivering a keynote presentation and sitting on a panel discussion, respectively.
While we are our own persons — few of us are still “directed” or “told” to pursue this or that career — we are also the products of our environments. Many of us grew up watching our parents climb the proverbial corporate ladder and hearing them tell us what was so special about each rung. We look up to our parents, even as we see them occasionally struggle to reach that next rung. We admire them even more for the struggle. So then it is no surprise that some of us follow in our parents’ literal and figurative footsteps, up that procurement ladder, rising towards the coveted CPO title.
Final Thoughts
Collaboration is a key theme that I have written about many times on PayablesPlace. As I have done in the past, and will continue to in the future, I will provide and share content and insights into other parts of the enterprise (procurement, treasury, finance, business units, C-suite, etc) to Accounts Payable professionals who need to know and understand what’s happening in the rest of the business in order to be in a position to continue to change the perception of AP from a back-office function to a strategic, value-adding, and highly respected member of the greater team.
