In April and May, Ardent Partners hosted The CPO Rising 2K20 Virtual Series – The Resiliency Imperative as a way to bring together our global community of procurement, finance, and supply management professionals and collectively tackle the big issues we were all facing and continue to face as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 2,300 people participated in the 20 virtual sessions including our livestream summit. We also had 27 experts share their ideas and insights. Once the dust settled on the series, we went back to interview many of these leaders so we could learn a little bit more about them and their companies. We’re also working on a plan to replay many of the sessions, so stay tuned.
We continue the speaker spotlight series with a discussion with Jim Bureau, CEO of Jaggaer. During the CPO Rising 2K20 Virtual Summit, Jim and Ardent founder Andrew Bartolini went through a livestream video interview that focused on key leadership strategies in times of crisis. Andrew caught up with Jim earlier this month for a special interview.
Andrew Bartolini: Jim, great to speak to you again. How’s your summer going?
Jim Bureau: Hi Andrew, pleasure to connect with you as well, my summer has been great, but quiet.
AB: A common response. For our readers, I’d like you to tell us about your background and then Jaggaer, which has gone through some big changes over the past few years.
JB: I started my career in investment banking, moved into warehouse software management, and subsequently worked for 3M, Oracle, Shared Health, Pegasystems and Kana/Verint. So, my background is primarily enterprise software in large multidimensional organizations, in particular healthcare systems for both payers and providers, where you’d have maybe 150 hospitals and other institutions sharing patient, clinical and lab data. In such an environment, there’s absolutely no room for error. That was a pretty material influence when I moved into change management and business process management solutions at Pegasystems.
From a personal perspective, I am the fifth of six siblings which I think had a major impact on my development! Large family dynamics teach you how to stand up for yourself. I now have a large family of my own. I’ve lived nearly all my life in Atlanta, Georgia. There’s a unique dynamic of being in the American south, and an international crossroads with the world’s busiest airport, making Atlanta a cultural and business capital that’s actually now populated largely by folks who’ve moved down from places like New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco, as well as overseas.
JAGGAER is a software and services company that works with buyers and suppliers to make procurement a better experience. Our core product, the JAGGAER ONE platform, offers full digital transformation across the entire procurement spectrum from source to pay and for all types of spending in all industry sectors. Recently there has been a growing focus on leveraging pattern recognition and visual intelligence to ensure that process flows are closely aligned to the desired customer outcomes, so my background has provided insights that are proving very useful in this respect.
AB: Atlanta has undergone an amazing transformation. Some even call it the “Paris of the South.” What brought you to Jaggaer?
JB: The transition to Jaggaer was really from the broader perspective of how procurement fits into the entire spectrum of business processes, and getting all those processes to work with each other; experience that I gained from my time at Pegasystems and then Verint, especially working with workforce management software implementations that had up to 30,000 users in multidimensional organizations. So, I guess the bigger picture is how to effect change management to achieve desired outcomes. I think this has been a huge material advantage because recent events have demonstrated how attention to tight process flows across an organization is fundamental to negotiating your way forward when revenue streams have dried up. Managing spend with tight process control is the only real lever many organizations have right now.
AB: I always like to hear about people’s major influences in their professional careers. Tell me some of yours.
JB: There have been many influences but if you put me on the spot, there are three people that I would call out. First, George Sears, who entrusted me with a management role when I was in my twenties. Above all, he taught me the value of maintaining a calm demeanor in complex situations in order to “tone down the noise”. His disarming personality impressed upon me the value of being transparent in my dealings with people. Then there was a gentleman named Joe Duffy, who I worked with at Oracle. He also gave me a lot of responsibility at a fairly young age, which involved managing people who were considerably older and more experienced in a fairly aggressive environment. To do this takes a strong sense of empathy for others plus accountability for your decisions, being firm without being conceited. And finally, Alan Trefler, CEO at Pegasystems. One of the smartest guys I have ever met. He passionately believed that everyone in the organization should have an opinion, and that every opinion should be heard. That sounds simple but it is about empowerment, which is a very difficult thing to execute in practice. One of the big takeaways from these and other influences was the need not only to have a set of values but also to strive to abide by them if you are to be a truly effective leader.
AB: That’s a great mix of leaders. So the mandatory question COVID-impact question – recent events have taught us many things regarding short-term preparation and general planning. What should procurement teams be paying attention to now, in the short-term, and in the future?
JB: We’ve been living with COVID-19 for the best part of six months now and the best advice I can give is “hope for the best but plan for the worst.” Organizations that do not have their supply chains and spend management systems in order and structured have been left exposed. The very first question that every organization is going to hit in this kind of situation – and we can be sure there will be other crises in future – is “how do we manage cash flow when revenue streams have dried up?” Companies are still firefighting, but longer term, they need to get those structures in place.
AB: This decade has gotten off to an inauspicious start, but it will eventually right itself. Where do you think we will be in 2030?
JB: It’s interesting – over recent years there have been seismic shifts in the way people interact with enterprise software. One was the shift to browser-based user interfaces, giving people greater flexibility, then cloud and SaaS. By 2030 the big change will be artificial intelligence, but more specifically how that AI leverages the unimaginable volumes of data that companies and society generate. AI has been around for years, but big data hasn’t, and AI is only as good as the data.
Conversely, without AI, the data is simply unmanageable. You get overwhelmed with information. What is the use of a neural network searching terabytes of data if it still throws out a million hits? Some technologies such as search engines already succeed in getting it down to the top dozen or so most relevant to the user. We are on track to get similar results in procurement and supplier management software. The big challenge is to advance pattern recognition and apply it to improve the way people work. I take the optimistic view that this will enable procurement professionals to do fewer mundane and routine things and work more productively and strategically.
AB: I have been closing out these interviews by asking what was the best or most interesting thing you watched, read, etc. during the shutdown?
JB: I found myself getting more and more into podcasts, especially ones by or about contemporaries who have done something extraordinary that has had an impact on millions of people. These give valuable insights into human behavior. I’ll give just one example: a recent podcast on NPR about the British inventor James Dyson. He invented a new kind of vacuum cleaner back in 1979, worked for five years to perfect it, and was rejected by every major manufacturer. So, he started his own company and today, Dyson is the biggest brand in the sector, and James Dyson is a billionaire. That kind of success takes determination and passion, plus that undefinable quality of looking at things from a different angle. Truly inspiring.
AB: That’s a great story. Thanks Jim, be safe.
