A Playbook for Digitalising Procurement with Rees Thomas

In this episode of Procurement Reimagined, host Daniel is joined by Rees Thomas, Head of Procurement at Graze, a UK-based healthy snacking brand.  

Rees shares his end-to-end vision on digitalisation in procurement, from designing the digital framework to driving its adoption.  He also shares his insight on the evolution of the procurement function over the past decade. 

Rees describes himself as a motivated, innovative, and capable buying manager with a proven sixteen-year track record in the procurement space.  He believes that procurement is more than just cost reduction; it is a strategic function that adds value to the business. He is also a firm proponent of the value of supplier relationship management.  

Key Highlights:

• 05:50 - 08:10 - Evolution of Procurement Over the Past Decade - Rees shares how the role of procurement has evolved from a cost reduction function to a strategic process that adds business value while ensuring the robustness of supply chain functions. Today, procurement provides win-win solutions for all stakeholders, including the business and its supplier partners. Events like COVID and Brexit have added uncertainty to supply chains, and businesses that have thrived in this period are ones that focused on building strong relations with suppliers with a good supplier relationship management program in place.
  
  
• 09:52 - 12:54 - Defining Digitalisation in Procurement - Digitalising procurement is about putting a system in place that lets people get things done quicker and more efficiently. It’s about selecting tech stacks that work with your legacy systems and stacks that can work with each other. Good digitalisation is essentially about having the right system in place.
  
  
• 17:26 - 19:16 - Getting Digital Applications to Work Together - Before you select your digitalisation stacks, start by analysing your current, short-term, and long-term needs. This will not only help in future-proofing your system, but it will also prevent capability gaps down the line. Identify the key components you need and look at possible suppliers in that space. Before investing in software, try the free trial version to check how the software integrates with your existing system.
  
  
• 21:11 - 23:15 - Driving Internal Adoption of Automation - Resistance to adopting new technologies is normal, thanks to our desire for the status quo. To drive adoption, the technology must be intuitive and easy to use. A solution with all the bells and whistles regarding functionalities but with a steep learning curve will always face resistance at the adoption stage.

• “Procurement is more than cost saving; it is a strategic function that adds value to the business while securing stable and scalable supply chains”.
• “Digitalisation is about how we can simplify processes for users. It’s about bringing processes and departments to a centralised area”.
• “Automating procurement is complex because you’re trying to make the system efficient while striving to future-proof it”.