Procurement on the Thames: Ivalua’s London Summer Symposium

by Eloise Barnum

As businesses navigate through supply chain disruptions, high inflation, and sustainability initiatives, procurement, and supplier management has taken center stage in driving change. At Ivalua, we recognized the need to stay ahead of these developments and organized our first annual Ivalua Summer Symposium in London on a wonderful sunny evening on the Thames to discuss the latest trends in procurement and supplier management. 

The symposium brought together CTO’s, procurement professionals, and industry experts to share insights that will shape the future of procurement. In our recap, we’ll dive into the key takeaways from the event and what they mean for the industry.

Ivalua CEO and Founder David Khuat-Duy and Ian Thompson, VP of Northern Europe kicked off the day with an introduction. We greeted our guests—including some familiar faces from KPMG, Deloitte, Touchstone, Accenture, PWC, OJC, and Capgemini. Our team also welcomed MBDA, Ametek, Blue Crest Capital, Sainsbury’s, ISG, Genel Energy, and Motorola Solutions.

Vishal Patel and Peter Hunt delivered their session ‘Creating Value with Strategic Sourcing’ to discuss how Procurement professionals are recognizing that the fast-paced digital landscape of today demands new approaches to category management and strategic sourcing. They asked, what can organizations do to optimize their strategic sourcing processes? The answer is simple – automation. Automating strategic sourcing not only simplifies the process but also offers significant savings, increased efficiencies, and better governance. 

Organizations with an integrated strategic sourcing platform powered by automation can yield considerable benefits in terms of cost savings, efficiencies, and intelligent decision-making. With streamlined category management, reliable data, optimization of strategic sourcing, standardization of processes, supplier compliance, and risk mitigation, procurement professionals can create a more sustainable and profitable procurement environment. Therefore, it is critical that organizations adopt strategic sourcing automation as a top priority to improve procurement practices and overall business performance.

Arnaud Malardé and Tino Wienand delivered a session on, ‘Achieving Best-in-Class Procure-to-Pay’. Arnaud and Tino discussed that in order to achieve Best-in-class P2P, you need to identify key performance indicators, streamline workflows, adopt innovative procurement technology systems, collaborate with suppliers, and optimize payment processing. Adopting these practices helps to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and automate procurement processes leading to better control and accuracy.

Sustainability and responsible sourcing were also central topics at the symposium. We delivered an expert panel, ‘Getting Started on Scope 3 Emission Reduction’, moderated by Stephen Carter, featuring Oliver Hurrey (The Sustainable Procurement Pledge), Lazar Armianov (EcoVadis) and Vishal Patel, VP of Product Marketing at Ivalua.

The final session of the day, ‘Driving Sustainable Procurement’ was presented by Stephen Carter.  Consumers are demanding more transparency and accountability from businesses when it comes to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Steve discussed how Procurement teams are in a unique position to drive sustainable initiatives within their organizations and the steps they need to take to drive these changes.

The symposium emphasized the importance of data management to track ESG metrics and ensure compliance with regulations. Ivalua’s sustainable sourcing solution can help organizations identify sustainable suppliers, monitor supplier sustainability performance, and report on progress towards sustainability goals. 

See you soon! 

After a day of learning and listening, we set sail on the Thames to mingle, relax and catch a perfect sunset! Thank you to all our amazing guests who joined us on this incredible voyage along the stunning waters. We hope you had a fantastic time and look forward to hosting more events and expert panels throughout the year. Stay tuned and don’t miss out!

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