PROFILE Procurement Pro Tackles High Cost, Low Service

Has the pandemic changed how the value of travel purchasing is viewed in your organization?

I think it is more strategic now. Everyone initially cut travel, and now they’re trying to get back into travel. Your partners that have been there in a lot of cases are failing, whether they don’t have the capacity at this point, a war on Ukraine, fuel prices, lack of pilots, whatever the case may be. Whereas in the past you used to shop around primarily on price and availability—most of these car rental guys are in the same airport you’re going to—now you have to stop and say, who’s really the right [supplier] who’s not going to leave my people stranded.

Has there been any change in terms of how travel itself is viewed?

In the past, travel was just there. Everyone was trying to rack up points and find an excuse to go to Florida in the winter. Now it’s viewed as actually costing us money, and why travel when you can do these conference calls or whatever? There is value to travel. I personally like that face-to-face interaction if I’m negotiating an agreement or contract. I think there is a lot of value to it. To keep it valued, we have to show the company that, hey, not only are we providing this service, but it’s an affordable service when you start comparing it to what it looked like two or three years ago.

Are there other roles you’ve taken on in the past two years?

It’s maybe not so much in travel but how we process expense reports, that’s getting a closer look. We want to get our hands around what that expense report is really costing us, how much are we paying for food, cars, these frequent gasoline guys who don’t refuel. It’s a cost to the company, and it’s not managed, so we want to get that under control.

What have you been doing on the data side to achieve that?

We’re doing a lot of new data projects. We’re moving to the cloud on our ERP systems, we’re also going after the value-added taxes our travelers are spending. There’s a lot wrapped up in that data to allow us to get some money back in the organization, so we’re doing a lot of that stuff now.

In what ways have you become a greater resource to your company?

Definitely on the contract and cost-savings side. These relationships prior to our spinoff were never really revisited—once you are a supplier, you’re always a supplier—so I’ve been taking a look at those relationships, and some of them are definitely in need of change. Our goal from the procurement side of the house is to save this organization as much money as possible and get the same level of service. Now, with the inflation and everything else going on, it’s a much more valuable resource in general, whether it’s travel or not.

What internal relationships have you formed that have seen the most transformation in recent years?

The finance group has always been the finance group, and the only time they come to interact on the procurement side of the house is if there’s a problem. In the past, they may not have been paying close attention to the amount of money that was going out the door for travel, but they’re hearing these calls where I’m badgering these airline guys, so we definitely have a much closer working relationship, and it’s spilling out to some beneficial results. Now, I have finance backing, and the magic words are, “I’m going to save you some money. Watch this.”